Gardening: Soil Mineralization

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What did Paracelsus say about rocks?

I live in the Chicago suburbs and I started using rock dust on my own apartment garden about 10 years ago. At first I crushed red and black volcanic stones you can buy by the bag and fed them to my houseplant (a green shamrock plant) as an experiment to see if it would work. It did. In about a week the plants grew from 3 inches, where they "normally" were at the highest I had seen them, to 8 inches high !!! That's where they remained as long as I had them (12+ years).

My apartment garden, 3ft by 20ft suffered from tomato worms the 1st and 2nd year. the 3rd year I applied about 20 pounds of rock dust from a supplier in Canada. Coulda been more, I think I used half of a 50 lb pail they supplied. Anyway it was amazing. I started the garden a month after everyone else had started theirs, and I caught up and surpassed them by July. I planted everything closely and it looked like a Jungle hedge !!!

I had rabbits living under my plants (they told me it would attract the wildlife). No bugs at all, and very sweet fruit. The garden only got full sun until noon!!  I don't live there anymore, but now I am going to try patio tomatoes on my balcony with dust and m-state this year, although it is very shady, we'll see what happens!!!

Stan Zotas