Remineralizing the Garden

The following thread will walk everyone through the thought process of replenishing the minerals in our gardens, the why and the how.  I will be putting together a follow up thread which will discuss replenishing minerals in the human.  Spring approaches and I hope the following information will allow you to acquire the right soil supplements now to plant alongside your starts in the spring to increase yields and fortify the nutrition and mineral content of your produce.  May you find abundance in your garden and your life.  

1.1   Metalloproteins 

All enzymes are metalloproteins.  Enzymes are the catalysts for life and are required for the production and metabolism of proteins.  At the heart of every enzyme’s chemical structure is a metal ion.  Hormones also act as catalysts and require specific trace minerals as well, all of which are built upon a chassis called cholesterol.  From an electric universe perspective these trace mineral ions provide the necessary polarity or charge to interact and change other proteins (like magnets repel and attract), this is how they act as catalysts.  pH is the biological expression of this electric “potential of Hydrogen” and proteins change shape and binding potentials based upon the pH of their environment.  This is why plants can only utilize certain nutrients from the soil if the pH is correct for them.  Blueberries for example can only uptake their required nutrients from an acidic soil, if pH is neutral or above they cannot interact with the nutrients in the soil to make them bioavailable to the plant because they are not in the right “shape” at an inappropriate pH to the plant.  In chemistry pKa is the pH at which any protein will exist in equal amounts of both acid and base “shapes.”  Every chemical compound has a unique pKa.  Another way to picture this is a human hair.  Hair is a series of acid and base amino acid pairs to form a protein chain.  Depending on the arrangement of acid and base pairs in the protein chain tertiary (3rd step) binding can occur, meaning the protein chain folds upon itself as the acid base base pairs attract to each other at different points along the chain.  This is why some people have curly hair.  If the amino acids line up such that tertiary binding does not clump the chain together (like magnets repelling) a person will have straight hair.  You can think about the nutrients the blueberry plant needs in the soil requiring a specific pH range to make bioavailable the “curly hair proteins.”  If the soil pH for the blueberry plant is neutral or above the nutrients are in a “straight hair shape” and the blueberry plant is unable to uptake them from the soil.  

When you remove the trace minerals from the environment soil microbes are unable to make enzymes.  Without enzymes microbes are unable to make or break down proteins and therefore the microbes die.  Plants, animals, and humans are symbiotic ecosystems that rely upon microbes to produce the enzymes to break down our food etc.  Taking out the minerals, takes out the microbes, takes out the plants, makes humans chronically ill.  Humans are a complex organism compared to microbes or plants, therefore we do not directly die from demineralization like a bacterium that relies on a much narrower spectrum of enzymes. 

Glyphsate is considered to be safe bc there is no acute toxicity to humans.  However what happens when you remove minerals from the human?  This will be discussed in a later thread.  

1.2 Understanding the role of Round UP glyphosate

To understand the history and impact of glyphosate please watch this presentation from Dr Thierry Vrain:

Engineered food and your health: the nutritional status of GMO’s
https://youtu.be/yiU3Ndi6itk

Glyphosate was initially developed as a chelator aka descaling agent to clean commercial boilers.  The water was then dumped outside the boiler plant and curiously nothing grew there.  Eventually a specific sludge or algae did grow where the water was dumped because it contained an enzyme that rapidly brokedown glyphosate.  Monsanto then purchased the patent for glyphosate to re patent as an herbicide.  Decades of genetic research identified the glyphosate resistant enzyme in the sludge that grew out of the glyphosate exposed runoff.  Monsanto has now inserted this gene in all GMO foods to produce the enzyme that rapidly metabolizes glyphosate.  

Beyond acting as an indiscriminate descaling agent glyphosate blocks the shikimate pathway.  This is a protein synthesis pathway that produces tyrosine based amino acids (tyrosine becomes 5-htp which becomes serotonin in humans for example).  Microbes and plants rely on the shikimate pathway to produce tyrosine based amino acids.  Humans do not utilize the shikimate pathway as we rely on these “essential amino acids” from our diet of plants and microbes.  

Glyphosate resistance through inserting a gene that produces an enzyme that breaks down glyphosate
http://www.isaaa.org/resources/publications/pocketk/10/default.asp

Shikimate Pathway (EPSPS enzyme pathway)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPSP_synthase

Evolution of glyphosate

1964 descaling agent

1969  herbicide

1996 Round UP ready

2005 dessicant

2010 antibiotic at 1ppm (glyphosate is the perfect indiscriminate full spectrum antibiotic)

Glyphosate does bind with Fe/iron in humans as well as the 57 different cytochrome P450 enzymes in the liver that are responsible for all drug and protein metabolism.  

The major trace minerals that glyphosate binds to that cause the most disruption in the human system include:  S, Fe, Cu, Zn, Ca, Mg, Mn, Co, Mo, Se but there are many more. 

As you will notice in the presentation above from Dr Vrain at 11:00 mark as corn became 100% GMO over the 90’s the age old weight of a bushel of corn had to be redefined from 56lbs to 54lbs.  Where did 2 pounds of weight go to?  2lbs per bushel of metal ions are now missing from every bushel of corn because they have been bound up in the fields by glyphosate rendering them no longer bioavailable to the crops.  

Glyphosate is ubiquitous and every garden and human must be remineralized.  Even though you buy organic food there will be missing mineral weight compared to the same crop prior to the 1960’s.  The nutritional content of our food supply is continually being depleted of vital trace minerals.  The only way to correct this problem is to grow your own food and remineralize the ecosystem yourself.  Do this and you will see dramatic reversal of chronic disease.  

1.3   Remineralizing soils to produce therapeutic bioavailable medical nutrition.  

Every plant takes up different minerals in different parts of the plant.  

Please watch this interview with the founder of www.naturallynoble.com

Prevent and reverse disease with life-changing organic fertilizer
https://youtu.be/NS1OGWuxJ7o

Naturally Noble (soil amendments)
http://www.naturallynoble.com/

Browse the soil amendments on the site to see how different trace mineral deficiencies lead to different types of disease.  Remember all enzymes are metalloproteins and without the minerals there are no enzymes and from there all physiological pathways begin to breakdown.  Replacing the minerals allows the microbes to replenish the enzymes which allows the human to function as nature designed.  Adding specific minerals to soils to grow specific plants for harvest makes a therapeutic nutritional supplement or food medicine.  For example, insulin requires chromium.  Radishes are big uptakers of chromium.  Growing radishes in chromium rich soils produces a food that helps to replenish the production of insulin in diabetic patients with impaired glucose production.  This is just one example.  

As a pharmacist I have been working backwards from allopathic Big Pharma drugs for years to understand the missing micronutrient that cause the jenga tower to collapse into disease in the first place.  What happens when you take selenium out a human ecosystem? Or copper? Or molybdenum? And so on.. This is a large question that will be keeping me busy for many decades to come.  But it is this line of thinking coupled with gardening that will have the capacity to CURE disease.  

A reference here can be used to find which plants take up what minerals and in what quantities.  

Dr Duke’s Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Database 
https://phytochem.nal.usda.gov/phytochem/search/list

One stated flaw of the database above is that the locations and soil conditions of the plants studied was not factored in.  Therefore, we cannot be 100% certain these are the hard limits of what specific plants can uptake and contain.  But the general trend is still very valid.  However, with further study we may find that radishes have a much higher capacity for chromium retention than what is detailed in the database.  Yet we still can surmise radishes are a great way to replenish chromium.  

Also stated by the video above most food preservatives function in much the same way as glyphosate by binding up minerals.  

1.4   Specific soil amendments to start incorporating back into your garden.  

Simply put you need to add rock dust, crushed granite, stone flour, Azomite, and other crushed mineral deposits.  You can add this as you overwinter a bed or you can sprinkle into each hole that you plant your starts into.  Keep doing this annually or with each planting.  Over time the microbes in your soil will break down the rock dust into angstrom length particles that can be taken up by your plants.  It may take many seasons for the microbes to work the rock dust down into bioavailable particle sizes. It gets better with time.  So this should become part of your long term soil building strategy.  Increase your organic matter (microbes) in your soil, replace the trace minerals through rock dust, give your ecosystem the entire periodic table of elements to work with and let nature sort things out.  Grow your own nutrient dense food, recolonize your own gut microbiome, produce your own enzymes in your gut, get the most out of the food you grow and consume, stay healthy and ward of chronic disease due to micronutrient deficiencies.  

Azomite is probably the easiest rock dust to obtain without regard to geographic location and it has a full spectrum of trace minerals.  Azomite comes in dust form and a granulated form (cut with molasses) which makes “extended release” pellets.  You can use one form or both.  

https://www.amazon.com/Azomite-Micronized-Bag-44-lb/dp/B00A8PGEES/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1518635478&sr=8-5&keywords=azomite

There are also many good videos on rock dust done by John Kohler at Growing Your Greens channel on Youtube.  If you search John’s videos for “rock dust” you will find a lot of good information.  

http://www.boogiebrew.net/gyg/

Above is a link with discount to John’s channel and the owner of Boogie Brew has done many videos on rock dust and compost tea with John.  There are many different types of stone flour on Boogie Brew though he seems to be sold out on most for the last year.  But this gives you an idea of other mineral deposits and volcanic ash that may be available in your geographic location.  

1.5   Summary

Earth is a self-healing system that replenishes the mineral contents through volcanic eruptions over long cycles of time.  As we head into the Ice Age volcanic activity will increase and deep Earth minerals will be spewed out on the surface once again through volcanic eruptions and carried via the wind to places further away.  This is why places around ancient volcanoes are so fertile, think Hawaii for example.  

I will do another thread in the near future about replacing the minerals in a human.  For now enjoy the spring gardening and don’t forget to incorporate rock dust into your soils.  

Phoenix is right.  The detox part of the soil is restoring the bio matter which includes everything above.  EM supposedly has eliminated all radiation from farms on the outskirts of Fukushima.  No way for me to verify that but I have seen that from multiple sources.  The microbes will eventually breakdown the glyphosate in the soil as well if you can stop adding RoundUP and replace the microbes.  

Depending on they type of farming the minerals are depleted from the soil unless you are doing regenerative farming or permaculture.  Commercial agriculture grows a monoculture then ships the produce out to the distributors.  What metals that are taken up by those crops are never replaced in the soil and get more dilute over time.  Plus erosion over time returns all these minerals to the seas.  Modern humans have made this mineral depletion drastically worse by the ubiquitous spraying of glyphosate and other chelating chemicals.  Eventually the Earth spews them back out on land through volcanoes as we are about to witness over the next decade.  And the cycle repeats.  

Compost tea is probably the best way to replace the probiotics in the soil.  

Here is a cool open source compost tea recipe if you are inclined to make it yourself:  
https://youtu.be/sTijkwQaPRI

I typically bubble mine in a large tub for 24 hours.  Eventually I want to get one of these Vortex brewers.  This thing will structure the water beyond just brewing up a big batch of microbes.  
https://vortexbrewer.com/vortex-brewer/

Same goes for the garden as our gut.  Replace the microbes, replace the minerals, and the microbes will have a full tool kit to make all the appropriate enzymes.  This will boost the essential oil production of your plants, which is their immune system.  And the same thing happens in our guts which boosts our immune function by complete digestion and reduction of burden on our immune system.