Pflanzen Anhang 2
[V.D. Kaviraj]
CONCEPTS – QUINTESSENCES
All concepts stand or fall with their ease of understanding and
consequent adherence to laws and principles, because events follow cyclical
patterns. Many cycles consist of four or six units, such as seasons in the four
climate bands that circle the earth or the seasons that may prevail in some of
them.
We know from the fact these cycles of four exist, that a fifth – the
originating intelligence – needs to be added to the equation. However, this is
not the type of quintessence we speak about here.
Here we speak about quintessence’s that can be expressed easiest in five
short, terse aphorisms, which by themselves depict truths about the scientific
idea they convey and which together explain the entire concept in broad lines. We
will meet many of them in these pages regarding diseases, elementary
substances, elemental concepts and in the application of the Law of Similars. In this chapter we will give a few of them.
For practical application we have set up this section from the point of
view that plant communities form close-knit relationships between all the
members.
1. It begins above the surface, with the climate and the weather. Below
the surface in the soil we have a fauna and flora, consisting of many billions
of living entities which all influence plant life.
2. These include the micro and macro nutrients, the fungi, both of
protective and antagonistic perspective such as rusts, slimes, moulds and the
like, the subsoil parasites and beneficial animals, the bacteria and viruses
and finally the allelopathic chemicals, which help
suppress weeds, provide for pest and disease protection and function as stress
regulators determining seeding, growth and flowering as well as fruit, nut or
seed production.
3. Above ground we have the direct protective and antagonistic plants or
companions and weeds, the insects, both beneficial and antagonistic, such as
pollinators predators and pests, We also include a section on injuries and the
pollution of soil, water and air, which with the appropriate remedies may be
alleviated when crops grow on contaminated soils or in heavily polluted areas.
4. Each plant is an expression of the consciousness we experience after
partaking of the remedy derived from it. It has its particular mentality and
emotional life and is as such a sick individual, specifically in the artificial
environment we have created for it. Hence its relationships tend to follow
those as expressed in the material medica and what is
not there, we can discover by studying the relevant literature.
5. From the material medica we can learn about
relationships in communities of plants and the elements they partake of during
their life, known from agricultural literature, while from research in allelochemicals [=a biological phenomenon by which an
organism produces one or more biochemicals that
influence the growth, survival, and reproduction of other organisms. These biochemicals are known as allelochemicals
and can have beneficial (positive allelopathy) or
detrimental (negative allelopathy) effects on the
target organisms. Allelochemicals are a subset of
secondary metabolites,[1] which are not required for metabolism (i.e. growth,
development and reproduction) of the allelopathic
organism. Allelochemicals with negative allelopathic effects are an important part of plant defense against herbivory. Allelopathy is characteristic of certain plants, algae,
bacteria, coral, and fungi. Allelopathic interactions
are an important factor in determining species distribution and abundance
within plant communities, and are also thought to be important in the success
of many invasive plants. For specific examples, see Spotted Knapweed (Centaurea maculosa), Garlic
Mustard (Alliaria petiolata),
and Nutsedge.
The process by which a plant acquires more of the available resources
(such as nutrients, water or light) from the environment without any chemical
action on the surrounding plants is called resource competition. This process
is not negative allelopathy, although both processes
can act together to enhance the survival rate of the plant species. and their
actions on plant life, much can be learned and deduced about how everything is
connected. Even a simple herbal can teach much about relationships between
remedies in the garden and in material medica].
These are the quintessential points this book hopes to explain with
examples from practice and experience. Throughout these pages, the reader will
come across more of these quintessential concepts and they form the basis on
which the entire edifice is built. If we observe nature, we see that 5 elements
form the engineering structure of all life and these are:
1. Helium, which is the male/female principle or Aether.
2. Oxygen, Air we all need to breathe.
3. Hydrogen, Water we must drink and of which 70% of the body consists.
4. Iron, Fire of digestion and oxidation, providing energy.
5. Silicon, Earth, the building blocks like bones, teeth hair and nails
and finally the skin.
This is exactly as the ancients saw it and confirmed by daily life. Elsewhere
we have extended somewhat more on these principles and need not explain further
here.
Here also the quintessential is of prime importance in understanding the
problems faced in agriculture, although to the superficial observer they have
little or nothing to do with each other. Quintessentials
have in common that they express the same type of principle in a concise and
terse manner, which leaves little to the imagination and everything to careful
observation.
Another quintessence that comes up frequently is the one on the Law of Similars, on which this entire work is based. It follows
the adage that what happens in nature must be imitated by man according to the
following five Rules.
1. Like produces like. Monkeys don’t give birth to humans.
2. Like is attracted by like. Monkeys have sex with monkeys.
3. Like is imitated by like. Monkeys have as much sex as some humans and
humans often try to have more.
4. Like is neutralised by like. Try making love to a monkey.
5. Like is cured by like. Better stick to your own kind.
Societies of plants seek each other, but they also seek man, because
like attracts like – what is in the same vibration of consciousness will
invariably seek each other and find them too.
The domestication of plants is a logical outcome of man collecting himself
around wild grains, which he then began to grow to feed ever-more mouths. Just
as grains grow around man, man grows around grains.
It is also often said that the weed that grows abundantly in the garden
of a sick man will be his medicine, from which we can learn that plants are
attracted by similarities in consciousness and mentality for their favourite
places of growth. A little anecdote from my case-books will illustrate this
perfectly.
I once had a Scottish friend, who had relations with one of the biggest
dope dealers in the vicinity. This man was a rough type, who drank whiskey like
water and smoked joints like a chimney.
He was rough in the mouth and had the raspiest voice I ever heard. He
had a problem – he had an eczema that itched him no end. Could I help him?
Sure, why not? Better than the priest who condemns the sinner, the
doctor treats friend and foe – he does not ask how one make one’s income. He
asks what type of work he does. When the answer is import export, the doctor
may know exactly what is meant. On arrival at the man’s house I saw the yard
was overgrown with nettles. I said nothing, but went inside, where the
roughneck was drinking whiskey and trying to order his wife around. The living
room was huge and a fire burning in the open fireplace, to which the host had
stretched his feet and was busily scratching himself voluptuously. His wife
asked what I could do for him. So I told her he should get a flogging with
nettles, to get rid of his itch. At that he pulled out a gun and told me he’d
shoot off my head if I so much as even thought about it. I told him I had a
present for him and handed him a few bottles of Glenfiddich,
his favourite malt. So we fed him so drunk, he passed out and slid from his crapaud on the floor and was unconscious. Then we went into
the garden wearing rubber gloves and cut many bunches of nettles. These we
brought inside, then stripped the fellow and flogged him with the nettles till
he was swollen and red. We covered him with a blanket and let him get out of
his booze. Then I left for the night with my friend to his place and the next
day back home.
The next day he called and even his voice was smoother. He had lost the
desire to brag and swear and told me his skin was as smooth as a baby’s. If I
could come by to get my pay. I told him I did not require to have my head blown
off with a big sawn-off shotgun. He told me it was a joke and please come – he
is embarrassed by his threat and needs to show his gratitude. Even his wife had
asked me to come by. I told him I would be back in six weeks. When I came back,
I visited him again. The garden was almost free of nettles. I asked him whether
he had cut them down. “No” he says, they had gone by themselves. He had two
more flogs by his wife and then by the second time they were almost gone. His
wife told me he was much nicer and softer now and his business was booming. Even
she had changed, and was much more relaxed. That consciousness left the man and
the nettles left with it.
Our hunger for food keeps our relationship with the plants reasonably
intact, insofar as we respond to its need for nutrients in one form or another.
The preferred method is to apply a massive dose of nutrients at once, in a form
that is but slowly dissolved in water, thus appearing to keep nutrient levels
fairly constant. In nature this never happens, because natural systems are
always in flux. Soil is moreover more than a medium to support plants and to
suspend nutrients in, it has to be adequate to the degree of development, which
is also in constant flux. To favour one type or even a mix of nutrients over
others to enhance development, comes at the cost of many drawbacks, such as
pest and disease susceptibility or pest and disease-promoting circumstances. Such
one-sided junk food may seem to promote health, but produces instead weak obese
plants prone to all kinds of problems such as diseases, retarded or accelerated
blooming and fruit setting, without taking into account the ultimate readiness
of the crop. The result is a watery taste, without the necessary aromas and
subtle sensations that organically grown food gives to the palate.
With homoeopathy, the taste of everything you grow will greatly improve,
because the necessary balance underground is equally dependent on that remedy
for its complete development. A remedy to control nematodes will act like it is
supposed to, because the plant does that in its daily life. Nematicides,
even from so-called biological sources, see the nematode as the problem that
must be killed, while we (homeopaths) see the nematode as the result of an
unbalanced pattern of life. It can be reinforced by the imitation of a natural
pattern that is balanced and provides optimum control of all elements in the
crop cycle, without adding poisons to the environment. Then the nematode will
go its way without attacking our crops, because the remedy has put the plant in
an invulnerable position.
ELEMENTARY, MY DEAR WATSON!
Four elements are needed by all living entities – earth, fire, water and
air. Another way of explaining that the views of the Middle Ages were not as
superstitious as most scientists want us to believe is found in the following:
It is interesting and for practical purposes very important, that more
than 95% of the universe consists of the following very few elements.
1st the spectroscopy of the universe shows that helium is exceptionally
abundant. It is widely distributed. Helium is nothing more than the primordial
positive and negative electrons tied together, or in the process of being tied.
2nd the same spectroscopy shows that helium is enormously prevalent and
everywhere present, although it does not combine with anything and is almost
the lightest of the elements. It does not even combine with itself. The earth
has retained little of it. If you however look at the radioactive elements and
the alpha particle given off by them, you discover it is nothing but helium. Therefore,
it must have a particular prevalence, even on earth, for it is part of the
structure of the heavy elements.
3rd Hydrogen is the next abundant element, which forms water with the
next – oxygen. The spectral lines we see in the heavens are caused by hydrogen,
oxygen and nitrogen. Oxygen constitutes 55% of the earth’s crust and it has
about the same proportion in meteorites. Oxygen and nitrogen have nearly the
same atomic weight. For the purpose of this explanation, we shall regard them
as one. Between oxygen and helium, there are no abundant elements, and you
should note this. True, carbon has some prevalence, but having almost the same
atomic number, we could say it is a satellite to oxygen.
4th and lastly, we see that nearly all the meteorites consist
of oxygen, well over 50%; magnesium, at 13%; silicon, fifteen percent and iron,
at thirteen percent. ¾ of the crust is composed of three elements – oxygen at 55%,
silicon at 16% and aluminium at 5%. The others do not have more than 2% each. Iron,
supposedly abundant in the core, has 1½ %.
Aluminium, silicon and magnesium have similar atomic weights, so we give
them combined the name silicon, which after all, is the peak of the period,
falling in group five. Between oxygen and silicon and between silicon and iron,
there are no abundant elements. Iron has an atomic weight of fifty-six.
Now from the point of view of an engineer, the universe is made up of
positive and negative electrons; helium and four elements built out of them,
oxygen, hydrogen, silicon and iron. Differently expressed, they are aether, air, water, earth and fire, exactly as the ancients
described it and which we regard as superstition. Besides, the ancient Greeks
knew all about those elements. Here is a quote.
“And they allowed Apollonius to ask questions and he asked them of what
they thought the cosmos was composed. But they replied:
“Of elements.”
“Are there then four” he asked.
“Not four,” said Iarchas, “but five.”
“And how can there be a fifth,” said Apollonius,” alongside of water,
air, earth and fire ?”
“There is the ether”, replied the other, “which we must regard as the
stuff of which gods are made, for just as all mortal creatures inhale the air,
so do immortal and divine natures inhale the ether.”
(Mahavisnu)
Apollonius again asked which was the first of the elements, and Iarchas answered:
“All are simultaneous, for a living creature is not born bit by bit.”
“Am I,” said Apollonius, “to regard the universe as a living creature?”
“Yes,” said the other, “if you have a sound knowledge of it, for it
engenders all living things.”
(‘The Life of Apollonius of Tyana’, Philostratus, 220AD).
What is more, others also are of the same mind – as is due to great
minds, according to the saying.
‘For a truly joyful and auspicious human work to flourish, must man have
the capacity to climb from the depths of his attachment at home up to the
ether. Ether here stands for the high flight of the high heavens, the open
realm of the spirit.’
(Martin Heidegger, ‘Treatise on human thought’)
For plants this is the essential – hydrogen; water – oxygen; air –
silica; earth – iron: fire.
What else is fire but oxidation? What else is earth but construction and
glue? What else is air but respiration and breath? What else is water, but food
and drink? So we trace back the need for nutrients to these four elements. The
fifth is the commanding force, so to speak, from where all ideas come forth,
either as remembrance from previous existence or obtained by talent.
1. General Remedies
In this Chapter we discuss the remedies that are important to all
plants. In the plant world, some elemental substances are essential to all
plants. First we discuss the essential components of these subsoil events.
1. Micronutrients and Macronutrients and their associated remedies, all
from the subsoil area.
2. Fungi, also from the subsoil area.
3. Bacteria and bacilli, having the same source.
4. Viruses also from the soil.
5. Allelochemicals, coming from plant roots.
Another quintessential relation has been established and the
consequences are equally far reaching. For they indicate a quintessential set
of influences, which may consist of many different species and in very large
numbers, which can be controlled by these very same substances.
The relationship between these remedies is explained as producing
similar phenomena, because they live under similar circumstances, although they
may react to allelochemicals differently than our
crop. What is related in nature always seeks each other and so we see that
plant societies are formed, in which similar states of mind are grouped
together. After all, similar plants grow on similar soils and have their
friendships and enmities, just like humans. We have seen that certain plants
growing on acidic soils have cravings for certain elements, which are moreover
hard to get – those of the alkaline type. Hence these relationships between
soils, elements, plant communities and allelochemicals
is reflected by similarity in the relationship between remedies.
To further work out how these remedies are related we have to consider
the fact that nearly all plants require microelements of a particular class as
well as macronutrients of a particular class.
As we saw at the description of the functions of the elemental
component, some are related to growth and others are related to flowering and
fruit setting. These same relations are found in the macronutrients. Recent
research has shown that plants chatter and communicate with their community
when attacked by a disease or pest. We have read in the introduction about
these phenomena and seen that there are some differences and many similarities
with human and animal societies.
These phenomena are important in more than one way. We see certain
remedies with a very pronounced picture first, followed by their antidotes, and
similars. This is reflected in nature, where we see
the nettle and its antidote growing right next to each other. In agriculture,
we should imitate nature, with doses so small as to elicit a reaction and thus
have the best manageable agriculture. Space age agriculture consists of the
manageable use of poisonous substances as produced in the relationships
discovered in nature, to imitate as much as possible that natural setting. Instead
of unmanageable poisons and an external approach, as is wont in chemical
agriculture, homoeopathy has made those and any other poison manageable, and
because of its extensive knowledge about relationships in nature is capable of
presenting the truly integrated approach to garden problems.
Some plants are genuine companions while others are antagonistic. The
same counts for elements, insects, fungi and allelochemicals,
which all combine to provide a comprehensive picture of the normal environment.
We proceed from the soil and the elements, next the companion plants, then come
the insects, the soil fungi and the plant excretions. Each is discussed from
the point of view as an individual remedy first, followed by a paragraph
explaining its place and function within the community of plants. Thus the
relations are explained and enable one to understand the role of each in connection
with the remedy under discussion
Climate Zone
There are basically 4 main climate zones:
1. Arctic, not here under discussion;
2. Moderate,
3. Subtropical and
4. Tropical.
Within these 4 zones, we have many further differences -
A) A coastal climate,
B) An inland climate
C) A land climate
D) A desert climate, each with its own weather type. Within these
different landscapes we may also have
*) Hills,
^) Mountains, where each valley may have different weather at any one
time.
<) River-delta climate.
<<) Moor
~) Savanna
We then follow with the use of the soil below.
~>:P Grazed Savanna
~!!&) mixed culture
!!) Forests
&) Agriculture
We may have a tropical coastal river delta, a 4A< or a 2B*, a
moderate inland hilly landscape. In the first case, we have long warm summers,
with not too much rain and a landscape that is cool on the hilltops and warm in
the valleys. Rivers may modify the moisture content of the air and soil. It is
the latter which determines its use. If it is also forested it becomes 2B*!!. If
there is a mixed culture it becomes 2B*!!&
The landscape below determines the microclimate at local spots. A desert
with its alkaline soil will not receive rain at all, or may have seasonal
downpours. A highly acidic rainforest jungle receives abundant water; a neutral
agricultural area receives sometimes too much and at others too little, but
generally enough. Dependent on the soil pH below, the weather will adapt to the
local circumstances, creating microclimates, all within its moderate,
subtropical and tropical climate zones.
We can therefore say that within the 3 climate zones under discussion
here, we have 4further subdivisions and 5 more micro-climatological
concomitants as enumerated above. That makes for 400 plus different climate and
weather conditions we may be confronted with, within which landscape features
may further influence microclimate.
We can imagine to have a 2A* landscape or a 4B!! landscape and we
discover also differences in microclimate, simply because a hilly coastal
landscape has different soil conditions from a tropical rainforest and thus a
different flora, fauna and above all climate. The tropical rainforest could
never grow on those moderate coastal hills, while most of what grows on these
hills would not long survive or even germinate in that rainforest. We see that
each has particular constraints where it concerns the development of a plant
community. These constraints begin of course with the climate and weather while
also extending into the surrounding vegetation and the subsoil events, which
are not of less importance, but simply less visible to us.
Of course the soil determines the type of plant that will grow there,
but the climate constraint takes care of details that man likes to forget. Hence
we see that Australian plants all have a leathery feel and are tough, have waxy
flowers and do not lose the leaves at the onset of winter – they are evergreen,
while European deciduous trees have soft leaves, that wilt easily in the dry
climate there, have flowers that stand no longer than two days in the climate
zone and moreover lose their leaves at the moment they would need them the most
– during the wet season, which is the deciduous tree’s rest period. Although it
will grow and become large, it does not live under conditions that are entirely
conducive to its survival. If shaded by native trees, the heat may be bearable,
because also Australian forests are cooler than the surrounding land.
Other plants become outright pests when transplanted to places they do
not belong. The blackberry is such a plant in Australia, where one is obliged
to remove it from one’s soil entirely, because it takes over vast tracts of
land. It likes the soil and weather as if made for it and goes rampant wherever
it is not checked. Lantana is such a pest and we shall meet this tree again
when we discuss the allelochemicals. It fills up
empty spaces, but does not compete with the other members in the forest. But
wherever it has taken hold, it does not leave and slowly but surely takes over
all the other empty spaces that fall into a forest over time, before any other
member has that chance.
We do not advocate such transplants from continent to continent, nor do
we condemn it outright. We urge caution and to first try out how it grows in an
artificial landscape set up in a greenhouse that resembles the climate and
weather you want to transplant in. It is full of local plants and you simply
plant the wanted tree or other plant in that landscape in the amount normal to
make a living. Then leave it alone and see what happens. If after a few years
your plant starts to take over, do not import the plant there. If it grows but
suffocated, do not transplant this plant – it will give you no end of trouble. Only
when the plant has been accepted as a normal member of the plant community and
does not die out or take over, can we say we have a successful transplant
candidate.
Climate is therefore more than a simple placement within the three zones
important for the subject under discussion. It requires taking into account the
soil pH and the flora and fauna that populate it, as well as the particular use
that is made of that climate condition.
We shall try to enumerate most climate conditions under which some crops
grow, which may include more than one. Brassicas are
grown all over the world in almost all climate conditions. Wheat is the grain
of moderate climate zones, rice that of the tropical zone, while maize lies
somewhere in between in the subtropical zone.
Climate is, after soil, the next great regulator of available crops in a
particular area at a particular time. Climate is the regulation and occurrence
of the weather over a long period of time. Within the climate we see the
occurrence of extremes, and a cyclic appearance, as a confirmation of the rule.
Climate is what regulates that cycle of life and carries it through to
completion, or in a freak event destroys large portions of it.
The weather type is determined mostly by the type of plants that grow
underneath and the proximity to the coast. Both make for a wet landscape, since
trees attract rain like a magnet attracts iron. We must not forget that a 30
metre high tree processes about 3000 litres of water per day in the summer. Over
a forest, millions of tons of water-vapour are released into the air, making it
obviously cooler. When one passes portions of forest in the landscape on the
road, that difference in temperature is enough to notice for a human – 5 to 7
degrees cooler in the forest. Cooler air is heavier than hot and sinks to the
ground, making everything cool and thus of lower pressure. We all know that low
pressure on the weather map means rain.
Over river deltas and moors have a similar situation – massive amounts
of moving or stagnant water, which is cooler than anything around it and
spreading that cooling property along its banks by osmosis and wind. This
lowers the pressure and low pressure brings rain.
Over a desert on the other hand, we have the opposite situation – the pressure
is always high, due to the absence of any cooling property. Except at night,
when that same absence results in the rapid cooling of these hot sands and
drops the temperature often below zero and any moisture that may be in the air
is instantly frozen and lies as a film of ice crystals over the sand in the
morning and is gone before the sun is more than a hand above the horizon. An
hour later, it is already 20 degrees. Fifty degrees or higher by noon is no
exception. The Sahara has spots where it soars up to almost 70 degrees and I do
not mean Fahrenheit.
Evidently, over agricultural land we are more dependent on the landscape
itself to enable accurate weather and microclimate predictions. In river
valleys we may expect more rain, but as easily see nothing of it, except in the
hilly and mountainous regions and on the coast. On the world’s plains grow most
of our crops, and here we have created a zone with almost neutral pH, trying to
outwit the acidity or alkalinity of the soil to grow crops that actually often
require the opposite of the soil we try to grow them in.
Here we have sometimes drought and sometimes floods, while generally we
hope for enough at the right time. The amount of water evaporation from a crop
is substantially less than that from a forest, a reason to leave trees on
pieces of land that are inaccessible and that border the crop. They have,
besides a function in weather conditions such as forming windbreaks, also an
influence on pests and predator presence and may help to keep weeds off the
land.
Weather can make or break the crop and much of what grows around it. Extreme
weather can destroy everything in a very short time. Generally we can expect
reasonably predictable weather patterns for specific times of the year. This
enables us to grow crops to feed the world. From the integrated viewpoint as
described here, we must understand every part to sensibly grow these crops.
Soil pH
Soils are extremely diverse in their acidity and composition. The
minerals and particles of their construction, organic matter content and other
components, are particular to each type of soil and hence their behaviour
differs as much.
Moreover, soils differ in their flora and fauna, microbes, fungi, roots,
rhizomes and tubers or bulbs. If we understand everything that lives in the
soil we can understand the needs of the plants that grow in and above the soil.
This makes a piece of soil an individual piece that is different from all other
pieces of soil.
Roughly, we divide soil into acidic, alkaline and neutral pH. We shall
explain how the soil acidity determines the available nutrients and how certain
practices can change the pH of the soil.
The soil pH is important for the plants that grow on it. It expresses
the acidity or alkalinity of a soil. Acid soils have a pH<7 and alkaline
soils have a pH>7. The pH of a mineral soil lies between 3.5 to 8.5. Organic
soils may have a lower pH. It is evident that each requires a particular set of
nutrients in a particular consistency. Certain nutrients are less available
while others are more abundant. When the pH drops below 6, aluminium can occupy
a significant portion of the cation exchange phase of
soils, while exchangeable bases such as Ca2+ Mg2+ K+ Na+ are more dominant at
higher soil pH. This is because the base saturation rate is greater. Soils with
a pH between 8 and 8.5 typically contain calcite. Higher pH levels, such as
>9 can occur in arid areas, where one finds high levels of salts of the
sodium group. These soils are getting extended throughout the Australian
outback, where short sighted people have cut down the large swathes of forest
for gaining new agricultural lands, because the ones they had cut down already
gave harvests only for a few years.
There is a general trend of decreasing base saturation and increasing
saturation with acidic ions such as Al3+ and H+ as the pH decreases. The
sources of protons that contribute to the decline in soil pH and increasing
soil acidity include atmospheric deposition of acids such as H2SO4 and NHO3
generated from atmospheric reactions between water and gaseous NOX and SOX from
fossil fuel emissions, H2CO3 produced from aqueous dissolution of atmospheric
CO2 or biologically produced CO2 and biological activity, such as respiration,
production of organic acids, nitrification of mineralised N or ammonium
fertilisers and imbalances in cation and anion uptake
by plants. The rate of soil acidification is related to the rates of acid
inputs versus the soil buffering capacity. Soil pH is mainly buffered by the
dissolution of calcite and other carbonates at a pH >7, cation
exchange of bases by H+ and Al3+ or their hydrolysis species at a pH 7 to 5,
dissolution of Al-bearing minerals at a pH<4. Phytotoxicity
of simple organic acids is most evident in acidic conditions when organic acids
are protonated, meaning neutral in charge and this
toxicity is lost when organic acids are partially dissociated under neutral and
basic conditions or negatively charged.
ACID SOILS
These soils have a high pH, 7.5 or higher. The acidity is expressed as a
scale that runs from 4.5 to 9, whereby 6.5-7 is considered neutral and the
lower alkaline, while the higher depict acidic soils. They attract oxalate
plants and those that like acidic soils, many of which are weeds. However, many
of our crops also like a rather acidic soil, which is often made more so by the
use of swine and chicken manure. This has an influence on the nutrients, of
which the alkaline may have deficiencies. The nutrients that are alkaline in
nature are harder to obtain than those that work through acids, such as
Nitrogen. Potassium and Calcium salts may also be in short supply, while the
phosphates are all plenty available. Manganese may be hard to get too, since
the acidity hinders its uptake. Liming is a good method to make acidic soils
more neutral in pH. This soil demands horse manure, for its alkaline qualities.
This already tells us much about the above-ground plants – their shapes, their
functions and their habitat within the plant community.
The acids are all decomposers and destroyers, which does not mean they
are necessarily bad. Many processes cannot take place without the use of acids,
the most important of which is perhaps respiration, which runs on the Citric
acid cycle and has 7 acids in that cycle to enable uptake of necessary
nutrients and processing of carbohydrates to sugars and proteins.
NEUTRAL PH
A soil with a neutral pH will attract other plants and be better for
different crops than the acidic or alkaline soils. They support plants that are
in need of balanced diets of nutrients and whereby the excess of one or the
other is mostly due to human failure. These excesses help in the build-up of
pest populations. Excess Kali and Phosphorus always result in aphid population
explosions. That what we do to one part, we do to all parts, is no more obvious
than in this instance. Everything therefore depends on everything else and each
part must be taken into account.
Neutral Ph soils have all nutrients available, but not always at the right
time. This can be manipulated by using the remedies from the nutrient class or
some of the companion plants, which have great influence over nutrient
availability, such as Chamomilla. Crops may have
requirements at other times that can be manipulated to advantage. Neutral pH is
often considered the best soil for growing crops, but this is also dependent on
the consideration of the necessity for plants to have more acidic or alkaline
soils to grow in. In general though, the notion stands with many crops.
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