By Steve Diver
Foliar fertilization is the misting of aerial plant parts with soluble nutrients and
biostimulants to supplement plant nutrition, to boost crop health, to promote
pest resistance, and to enhance food quality.
The three pillars of eco-farming are Mineral Balancing, Humus Management,
and Energetics.
- Mineral balancing is a system that emphasizes base cation saturation ratios,
or BCSR, supplementing soils with lime and fertilizers to achieve an optimum
ratio between calcium and magnesium, and so forth. The optimum BCSRs
are sometimes known as the Albrecht ratios. In a broader sense, mineral
replenishment is a key component of eco-farming and may include any form
of remineralization.
Humus management is a system of biological farming practices — cover crops,
crop rotations, green manures, composting, tillage systems, grazing, microbial
augmentation — that provides food and shelter for soil biota — the soil edaphon —
for the purpose of maintaining soil organic matter and building clay-humus
structure in soils. These organic amendments are transformed by soil biota
into various stages of soil organic matter. Humification is the microbially-driven
process of breakdown and buildup, the biotransformation of raw organic material
into complex, humic substances. Soil humus can be viewed as the savings
account, and actively decomposing organic matter can be viewed as the
checking account. The applied principle of humus management is the
soil foodweb.
Energetics is a broad term that includes photosynthesis and other
natural forces that drive biological systems, as well as subtle energetic
influences such as atomic ionization, background energy in the electro-magnetic
spectrum, and biological energy fields at the cellular level. The energetics
category can also be viewed as vibrational physics, encompassing emerging
concepts and practitioner approaches such as homeopathy and radionics.
Eco-farming recognizes and monitors energetic influences in soils and plants,
using both simple meters and complex instruments.