Playing in the dirt.

Aside from building, I am most at home in an agricultural setting. Having raised animals and their associated feed requirements most of my life, I know a thing or two about soils and plant nutrients. Ecuador is a little different; not just the weather but also the soil content. My concern is the Andrean soils because I need to raise feed stock for chickens, goats, at least two people and whatever else Barb comes home with.

I need to tell a little story at this point. In my youth, I was probably one of the worst violators of nature you can imagine. I have knifed in thousands of acres of anhydrous ammonia - 80% nitrogen to increase yields of corn and soybeans, sprayed thousands of gallons of 2-4D herbicide ( agent orange without the X-77 sticker )  to kill brush, aereal applied chloridane to kill European corn borers and used DDT on a regular basis for pest control. If that isn't bad enough, as a salesman for a farm co-op, I sold at least a thousand times what I used personally, every year. What I am saying is, I sterilized the soil with anhydrous, sterilized the soil with 2-4D and killed a bunch of wildlife that eat the insects sprayed with DDT. These practices still go on in the U.S. every year, different chemicals, same result. It took me a long time to realize that nature doesn't need a whole lot of help from the likes of me or the big manufacturers of gun powder after WWII - that's where our chemical fertilizers come from, the ingredients for gun powder.

In the Andes of Ecuador the soils are mostly of the weathered volcanic type, which have some different characteristics that I am not familiar with. My initial reaction to the 12" humus mat on our property was calcium ( lime) to raise the ph, loosen the soil and allow the aerobic bacteria to work on all that organic matter in the soil. Well that was partially right. I did some test plots and the soil shows improvement with the addition of about 2 tons to the acre of calcium carbonate. The problem, especially with root crops, is the lack of available phosphorus. The soil has plenty of phosphorus in it but because of the high humus levels and aluminum from volcanic rock the phosphorus in the soil is bound to the carbon and aluminum. So we will have to add phosphorus to the soil - about 300lbs to the acre, every year because in the course of a year any available phosphorus will become bound the the soil making none available to the plants.

All in all the soils here, especially in the mountains is yet another plus to life in Ecuador. With a little common sense and the addition of a low magnesium lime and phosphorus this soil can grow anything.