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Welcome to the blog website for Growing Healthy Organic Food. Our blog contains many resources on organic farming and healthy gardening, including stories, videos and other topics. Our blog is completely free.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
The Importance of Trace Elements
The current situation
Food produced by large-scale, conventional, commercial farming practices generally contains 3 major nutrients (nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous) and 4 minor nutrients (boron, copper, manganese and molybdenum). These elements are generally monitored in agricultural soils. Three other nutrients (iodine, cobalt and selenium) are contained in our food if we eat meat. Iodine and cobalt come from salts licks provided to cattle, selenium is added to fortified chicken feed.
The bad news
The bad news is that living things need 72 biological elements for normal metabolic function, reproduction and maintenance of the immune system. From the studies of Mt Tamborine soils carried out by the Tamborine Mountain Local Producers’ Association, which sponsors the Green Shed Market, we know that calcium is generally deficient. Since calcium is required in every cell in our body it is vitally important. When food is grown on soils, which contain all 72 elements, it is healthy. Because it is healthy, plants grown in this soil are healthy. Insects and diseases do not attack. Insects are nature’s garbage disposal agents. Too often we choose to kill the insects and we eat the garbage. Disease is also nature’s way of eliminating those things that are not healthy, whether they are plants, animals or humans.
The food we eat is severely deficient in over 60 vitally important elements. Many practitioners of alternative medicine and a growing number of doctors believe that this is the cause of large numbers of physiological and mental diseases such as cancer, auto–immune disease, late onset diabetes, degenerative and chronic diseases, allergies and birth defects. Dr Carole Hungerford’s book “Good Health in the 21st Century” provides a sound scientific explanation of the thinking behind this claim. Her book won the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award in 2006. Dr Hungerford rejects the routine cocktail of medications with their complicated interactions and side effects, and shows how to provide a chance for minerals, vitamins and essential fatty acids to do their health giving work.
Trace elements are:
• Essential in the assimilation and utilisation of vitamins.
• An aid in digestion.
• A catalyst for hormones and enzymes.
• An aid in replacing electrolytes lost through perspiration.
• A protection against toxic reactions.
Reinstatement of trace elements in our soils eliminates all plant diseases, pest and insect attack. This eliminates the need for use of toxic agricultural chemicals, which are used with frightening frequency on our food.
On Tamborine Mountain we have proved that the claim of adding the full range of trace elements and balancing the major elements is the way to grow healthy crops. Customers at the Green Shed see the evidence and comment regularly on it. If this strategy can make a difference to plants, we ask the question: “Why don’t we use the same strategy to improve human health?”
Most research into trace elements seems to be done with the intention of finding out the effects of having too much of a particular trace element. There seems to be only a little work has been done to identify the beneficial role played by individual trace elements. Research has shown that:
• Chromium shortage may cause heart condition, disruption of the metabolism and diabetes,
• Indium stimulates metabolism,
• Molybdenum functions as a co-factor for a number of enzymes that catalyse important chemical transformations eg xanthine oxidase catalyses the breakdown of nucleotides to form uric acid which contributes to the anti oxidant capacity of the blood,
• Boron promotes bone and joint health. Adequate intake of boron in conjunction with magnesium helps prevent calcium loss and bone demineralisation in post-menopausal women. Anecdotal studies suggest boron may alleviate symptoms of osteoarthritis.
• Zinc deficiency is associated with anaemia, delayed growth, birth defects, spontaneous abortion, impaired sexual maturation, sterility, slow wound healing.
Reference: http://www.truehealth.org/
Some essential trace elements
Silver, aluminium, gold, boron, barium, beryllium, bismuth, bromine, niobium, cadmium, cerium, cobalt, chromium, caesium, copper, gallium, germanium, mercury, iodine, indium, iridium, lanthanum, lithium, molybdenum, osmium, lead, palladium, platinum, radium, rubidium, ruthenium, antimony, selenium, silicon, tin, strontium, tellurium, thorium, titanium, vanadium, zinc, zirconium.
Written by Bev Buckley, Growing Healthy
http://www.growinghealthyorganicfood.com/
Food produced by large-scale, conventional, commercial farming practices generally contains 3 major nutrients (nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous) and 4 minor nutrients (boron, copper, manganese and molybdenum). These elements are generally monitored in agricultural soils. Three other nutrients (iodine, cobalt and selenium) are contained in our food if we eat meat. Iodine and cobalt come from salts licks provided to cattle, selenium is added to fortified chicken feed.
The bad news
The bad news is that living things need 72 biological elements for normal metabolic function, reproduction and maintenance of the immune system. From the studies of Mt Tamborine soils carried out by the Tamborine Mountain Local Producers’ Association, which sponsors the Green Shed Market, we know that calcium is generally deficient. Since calcium is required in every cell in our body it is vitally important. When food is grown on soils, which contain all 72 elements, it is healthy. Because it is healthy, plants grown in this soil are healthy. Insects and diseases do not attack. Insects are nature’s garbage disposal agents. Too often we choose to kill the insects and we eat the garbage. Disease is also nature’s way of eliminating those things that are not healthy, whether they are plants, animals or humans.
The food we eat is severely deficient in over 60 vitally important elements. Many practitioners of alternative medicine and a growing number of doctors believe that this is the cause of large numbers of physiological and mental diseases such as cancer, auto–immune disease, late onset diabetes, degenerative and chronic diseases, allergies and birth defects. Dr Carole Hungerford’s book “Good Health in the 21st Century” provides a sound scientific explanation of the thinking behind this claim. Her book won the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award in 2006. Dr Hungerford rejects the routine cocktail of medications with their complicated interactions and side effects, and shows how to provide a chance for minerals, vitamins and essential fatty acids to do their health giving work.
Trace elements are:
• Essential in the assimilation and utilisation of vitamins.
• An aid in digestion.
• A catalyst for hormones and enzymes.
• An aid in replacing electrolytes lost through perspiration.
• A protection against toxic reactions.
Reinstatement of trace elements in our soils eliminates all plant diseases, pest and insect attack. This eliminates the need for use of toxic agricultural chemicals, which are used with frightening frequency on our food.
On Tamborine Mountain we have proved that the claim of adding the full range of trace elements and balancing the major elements is the way to grow healthy crops. Customers at the Green Shed see the evidence and comment regularly on it. If this strategy can make a difference to plants, we ask the question: “Why don’t we use the same strategy to improve human health?”
Most research into trace elements seems to be done with the intention of finding out the effects of having too much of a particular trace element. There seems to be only a little work has been done to identify the beneficial role played by individual trace elements. Research has shown that:
• Chromium shortage may cause heart condition, disruption of the metabolism and diabetes,
• Indium stimulates metabolism,
• Molybdenum functions as a co-factor for a number of enzymes that catalyse important chemical transformations eg xanthine oxidase catalyses the breakdown of nucleotides to form uric acid which contributes to the anti oxidant capacity of the blood,
• Boron promotes bone and joint health. Adequate intake of boron in conjunction with magnesium helps prevent calcium loss and bone demineralisation in post-menopausal women. Anecdotal studies suggest boron may alleviate symptoms of osteoarthritis.
• Zinc deficiency is associated with anaemia, delayed growth, birth defects, spontaneous abortion, impaired sexual maturation, sterility, slow wound healing.
Reference: http://www.truehealth.org/
Some essential trace elements
Silver, aluminium, gold, boron, barium, beryllium, bismuth, bromine, niobium, cadmium, cerium, cobalt, chromium, caesium, copper, gallium, germanium, mercury, iodine, indium, iridium, lanthanum, lithium, molybdenum, osmium, lead, palladium, platinum, radium, rubidium, ruthenium, antimony, selenium, silicon, tin, strontium, tellurium, thorium, titanium, vanadium, zinc, zirconium.
Written by Bev Buckley, Growing Healthy
http://www.growinghealthyorganicfood.com/
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Monday, February 7, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Controlling pests and diseases
As a gardener, you have at your disposal a huge range of agricultural poisons to control the pests and diseases that are attacking your plants. At last count there were something like 74,000 registered man-made poisons and the vast majority of which were designed to fight pests and diseases in agriculture.
The downside of this approach is that a recent study of thousands of American schoolchildren showed that all of them had traces of one or more agricultural poisons in their bodies. You are told that these chemicals are safe, but the toxic smorgasbord of chemical used by many commercial farmers, has unintended and undesirable side effects, including poisoning the soil, water and soil micro-organisms.
Governments have an interesting method for determining the "safe" level of toxins in food. When actual levels become higher than the "recommended safe level" they increase it! The European Union has raised the legal daily limit of glyphosate (the active ingredient in most herbicides and weedicides) residue to 20mg per kilogram of food. This is sixty times higher than the limits recommended by the World Health Organization. The EPA in the United States has raised the legally acceptable level to 100 mg per kilogram of food. This is 10 times the level at which birth and reproductive anomalies have been observed in animals.
An interesting side effect that comes from using a chemical to control a pest is that the rich suite of biological compounds that plants naturally synthesise in order to protect themselves, are not produced. This reduces the flavour, nutritional value and even medicinal properties that plants offer because beneficial bio-chemicals have been replaced by toxic, man-made chemicals.
Most gardening books and magazines you read, place huge importance controlling disease and eliminating insects. Even the "organic gardening" advocates suggest companion planting and safe, non-toxic "natural" sprays.
You don't have to worry about poisons and insects when you have healthy, nutritionally balanced soil with a pH of 6.4.
Healthy soil produces healthy plants. Insects and diseases hate healthy plants. Healthy plants are full of minerals and sugars, which give insects alcohol poisoning. This makes sense when you realise that insects and diseases are nature's garbage disposal agents. They get rid of the rubbish! There's no prize for guessing who eats the rubbish when we eliminate the insects and diseases with poisons.
Even the scrub turkeys won't eat your vegetables when they are grown in healthy soil. I have a very frustrated scrub turkey. He ransacks the compost heap every day and regularly wanders through the garden in the forlorn hope that there will be something to eat. He never does any damage. He brings friends occasionally. They don't stay. There is nothing to eat! Hares occasionally eat the carrot tops. This tells me that in that part of the garden, I've not got the soil balance quite right.
Plants have defence systems to fight against insect attack and disease. This may take the form of thick skin on fruit, or spines or hairs on the plants. It may involve feedback systems of bio-chemical pathways, which operate in a similar way to our immune system. An external cue, such as an insect sting, prompts a cascade of responses that triggers the production of bio-chemicals. These deter or kill invading pests. This response takes only minutes in a healthy plant but unhealthy plants do not have adequate energy resources to activate their defences. To ensure we have healthy plants we need to maximise soil health including soil life diversity including the billions of microbes and fungi that provide food to the plants. Kelp, rotted animal manures and plant compost, microbe food such as carbon and inoculations of microbes using compost teas all help to build a diverse soil micro-organism population.
For more information go to www.growinghealthyorganicfood.com
The downside of this approach is that a recent study of thousands of American schoolchildren showed that all of them had traces of one or more agricultural poisons in their bodies. You are told that these chemicals are safe, but the toxic smorgasbord of chemical used by many commercial farmers, has unintended and undesirable side effects, including poisoning the soil, water and soil micro-organisms.
Governments have an interesting method for determining the "safe" level of toxins in food. When actual levels become higher than the "recommended safe level" they increase it! The European Union has raised the legal daily limit of glyphosate (the active ingredient in most herbicides and weedicides) residue to 20mg per kilogram of food. This is sixty times higher than the limits recommended by the World Health Organization. The EPA in the United States has raised the legally acceptable level to 100 mg per kilogram of food. This is 10 times the level at which birth and reproductive anomalies have been observed in animals.
An interesting side effect that comes from using a chemical to control a pest is that the rich suite of biological compounds that plants naturally synthesise in order to protect themselves, are not produced. This reduces the flavour, nutritional value and even medicinal properties that plants offer because beneficial bio-chemicals have been replaced by toxic, man-made chemicals.
Most gardening books and magazines you read, place huge importance controlling disease and eliminating insects. Even the "organic gardening" advocates suggest companion planting and safe, non-toxic "natural" sprays.
You don't have to worry about poisons and insects when you have healthy, nutritionally balanced soil with a pH of 6.4.
Healthy soil produces healthy plants. Insects and diseases hate healthy plants. Healthy plants are full of minerals and sugars, which give insects alcohol poisoning. This makes sense when you realise that insects and diseases are nature's garbage disposal agents. They get rid of the rubbish! There's no prize for guessing who eats the rubbish when we eliminate the insects and diseases with poisons.
Even the scrub turkeys won't eat your vegetables when they are grown in healthy soil. I have a very frustrated scrub turkey. He ransacks the compost heap every day and regularly wanders through the garden in the forlorn hope that there will be something to eat. He never does any damage. He brings friends occasionally. They don't stay. There is nothing to eat! Hares occasionally eat the carrot tops. This tells me that in that part of the garden, I've not got the soil balance quite right.
Plants have defence systems to fight against insect attack and disease. This may take the form of thick skin on fruit, or spines or hairs on the plants. It may involve feedback systems of bio-chemical pathways, which operate in a similar way to our immune system. An external cue, such as an insect sting, prompts a cascade of responses that triggers the production of bio-chemicals. These deter or kill invading pests. This response takes only minutes in a healthy plant but unhealthy plants do not have adequate energy resources to activate their defences. To ensure we have healthy plants we need to maximise soil health including soil life diversity including the billions of microbes and fungi that provide food to the plants. Kelp, rotted animal manures and plant compost, microbe food such as carbon and inoculations of microbes using compost teas all help to build a diverse soil micro-organism population.
For more information go to www.growinghealthyorganicfood.com
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