Dave’s Organic Compost Secret
The secret behind Dave’s Organic Compost is a wondrous product, known as Humate, which is found in a seam directly above lignite coal but below peat and if left for another 1000 years or so it would become coal.
I have been personally selling humate for 15 years, and it has been a major component in improving the soil fertility of farms and orchards alike. In this article, I am going to use the term humates to include the entire family of related subsets such as humus, humic acid and fulvic acid.
Millions of years of forest and plant residue make humate the world’s oldest and most concentrated form of compost known to man. It is very rich in carbon, humic and fulvic acids and also contains numerous trace elements and minerals vital to optimum soil health.
Although humates are naturally present in most soils it is a scarcity at best and often not nearly enough is present to support vibrant growth and propagation. While it is possible to grow vegetation in soil that is deficient in a nutrient or trace element, albeit somewhat stunted, without the presence of humates it is not going to produce at all.
In nature, it appears to the naked eye as a dark brown to black substance. It is an organic compound containing large molecules made up of many similar molecules, hence it is a polymer of a very complex structure. For all you chemistry buffs you will understand this better by me stating that it has a molecular weight of 1500, they are nearly insoluble and impervious to water. What this basically means is that humate has the ability to retain up to 7 times its own weight in water – reducing the need for irrigation.
Probably one of the greatest benefits humates have for the organic gardener is that they have the ability to chelate heavy metals. In other words, they bind together the lead, mercury, chrome, cadmium and other heavy metals in the soil and prevent them from penetrating the cell walls and harming the plant. If they do not get into the plant, they can’t get into you either. With all the benefits listed above is it any wonder why many scientists conclude that “humates are the only effective way to restore the fertility of soil that is emaciated by intense exploitation!”
By Dave Whitteker – Director