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Little River, TX | Hydroponics farming the essential elements are always in solution or in the plant.
Soil has clay and organic matter. The only the positive elements are attracted to the negative charges in the clay and organic matter. When bonded they are no longer in solution. The more clay and or organic matter the higher the Cation Exchange Capacity and the more cations are bonded to the surfaces of the clay and OM.
The flow of liquids are also slowed by the mechanical action of clay and OM.
SO if you are farming beach sand, you are just about doing hydroponics farming. You replenish the moisture and the essential elements several times a day.
Most soils will retain 2 to 6 inches of moisture per foot of soil.
Go to Some of the East Texas sandy soils and without a rain you run out of moisture in a week to a month. Your nitrogen fertilizers are gone in three weeks.
In the Central Texas Clay soils the land will store 12" to 24" of useable moisture, and fertilizer will hang around not for weeks or months, but for years and years.
Then some of us have a calcareous soil, which is a whole lot of calcium carbonate, besides the calcium in solution and the calcium attracted to the clay particles.
Phosphates dearly love to react with calcium to form a long list of different calcium phsophates. (Rock Phosphate, emphases on the rock!) Here phosphate fertilizer applied may be recovered by a crop, Generations, LATER.
The truth be known hydroponics is a lot of work, more attention to details than casual farming. Also capital intensive. | |
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What am I missing ? about soil
