Weeds Indicate Soil Minerals

Explore the hidden messages behind the weeds in your garden with our video "All About Weeds". Click the link above to watch the full video 🔥🌿

#permaculture #discoverpermaculture #permaculturedesign #weeds #invasivespecies #brackenfern #garden #gardening #organicgardening #sustainability

[charlesissleepy]

potassium gets it name from pot-ash, the chemical symbol K is from Kalium, which also means ash

[debracisneroshhp]

Love Geoff, he's a wealth of permaculture information! 🌱🌿🌻🐝🌳🌎💖🙌😺

[marktemplin]

You have it backwards dude, , , , those plants are hi I K because if the potash left from a fire, , , Ash is very hi in K potassium requires a very very hot fire to burn off, , and is left behind in the ash of any fire that has not gotten hot enough

[thinkingoutloud]

This doesn’t make sense. You gather potassium from plants by burning them and then using water to settle out the ashes so you can get to the potassium. Pot ash, as others have said…
So if all the potassium goes up in smoke, how did we EVER find it and how do we really extract it???
I have to think more remains in the as than this seems to suggest.

[paulflute]

not true.. where I grew up bracken was common and every where and we never ever had fires.. sorry Geoff.. wrong again..

[dollyllama]

I need you to step in when my young child asks me questions and only responds to my answers with, “why?”

[yukey]

So glad to see you still going 100%, Geoff!

[dresden_slowjog]

Guess how you got detergents before commercial detergents were sold around the 1920s/1930s? In Victorian London with abundance of fireplaces in every home, you had LOTS of ash. (Digressing fun fact: In the 1920s average Londoner produced more gerneral waste than nowadays - tons and tons of ash and paper per capita). The detergents were made of potash from the ash.

[JaneThatcher]

‼️‼️‼️JUST REALIZED this is Hugh Grant. So cool that he’s doing his true passion now!

[marklloyd]

every plant is high in potassium. It's the most abundant mineral element in plants (OK, in some plants it's actually silicon). Potassium doesn't burn off in the smoke unless the ash is actually getting blown away from the fire

[woodymonte]

This guy is wrong the potassium is found in ash!

[nico.salcedo]

So does the fern (or a symbiotic microorganism) fix potassium in the soil or is the concentrated potassium just slowly released as old plant material decomposes?

[nicholaspostlethwaite]

I would think he is 100% wrong.
Wood ash from fires is the best source of potassium, (potash). After fires plant growth is good due to it being there for plants to absorb. Potatoes like, need, it for example. It is good for root development generally.

[ashhart]

There are videos on YouTube how to cook young bracken shoots a few ways before developing leaves 🌱🌿

[MrSubzero]

So what do you do with this info? Do you break up the ferns as mulch and give it back to the soil? Or leave the ferns as their very presence is adding potassium back into the soil already?

[Green.Country.Agroforestry]

I think it would be more accurate to say that the fern prefers to grow when there is an abundant supply of potassium, such as immediately following a fire. Some plants SEEM to have an affinity for absorbing certain minerals from the subsoil - one of our ambitions here it to conduct the proper testing, with a mass spectrometer and controlled conditions, to determine what plants are really 'accumulators'. Is it the plant itself? Soil Ph or form the element is in? Are microbes essential for this delivery? Fungi?

I plant morus rubra along side of my allium beds in the hopes of capturing some sulfur from the leaves .. but I remain ignorant of precisely _how_ the tree accumulates it. If I want to be able to take my design to Mars, for example .. I need to know these things. We ALL do.

[yusralouhi]

Thank you!
I don't understand how the adding of potassium from ashes leave the soil depleted of it.
Shouldn't it be the opposit?

[residentenigma]

Do you mean in very short supply, or very short demand ?
I subscribed about 5 words into this post.

[blablabla]

So would bracken be good to make a liquid tea/ fertiliser then ?

[Noone-rtpw]

Appreciate it! Know anything about heather as in the UK? Supposed to produce a real good honey that has to be vibrated out of the comb!