FrannyB wrote:Sean, did you ever get a response from that company?
email of orders@clayworkssupplies.com wrote: Hi Sean,
It sounds like this is out of our realm of uses for clays, as far as their plant purposes. However, I can tell you that we have an iron rich clay called Redart made by Cedar Heights. I am not sure if or how you would add potassium to it, but it is a dry, very fine clay body that we stock lots of in 50 pound bags. So if you want to look into that clay and see if it is right for your purpose, then we would be happy to supply. I am sorry I cannot be of more help. Please let me know if you have any other questions.
Thanks
-Theresa
410-235-5998
The Red Art clay is a dry clay with some iron in it already, if we just followed my emulsification process to add the potassium and extra micros it would do the job. One pound looks to cost $1.75 plus shipping. And 50 pounds would be $15 plus shipping. They are a local company, they might be willing to allow a pick up.
"したくさ" Sean
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SCMurphy wrote:The Red Art clay is a dry clay with some iron in it already, if we just followed my emulsification process to add the potassium and extra micros it would do the job. One pound looks to cost $1.75 plus shipping. And 50 pounds would be $15 plus shipping. They are a local company, they might be willing to allow a pick up.
Sean, would you mind posting a link to the discussion where you went over your emulsification process? I am thinking you may have wetted/liquified dry clay with a potassium chloride/ CSM solution and then dried the clay and ground/blended it over again. I have searched for it under emulsification as keyword and only this post comes up.
When I made my mineralized top soil I used red clay from my yard. I had dug out a trench and had a pile of dirt sittind in my yard for year. The rain had washed the soil away leaving little red clay "rocks". I gathered the clay rocks in a bucket, smashed them into dust and mixed them in with my top soil.
I saw Sean referring to emulsifying clays. I didn't think he was referring to the article on Mineralized Soils Aaron wrote. Am I wrong? I was thinking he was mixing dry clays with saturated solutions of potassium compounds along with CSM in order to add extra minerals to the clays via Ion Exchange. Am I thinking to far away from reality? (I did do what I described to some Bentonite clay obtained from industrial desiccant bags. Didn't do any testing on it to see if it really did do anything.)
I'll let Sean respond, but any time I've witnessed his demonstrations he's just used dry/powdered clay with the dry ferts listed on the article, or watered down the clay to more easily mix it into the soil. Step 5 of the article sums it up:
Now that you have a mineralized soil to use as the substrate, you will want to add in the aforementioned clay. Estimate how much clay you will need so that the resulting mixture of soil and clay is about 5% to 10% clay. If you prefer measurements I use about ¼ of a pound of clay per square foot of tank bottom.
To add the clay you soak it in a container of water to help emulsify it and make it easier to incorporate into the soil. A second option to add clay is to dry the clay in the open air and then crush it into a powder and add it to the soil. In either case you will want to eventually add enough water to the mixture to form a nice runny mud.
