The key to growing healthy, disease-resistant plants is to begin with healthy soil. How can you tell if your soil is balanced? Healthy soil… Looks, smells, and feels alive Is soft, moist, and crumbly Is darker in color Is easy to dig into Has a sweet and earthy aroma Is home to worms and other…
There is much to do to preserve and protect our planet, but there is also much to celebrate when it comes to sustainable foods, products and practices. Here are five things to celebrate—and to build upon: 1. CSAs, or community supported agriculture, are growing rapidly across the U.S. These are farms that regularly provide their…
Fruits and vegetables are all nutritionally alike, right? Wrong! When you read a nutrition label at the supermarket, you only get part of the story. Some scientists claim that the average supermarket vegetable has 5% to 40% fewer micronutrients (like magnesium, iron and calcium) than vegetables that were grown 50 years ago. Part of the…
The recent replanting of roses in Portland’s Peninsula Park was a great success. Thousands of new rose bushes were planted by a group of dedicated volunteers in anticipation of the park’s 100th anniversary in June. The blooms are going to be stellar. How can we be so sure? The rose bushes got an extra “boost”…
Early this spring, we did a top-dressing application of Cascade Minerals on a test field of carrots in Madras, Oregon. We’ll be following these carrots through to yield, and you can watch some of the videos on our YouTube channel. By late March, our plants were well-established and it was time to do a “side-dressing.”…
We appreciate hearing stories from farmers and gardeners who have experienced firsthand the benefits of Cascade Minerals Remineralizing Soil Booster all-natural volcanic basalt soil amendment. One of those is Millennium Farms in Ridgefield, Washington. Millennium Farms specializes in heirloom plants, also known as “old-fashioned” plants because they are usually grown on a small scale using…
Spring has sprung, and the warmer weather has been good news for the volunteers who came out to plant thousands of new rose bushes in Peninsula Park, Portland’s first public rose garden that will celebrate its 100th anniversary in June. Cascade Minerals has donated nearly 2,000 pounds of our volcanic basalt rock dust to help…
Spring has sprung—at least it appears that way at home and garden centers everywhere. Before going on a shopping spree (what gardener can resist?), prepare your soil for the busy months ahead. A little prep work now will ensure the health and vitality of your plants for months to come. The truth is, we demand…
It is important to feed the soil instead of just the plants. Chemically synthesized fertilizers do the opposite. They feed plants directly, without adding any healthy microorganisms back to the soil. The short term results are good. The long term consequences are bad. As beneficial living organisms die out, the soil becomes unbalanced and hard. Plants…
Do you remember those delicious tomatoes from your childhood? They were very different from the waxy, tasteless tomatoes on the shelves of most supermarkets today. It’s not just childhood nostalgia, either. It has to do with minerals and trace elements in the soil—or rather, lack thereof. Commercial agriculture practices in the U.S. have led to a…
