03/19/2026
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If it’s missing in the soil, it’s missing in the plant and then missing in the eater. Micronutrients- copper, boron, zinc, manganese, and iron ( plus others) are required in small quantities by plants but play intricate and important roles in plant health and metabolism, just as they do in humans!
We send many soil samples each year to a lab that tests right down to the micronutrients. This is an investment in maximizing yields but also in maximizing nutrition for ourselves and our customers! We take the lab findings (reported in p.p.m./parts per million) and break it down to a micronutrient cocktail of sorts for each bed. These are usually tiny amounts, that’s .06 pounds of copper (blue powder) pictured!
These are natural origin, mined minerals approved for use in organic agriculture.
I started to list them individually but this is getting long…. Micronutrients do so many different things for plants and soil microbes and are largely responsible for attributes like antioxidant production, flavor, texture, and shelf life!
A few thoughts and observations in no particular order:
- We never need to add iron. That’s why the clay is so red and Ferrum was home to historical iron furnaces (Ferrous). Our iron is astronomical and this can actually cause problems by crowding out other nutrients.
-Our soils are notably deficient in manganese, that’s the micronutrient we add the most of
-We also amend for calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sulfur but these aren’t considered micronutrients
- When you hear statistics like “you would need to eat 8 oranges today for the nutritional value of one orange in the 1950’s” this is why. Modern industrial agriculture rarely looks beyond N-P-K ( nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium) and lime (CA) application so over time soil becomes mined of its minerals
- This holds true for meat as well, if it’s lacking in the grazing land (or in the feed stock of feed lots) it will be lacking in the animal without supplementation. Copper’s importance in the soil was largely first discovered by sheep farmers whose sheep were breaking legs spontaneously but saw the issue resolved with copper supplementation of their fields
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