 I wanted to talk about something that's often neglected, all right, and that's minerals. All right, now we have basically two broad classifications of minerals. We have the macro minerals. All right, and those are the minerals that we think about. A lot of times when we think about minerals, those would be things like calcium, magnesium, iron. All right, but there are also another class of minerals called micro minerals. All right, and these are the ones you don't think about as often, and the reason for that is you only need very, very, very tiny amounts of these minerals. All right, whereas these you need in the milligrams or even the hundreds of milligrams for most of them per day, these you need in like fractions of a milligram. Just that's why they're called trace minerals. We only need very, very, very, very, very, very, very small amounts of them, which is a good thing because these are the minerals that are just found in very, very, very, very trace amounts in nature. All right, but just because we don't need much of them doesn't mean they're any less important. All right, because your body uses these trace minerals for a lot of the chemical reactions that take place in the body. All right, now to give an example of what I'm talking about here, who's heard of vanadium? All right, a couple of people, well you heard from last night, a couple of people heard about vanadium. Vanadium's a trace mineral, or chromium, probably a lot of us heard about chromium. These are just two, they're actually about 70 to 90 different trace minerals. And the reason I mentioned these particular ones is these, a deficiency in vanadium or chromium can make you, can predispose you to type 2 diabetes. All right, and type 2 diabetes is actually epidemic in our society right now. I mean it rivals heart disease and cancer is like the biggest killer of Americans. All right, now a lot of that is too much sugar in our diets, being overweight and underactive. All right, but it's also associated, you're predisposed to it if you are deficient in vanadium and chromium. And I for one know people who had type 2 diabetes and went on chromium and vanadium and actually were, you know, they stopped having the symptoms of the type 2 diabetes. All right, that doesn't mean that everybody who has type 2 diabetes is going to be cured if they take vanadium and chromium. All right, just the people who are deficient in those, but even the people who are not deficient, they could still, and if their diabetes is caused from some other reason, namely being overweight and out of shape, type 2 diabetes, again is what I'm talking about. Even they can be helped by getting a little bit of extra vanadium and chromium. All right, the thing about trace minerals or micro-minerals, and trace minerals is another term for it. It's the same thing, trace minerals. So the thing about trace minerals is that Americans are typically very, very deficient in trace minerals. And part of that is because of overworked soil. All right, now when farmers work the soil gearing and you're out, they use the nutrients in the soil and they put certain things back in the soil like nitrogen, for example. All right, but they don't put minerals back in the soil. All right, now everybody's heard of the benefits of organic gardening. All right, and there are a lot of benefits including less pesticides in your food, right? Because they don't use pesticides on the plants that they grow organically. All right, but another thing about organically grown food is it is higher in the trace minerals. And the reason for that is when you grow organically, you use natural fertilizer, right? Like compost, manure, these are things that are rich in trace minerals. So that's a good reason to actually grow organically. I brought a couple of visual aids over here. Hold on. Thank you. Okay, here's a product called trace mineral maintenance. This is a nutritional supplement. All right, the reason I brought this is because it has a list of trace minerals in here like antimony, beryllium, bismuth, boron. Boron is very important for your bones. Like calcium, macromeneral. You can have a lot of calcium in your diet, but if you don't have the trace mineral boron, you won't actually use the calcium in your diet to maximum efficiency. All right, bromine, cerium, cesium, chlorine, chromium, cobalt, copper, and I'm just in the seas. Okay, they're listed alphabetically here. All right, so this is an example of how many trace minerals are out here. The reason I brought this supplement is to show you that, yes, you know, people actually do take supplements. These trace minerals are not in your typical multivitamin product, but they are. But I'm showing this because, yes, people do pay good money to get trace minerals as a nutritional supplement. Because tonight I'm going to talk about a way for you to get your trace minerals without taking a nutritional supplement. Although I still recommend nutritional supplements, and I do, by the way, I grow organically and I eat mostly organically grown food, but I still take a trace mineral supplement. One I take, by the way, is usually liquid. This is a tablet here. I do take a liquid form that's more easily absorbable than the tablets. All right, but when our plants need minerals, we're talking about getting back to gardening. Our plants need trace minerals too. All right, and where they get it, they get it from the soil. All right, and when the minerals are in the soil and the plants can get the minerals, the plants are healthier. All right, now when you have garden plants that suffer from diseases, there are different approaches to treating those diseases. One is you can use certain products that target those particular diseases, like if there's a pest. You can use certain poises to kill that pest. Hopefully, you know, you can find something natural to kill that pest. All right, but another way for plants to fight off pests is naturally. Just like we have natural resistance to disease, plants have natural resistance to disease. All right, just like us, we need these trace minerals to have our maximum resistance to disease for our bodies to function, for our immune systems to function maximally. All right, we need these trace minerals. What's the same with your plants? And if you have a lot of problems with diseases of your plants, not just diseases, but even insect infestations, because if the plants are deficient in trace minerals, they're less able to fend off insects as well. You know, plants sometimes they secrete certain, you know, defense mechanisms, certain odors or whatever, that repel bugs. But if plants are deficient in trace minerals, they will be more susceptible to disease. All right, so a good reason to supplement your soil with trace minerals is for healthier plants. And the benefit to that is not only for your plants, but the plants absorb minerals from the soil and then they're contained in the plant. All right, minerals are rocks. Your body can't make it. Plants can't make it. Minerals on this earth were created at the creation of earth, and they're not created after that, right? Gold is a mineral. Gold is actually making on here. If they have, for thousands of years, alchemists have tried to figure out a way to make gold out of base metals, and they just, they can't do it. It just can't happen. It's the same with all minerals. All right, if they're not in the soil, the plant is not going to get it because the plant can't make the minerals. All right, now the other thing that plants need is they need beneficial bacteria in the soil in order to absorb these minerals, any minerals. All right, beneficial bacteria actually cling to the roots of the plant, and the beneficial bacteria actually take the minerals and they allow, they allow chemical conversion there, which allows the root of the plant to take up the trace minerals. All right, so even if you have trace minerals in your soil, if the beneficial bacteria is not in the soil, your plant, you know, can't use it as well. Very similar in our own bodies. So I'm sure most of you have heard about beneficial flora, the senior intestinal tract, or like 80% of our immune system is actually in our intestinal tract. And most of the lending cells in our bodies are not actually our own cells. All right, most of the cells in this body are not my VNA. Most of the cells in my body are actually the beneficial bacteria, most of which is in the gut. It's everywhere. It's in the skin, it's in the lungs, but most of it is in the gut. And it's very, very important, again, for your health, you know, for us to have the beneficial bacteria in our gut. All right, that's not the topic of tonight's discussion, so I'm not going to go further into that, but I'm just drawing the analogy of, you know, beneficial bacteria is necessary for us. It's also necessary for the plants. All right, in order for them to get the minerals. Now, the problem is pesticides kill beneficial bacteria. Not only pesticides, but a lot of your chemical fertilizers, they kill off the beneficial bacteria. All right, so a lot of the farming practices in the world, worldwide, really, I was going to say in the US, but pretty much worldwide, most of the farming practices revolve around using these chemical pesticides, right, on the crops. Well, it also kills the beneficial bacteria. Just like us, again, drawing the analogy with the human body, we have beneficial bacteria in our bodies, and you probably heard that when you take an antibiotic, it kills off the beneficial bacteria in your body, and that's the reason a lot of people say, well, take, you know, supplements like yogurt to help replace the beneficial bacteria after you've been on antibiotics. Well, it's the same with the plants, you know, and constantly adding these chemicals to the soil, just the soil is just almost sterile, or at least it's sterile of the beneficial bacteria that plants need to absorb the trace minerals. All right, to me, that is one of the most important reasons for organically gardening. Okay, one is because to avoid the pesticides themselves, because the pesticides are taken up by the plant, and then we eat these pesticides. All right, but the other reason is because the beneficial bacteria, it destroys beneficial bacteria, which is bad for your plants. All right, now, I talked about the supplement here. You can also get your trace minerals from your vegetables. All right, if your vegetables, or your greens, or whatever you grow, if they have, you know, again, their rocks and they can't create it, your body can't create it, if it's not there, you're not going to get it. All right, so the way you can get your trace minerals is by eating plants that are rich in trace minerals. That's the best way to get them. And that is, again, the primary reason, or one of the primary reasons for growing organically. All right, so what I want to talk about tonight is doing two things. I'm going to suggest two things that you can do. Well, actually, I'm going to suggest three things probably. And maybe more, some more come to mind. But one is grow organically, right? Compost, your vegetable matter. You know, when you, like any of our vegetable banana pills, any other vegetable matter, it all goes in our compost. We have compost buckets separate underneath the seat, and then that goes out in the compost bin outside. All right, I buy bananas from whoever, wherever they come from, right? Some foreign country. All right, those banana pills go in the compost. And guess what? Those are trace minerals from another, you know, part of the country, or another part of the world. Vegetables come in from other states, you know. Again, trace minerals coming in from all these different areas that we get our vegetables, especially if you buy organically grown food. And on that topic, organically grown food, I read one time that they tested spinach and they found out that organically grown spinach had 100 times more iron than conventionally grown spinach. All right, that's just one iron, it's just one mineral, okay? You can say pretty much the same thing for, you know, for all these minerals in there. All right, so how do you get the minerals back in your soil? Again, I mentioned composting. But you can also supplement, especially if your soil has been used, you know, whoever had it, you know, say if you knew to that area, whoever had it before, they could have used pesticides, you know, or they could have overworked their soil. I know when we moved out to Robertsville, I tested our soil. And this was a place where there had never been a garden. All right, and our soil was really deficient in nitrogen. It was way, way, way too alkaline. And there's a gravel road right by my garden and it's all calcium. You know, most of the gravel around here is that white rock and it's like all calcium. All right, and then also living in Ozarks, there's a lot of water on the hill. A lot of water leaches your minerals out and then leaches as calcium in. And as a result, my soil was really deficient and it was really, really, way alkaline. So first year I've garden, I did a lot of stuff, you know, adding to the soil, like compost, manure, sulfur, which is something you can add to have lower the pH of your garden. So last year, I did not have a tremendously good garden this first year in that location, but I did discover a lot of problems with the soil that I started correcting then. I've been correcting all along, so hopefully this year I'm looking for a much better year. One of the things I added was something called, oh, there it is. Some people call this rock dust, but rock dust is not a really good term because that could be dust from any kind of rock, right? I mean, my garden is already full of rock dust from all this calcium there. All right, so if your rock is just nothing but calcium, you know, then what are you getting when you add rock dust? All right, this is an example of one product about this in the, like a garden supply store somewhere out in rural Missouri near Springfield. I don't know if you sell it around here or not, I haven't found it around here. It's called Azomite, A-Z-O-M-I-T-E. This is a brand, this is a brand name. What happened to my black? Oh, there it is, how did it go up in there? All right, Azomite stands for A-Z of minerals. All right, in other words, it contains A-Z, contains all the trace of minerals. This one actually comes from volcanic rock, and there are other types from around the world. Bentonite clay is another. This is micronized, I'm going to pass this around. This is completely non-toxic, it's just ground up rocks. I know I want you to see, notice how fine it is. And that's what you want, you want to micronize because the smaller it is, the easier it's going to be for it to be taken up by the plants. So this is something completely natural, completely organic, it's just trace minerals. You spread it all over the soil, you till it in, and then you're good to go. But one other thing I recommend adding is beneficial bacteria. Now you can add beneficial bacteria from your compost because that's what's growing in your compost, right? It's bacteria. All right, but I like to, especially starting in a place where deficient, obviously deficient in bacteria. And this is a product I picked up here at local store, I think Walmart maybe, think they had this on sale last year. But also, I bought this in a larger bag. I said, as somebody, I bought this in a 40 pound bag, and a 40 pound bag costs like about $14, $15 or something like that. It's not terribly expensive. It goes a long way. All right, but beneficial bacteria is also not expensive. If you look on the label here, you see arthrobacter, globiformis, azotobacteria, cocrocoxium, on and on and on, just a whole bunch of beneficial bacteria you probably never heard of. I haven't heard of them. But anyway, so just wanted to mention that there are just like you can buy supplements to replace your own bacteria. This is also something good to add to your soil. If you just add the minerals and your soil is deficient in bacteria, then your plants are not necessarily going to be able to use it. And that's pretty much what I wanted to tell you tonight, but I will entertain questions. Did you do any tests before you did the azomite to determine your trace mineral content? No, I didn't. I don't have any tests to detect trace minerals. I'm not sure how you would do that. I know there's a way to do that. I didn't own any. That's why I was wondering. The only test that I did, I did pH tests and also tested for nitrogen, you know, the big nitrogen potash. It just makes the basic nutrients. But I figured my soil was deficient because my plants just didn't do very well. And I adjusted the pH of the soil somewhat, but they just didn't do as well as they could have. Yeah, no. But I just want to make sure, you know, it doesn't hurt. I mean, even if the beneficial bacteria is in there, it's not very expensive. And it doesn't hurt to, you know, add some more minerals to your soil. Any other questions on the topic? Yes, sir. What's your recommendation on the top five items to grow that you're going to get the most trace minerals from? Yeah. Is it kale? Is it the leaky greens? Or is it, you know, some more starchy vegetables like squash? Yeah. No, it's not so much a starchy vegetables. It's like most of the dark green vegetables like kale. Kale is a super, super thing. I grow a lot of kale, several different varieties of kale. A dry kale is easy to dehydrate and keep, you know. And then when we want to eat it, we throw it in with the chicken like in the pressure cooker. And it rehydrates and it's just like, you know, greens. It's just like you'd cook fresh greens after it rehydrated. Kale is something that's really, really nutrient dense food. But your dark green vegetables will have the most trace minerals, but all of your vegetables will have trace minerals in them. There'll be different minerals on different vegetables. That's one reason why you should eat a variety of food. You know, your squash and all those, I mean, they're mineral-rich too. Anything else? How about now? Well, it has your own bag, like how many pounds to use per square footage. But I just throw it out there. You know, you can't use too much out of this. They're just rocks. So I just like, I have this little thing that, you know, it sprays it all over the place. And I just like cover the ground kind of, you know, lightly. And then before I till it in. Where do you send your soil samples to? I didn't send it. I bought a test. The tests in Walmart or garden supply stores cost about $10. That tests your soil pH and those key nutrients like nitrogen, potash. I mean, that's all I did. You know, $10 kit from the garden supply store. Anything else? Do you ever use site formation service? Is that good for insect control? All right. Yeah. Diatomaceous earth is good. The only thing is, you know, another thing, I talked about beneficial bacteria. Another very, very important thing that I haven't mentioned yet is beneficial insects. All right. Like ladybugs, praying mantises, you know, that eat other insects. And I noticed when my vegetable, when my vegetables are plagued by any particular kind of insect, I notice at the same time there are beneficial on there. So when you treat the bad insects, you know, you don't want to use something that harms the beneficials because you're also killing off the good ones with the bad ones. All right. And that affects insects that have an exoskeleton. All right. Which are most of them. And you think it all, is it all of them? Or maybe it's the ones that have exoskeleton and joints. And join it. I guess most insects, that's what I read. I mean, so I guess maybe there are some who don't have caterpillars. But anyway, that's the one that, you know, that product kills. But also your beneficials, though, are pretty much, you know, I mean, so, you know, I use that for, oh, my dog is a powder on my dog. It's very, very non-toxic. It's very, very safe. And it's just calcium. But I use it, you know, it's a powder on my dog to help with fleas and ticks. But I don't put it on my garden because I don't want to harm the beneficials back here. And that's the problem, again, you know, with using these pesticides. You know, not only did they get in the plant, then we eat these pesticides, but they also kill off your beneficial insects, which is what, you know, that's nature's way of taking care of the insect problem in the first place. So if you work with your beneficials and, you know, you work with the nutrition of your plants, you know, don't just, you know, give it fertilizer, nitrogen, and stuff like that, but also think about the trace minerals and everything the plants need as far as, you know, pH and stuff like that. But, you know, that's the way, that's the better way, I think, to, you know, to handle insect problems. And then sometimes, if I'm growing a plant, it's just plagued with problems and I can't do anything about it. You know, anything that I try doesn't work. I just stop growing that vegetable and start growing something that's more resistant, you know, to it. I mean, just kind of try to go with nature. Anything else? Okay, bottom line is you need to balance the health of your soil. It's the health of the soil that gives us healthy plants and it's healthy plants that give us health and longevity. And that is all that I've got.