hello spiderman
attaching an email discussion from cityfarmers yahoo group
For a city farmer, preparing Amrit Mitti and forgetting about soil testing seems the best approach. If you are concerned about mineral deficiencies (which probably the amrit mitti process cannot take care of … unless the biomass you add to it has all the right minerals), just add 1 part rock dust to 5-10 parts of your soil. You can get rock dust from crushers or a local road construction site … you must have seen them dust the top of a finished road with what is commercially called ‘grit’. Read up more about using rock dust for growing plants … I have personally got great results.
It makes a lot of sense to get soil testing done if you have a larger tract of land and especially if you want to grow plants for revenue generating purposes. Even more if you have specific plants in mind. For instance, my land in Konkan shows great deficiencies in Phosphorous, Zinc, Boron … and to some extent in Potassium. I plan to use Bonemeal, Stone Dust, Biochar, and plenty cow manure to correct the balance. I am having to resort to bonemeal for phosphorous .. I am not aware of other good natural sources (India does not have good rock phosphate). I say ‘resort to’ not for compassion/ethics, but for the fact that commercial bonemeal is likely to be gotten from cattle reared on a life of antibiotics and heavy chemical usage.
you can register with group, they are good for urban gardening and are active in response but mostly based out of mumbai and pune.
I too have looked a lot for rock dust have not found it - geekgardener b’lore has info for bonemeal and some related stuff.
The second part to this being would like to get in touch with you on such extensive vegetable growing that too organic. I live in kukatpally/hitex area and have failed miserably - even methi and palak does not grow for god knows reason.
recently I have started gardening project at the school I teach so any info /help will be useful there, for I hate to see kids disappointed.
thanks sorry for the long reply.
madhavi