From

Location

Message

Date Posted

New Zealand

Does anyone out there have any knowledge about humates?

Or anyone with experience using humates as media

5/7/2008 5:52:15 PM

Sanford, Florida, USA

Humates, This is and area where the end product varies widely becuase the term so broad. A great many of the humates that are offered are chemically and/or heat extracted from Leordanite coal. There are a few that come from deposits that have not hardened yet so the processing they go through does not effect the live biology in them. I call these "Complete Natural Humates".
All most all humates have a wide range of trace elements in them that are necessary for good plant health but you again have to be careful in that some of humates have a high amount of heavy metals in them.
The one I am using new is a "Complete Natural Humate" and I am getting great results with it and organic fertilizer.
First, what is a humate? It is what is left when organic material in the soil stops breaking down and becomes stable. We do not know why this happens yet but what is left is mostly organic carbon and many other elements in an organic form that plants can absorb.
What does this type of humate do for you?
1. It works to help build the organic content of the soil, alowing it to hold more water and loosens it to where more air passes through it.
2. It provides you with many of the trace elements that are now lacking in the soil.
3. The 'Natural' humates bring the necessary biology back to the soil that provides many things for your plants including better disease fighting ability, drought and temperature extreme tollerance, better use for the nutrients provided and a much extended area that roots are able to collect food and water.
In the tests I have been running using humates in conjuntion with hydrolysate organic fertilizer are proving to give fantastic results.
I have been studying humates for a number of years and natural is best.

5/8/2008 8:33:10 PM

New Zealand

Thanks Organic Jim,
We have an opencast coal mining operation about 5 miles away from us and they are looking to market a product that they are claiming to be the equal, at least, of any other humate product on the market at present. TThe coal they produce is relatively soft lignite and is quite low, they claim, in sulpher. I have yet tio see a full chemical analysis and have quite a lot of information, gleaned off the Internet, to be able to make some comparisons.

5/9/2008 5:56:30 AM

Sanford, Florida, USA

Greenethumbs,
Many of the coal extracted humates can provide very high levels of both Humic and Fulvic acid which is very good. What you have to watch is wht else is there. Because humates, even in a coal form, are one of the best ways to bind up heavy metals and toxic metals the layers of naural earth that was above the coal leaches whatever is in them down into the coal. So you need to look not only at the sulfur content of the product but the concentration of harmful elements. Everyone takes it for granted that all of the trace elements in all humates are in a water soluable form being part of the organcis that produced the coal, but again leaching from earth layers above the coal sometimes adds large quanties of non-soluable trace elements. The best natural deposits of Humates that I personnely like and use products that are from Histosol deposits (In Australia they are called 'Organisols'). Here again these deposits can vary drastically in quality. The one I use tests out at over 95% organic carbon but others can be as low as 30 to 40% organic carbon. Even these I feel are better than extracted humates because they have the live biology and in most cases do not have the concentrations of heavy metals and sulfur that coal extracted products do. I know that Australia, Boreo and New Guinea all have deposits.

5/13/2008 8:58:17 AM