Letter from Southern Africa on what Laterite really is.

Letter from Southern Africa on what Laterite really is.

 

Closeup of what Laterite looks like from the box, not a fertilizer.

Darling,

I am going to do the anoxic filter.
I don’t understand why they call laterite fertilizer for plants on this forum. Laterite is a sedimentary (precipitation) deposit, caused in limestone especially in hot climates by fluctuating levels of ground water, which dissolves minerals and deposits them around grains which look like pea of different sizes. If you break the grain you can see inside circles of various colors being deposited in it. I think the major element there is some magnesium derivative but it has iron and other metals too. We have plenty here and I used to get a lot of it crush it and make powder which I used to dab onto wet cement/plaster and make it look like natural stone.

Response:

You are absolutely right; it is not a “fertilizer” like most hobbyists think it is. I take full responsibility for not correcting hobbyists when they call it that. After two and a half decades of trying to get the message through to people about the Anoxic Filtration System sometimes I let things slide when mistakes are made, than constantly correct people on every little nit picking thing they say wrong.

Laterite holds some very badly needed trace elements that are lacking with plants and bacteria growth alike (all this is explained in my Cd-book).  Even the words “trace elements” in ponding is now new too many hobbyists and they need time to wrap their heads around this new information.

You come from Southern Africa where Laterite is very plentiful, but for the rest of the world Laterite is a new word that they just don’t understand and why it is a key player in the Biocenosis Baskets.

The Anoxic Filtration system sounds very simple, but in reality it’s really very complicated in its matrix more than any other filtration system out there for the hobbyist.  As Syd has said in his articles ( Anoxic Filtration – is it a bog filter? Part 1 By: Syd Mitchell of the UK) this system is quite complicated to understand because it has words in its usage that most hobbyists have never heard of before.  I think that it is about time that hobbyists need to educate themselves on more eco-friendly systems than the status quo that everyone is making money off of.

On the other hand, nobody would like it if your doctor kept a lifesaving drug from you just because it was cheaper than a well-known drug that the pharisaical companies would rather have you take because of so much R&D that they have invested into that more expensive drug.

 I think some hobbyists would like you to believe that all you’re doing is replacing one fertilizer with another fertilizer, but that’s not the situation here. The two are as different as night and day. One makes a plant lazy and Laterite makes a plant function and photosynthesize like it’s suppose too. Laterite accelerates bacteria growth too; fertilizers don’t and can hinder their growth rate in some situations unknowingly to the hobbyists. 

So, thank you for your astute observation of the incorrect vernacular on Laterite and fertilizer. I hope those that are reading this will stop calling Laterite a fertilizer from now on. 

Anoxic 101