Quote:
Originally Posted by RayR
. . .they don't grind it to dust . . .
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The "DIATOMACEOUS EARTH DESCRIPTION" PDF link on this page at the Moltan site
http://www.moltan.com/Products/absorbentsDE.htm
says:
"When diatomaceous earth is quarried, milled, finely ground, heated, and passed through a screen, it becomes a porous granular product. This is a porous product with microscopic openings, and when magnified, looks like tiny sponges. Clear water can pass through these openings; but particles, as small as one to three microns, are trapped during the first pass through the media."
Which doesn't mean that the products Moltan sells would again break down to the "finely ground" state they were in early in the manufacturing process -- might depend upon the results of that heating -- I believe you observed earlier that the heating for processing this form of DE was dramatically less than that used in manufacture of swimming pool DE. I was considering that the granules might return to the dust state, under garden conditions, and if they didn't, what effect an accumulation of this manufactured granular product might have on the garden.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RayR
I don't know about its effects on soil pests, has that been proven or is it anecdotal?
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It has been several years since I looked into this -- it was before I began using food grade DE to deal with cabbage worms, etc -- when I wanted to be sure it would not hurt earthworms. My recollection is that in that search I ran across a study of one or more sites that found reduction or absence of particular pests in soil naturally high in DE -- near DE mining areas, as I recall. That doesn't mean that the same would be true of DE blended with the soil of average gardens, as the overall composition of the soil, level of natural moisture, etc. would be expected to play a role -- just suggests that an accumulation of DE in garden soil *might* have an effect, and if so, one would want to try to ensure that it was a beneficial effect. (Beneficial from the point of view of gardening primates
)
Your seed starting results have been so impressive I am hoping to incorporate DE into my seed starting combinations -- probably in some layered form. Seems likely that this would result over time in introducing more DE to the garden soil than gets there as a result of my DE plant dusting. Still, I suspect that DE accumulation in the garden would not be a problem -- but I try to think such things through in advance -- hard to get it out, once it's in there, if letting it get into the garden soil turns out to be an "oops".