barbaral (04/08/83)
I received an ad in the mail for Nitron. It is an enzyme which one adds to soil to break up the clay supposedly. Has anyone used this type of product? It's hard to tell if it'll really work, or if it is just a waste of $10 for a quart of this stuff.
michaelk (04/21/83)
I also receive the Nitron junk mail some few months ago. Reading the fine print in it, it says that you don't need to use lime on soil that you dump Nitron onto, that Nitron will "mellow" the soil. It also says that Nitron releases soil nutrients to make your plants grow. Well, the reason you use lime (really inexpensive stuff) is to control pH. When your soil is too acidic, one of the things that happens, is that the soil nutrients are "locked up". Yes folks, *lime* "releases soil nutrients to make your plants grow", and rather cheaply as well. In fact when you think about it in that light, everything in the Nitron junk mail literature that I received would apply if Nitron were just some alkaline solution, including *their* definition of enzyme. As I recall, they said that Nitron is a non-organic enzyme that ..., but an enzyme is defined as an organic substance, usually a protein substance. Further, when your pH is proper, your plants, soil life, etc will grow better, and *that* makes soil better. This is not to say that Nitron doesn't have an instant cornucopia effect, over and above lime, but it probably will take more than a testimonial from farmer jones in a brochure to convince me. May the green force be with you... Mike Kersenbrock Tektronix Microcomputer Development Products Aloha, Oregon
daleh (04/23/83)
Michael, Now that you mention liming soil, I seem to remember reading somewhere that adding lime to clay soil will loosen it up for a while, but I reiterate my previous claim that the solution to all of your soil problems is manure, manure, and more manure. Dale Henrichs tektronix!daleh