• Barley_Man@sopuli.xyz
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    12 hours ago

    I missed that azolla could fix nitrogen, knew that about duckweed but azolla is not my strength to be honest. However the question still remains, where would you get the potassium and phosphorus required to grow the azolla? All 3 of your examples involve continually harvesting azolla and not getting the nutrients back in. You could add chemical fertilizer to grow azolla into organic fertilizer but that would be kinda dumb wouldn’t it? Not to say that hasn’t been done multiple times before, looking at you alfalfa fertilizer pellets.

    In a way wood is a great way to produce biochar because nearly all the nutrients in the tree are in the leaves and the branches. When harvesting wood we only take the trunk. This means we can grow wood generation after generation and we don’t have to use fertilizer. The same is not true for something like azolla. A good setup to make it cyclical would be to put the azolla right next to the animal farm whose animals are fed the azolla. And use the manure to grow azolla. However then I wonder if the hygienic quality is acceptable.

    • jaykrown@lemmy.worldOP
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      8 hours ago

      You need to learn about the growth rate of azolla to understand why it’s superior, the cycle rate is insanely fast, it grows rapidly. Yes potassium and phosphorous would need to be introduced, it would be inexpensive.

      • Barley_Man@sopuli.xyz
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        5 hours ago

        Introduced from where? That’s my whole question. Apparently you don’t know but phosphorus is a finite resource which will run out in the next 100-300 years. It’s just as fossil as fossil fuel. Any solution that uses mined phosphorus is not sustainable.