This will cross your eyes: Silicate minerals http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicate_minerals
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Performance golf sands --
http://www.u-s-silica.com/golfsand.htm
snip snip /// http://www.mii.org/Minerals/photosil.html#uses
snip

The chemical compound silicon dioxide, also known as silica (from the Latin silex), is an oxide of silicon with a chemical formula of SiO2 and has been known for its hardness since antiquity. Silica is most commonly found in nature as sand or quartz, as well as in the cell walls of diatoms. Silica is the most abundant mineral in the Earth's crust.

Silica is a major component of the minerals that make up your soil.

I found that silica is really increase plant resistance. I gather lot of horsetail and use it for mulch (it contains a lot of silica). My begonia does not have powdery moldew any more.

Briergardener's comment about using a mulch of horsetail being beneficial to other plants, made me wonder what other high-silica plants we can use to strengthen our plants.

I found a paper whichi talks about the silica level in bamboo. http://www.tappsa.co.za/archive2/Journal_papers/Bamboo_pulping/bamboo_Figure_5.jpg

snip .. ""Bamboo is a grass and one consequence of this is that the silica content is much higher than for wood plants (figure 5). The presence of silica is the way that the plant is protecting itself from the environment. Trees use bark for protection while annual plants have high silica content, which acts as a "skin" for the plant.""

Can we gather from this that mulched grasses will have more silica than mulched trees? Kimmsr pointed out the prevelance of silica in our soils .... but it seems reasonable to guess that different plants utilize silica in different ways ... and those different ways dictate how readily the plant can give up its silica to benefit other plants ... and even animals.

snip from HEALTHY HEALING: ""In addition to its benefits for healthy skin, hair, and nails and for calcium absorption in bone formation, ...... sources are grain husks [barley, oats, millet, wheat]seeds, green leafy vegetables, beets, asparagus, jerusalem artichoke,parsley, bell peppers, sunflower seeds, and HORSETAIL. ""

So looks like pretty much all of the veggies that we put into our compost pile or mulch will help to increase the cell-strengthening silica level in our ornamental & food plants

Lou -- Im inclined to agree that in the interest of composting speed that we need to understand soil microorganism and learn how to innoculate them into our souls. Large scale agricultural use is still being investigated, but it looks to me like small-timers can grow their own innoculant. I'm still leery of the kind of hard-sell that gives so little hard evidence as one sees on the Biozone website [that site is very penny-ante. No office meant, but I could design a more useful and convincing site]

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The reference I gave in a previous thread - to a Rodale Institute field trials -- with controls ... describes how one might grow their own
http://newfarm.rodaleinstitute.org/depts/NFfield_trials/0903/daviddouds.shtml

scroll down to "Grow Your own on-farm inoculum system"
""The basic procedure is for the farmer to construct a simple enclosure out of landscape fabric (75 cm square and 20 cm high), fill it with a mixture of compost and vermiculite, and then transplant pre-colonized bahiagrass seedlings into the mixture. Over the course of the growing season the bahiagrass spreads within the enclosure and the mycorrhizal fungi spread and reproduce along with it. When the grass dies back in the winter, the farmer is left with a concentrated mycorrhizal inoculant that can be incorporated into his or her potting mix when starting seedlings in the greenhouse the following spring.""

One still needs an origional inoculate. The article didn't tell where to obtain one. Maybe contacting the Rodale Inst.