Devon Stork (@devonstork)

Almost certainly not! But that's mostly because soil on Earth is much more than just minerals - it's very rich in organic (humic) matter plus active and inactive microbes. Life has been omnipresent on earth for so long it's hard to find very many places that haven't been chemically changed by it to be more complex and amenable to life. You could do this with sterile soils from deserts & ground-up rock, and that's mostly what previous groups have done with the leachates we talk about! We're very interested in getting this process started for Mars regolith, since it is required to make arable soil.