Enlivening your land

Jim McCue to hazelwoodeditor@yahoo.com
for
http://hazelwoodhomepage.com

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Want a garden? Make soil.



Among the many changes going on at this point in history is the loss of
topsoil. There is little chance nowadays to buy really healthy
topsoil. You can approach it by buying peat, or letting manure or mushroom
manure break ...down. You can buy compost, if you can afford it, and
apply it to your dirt; that will lead toward turning dirt into living
soil. But the best thing to do is learn what makes good soil. That
way you can have more of it.



Our culture is so materialistic that most of us think that a good soil
will have such and such amounts of certain nutrients. But while
quantities of nutrients are important, the real heart of healthy soil
is that it is alive. Alive? Soil? Yes, alive.

A healthy patch of land
will have such a vast quantity and diversity of life (most too small to
see) that you could almost call it a civilization.



The various parts acted out by the plants, animals and microbes in
this great drama are what make a soil productive. For instance, if a
plant doesn't have certain fungi and bacteria on and/or in its roots,
it can't absorb nutrients. Some of these nutrients are in the soil,
but some are actually made by the bacteria. Enormously powerful
enzymes are created by living things, and these help chemical reactions
that result in the absorption of nutrients into the plants. If you
have bare dirt with little living in it or on it, seeds may sprout but
they won't thrive.



So many people nowadays say they don't have a green thumb. Their
hands are not the problem. It's that they've never seen real soil.
You can't plant in dirt that's dead and expect life to come out of it.
Start with inoculating your soil with whatever life forms you have.
Encourage the bugs we've too often been brainwashed into thinking are
ugly. Every living thing through the course of its life helps to
change bare dirt to fertile soil - by feeding, breathing, excreting,
digging, dying, and eventually rotting away as it becomes food for
other life forms. Want a fish farm? Start with a worm farm. Feed
those little things with any organic matter you can scrounge up.



Anything that was or is alive is organic and can contribute to the
community of life at the soil level.



Start feeding one animal, like an earthworm, and the next thing you
know you'll be attracting other animals - like birds, who like to eat
them. This is where it gets dicey, as we all know certain animals,
plants, and bugs we don't want. Although returning organic material
to the earth is at the heart of soil building - and absolutely
necessary if we are to survive the ocean and earth ecosystem collapse
currently taking place - the nurturing of life will if not managed
properly allow overbalances of unwanted life forms. Rats,
mosquitoes, snakes, groundhogs, raccoons, deer, foxes, and flies are
all part of nature, but must be kept in check by their natural
predators.

The most important basic of creating a healthy soil is to know that
most microbes, from a human point of view, are either directly or
indirectly beneficial. Contrary to the popular view that all "germs"
are bad (encouraged by chemical sellers that equate sterile with
clean), the vast majority of molds and bacteria are functioning parts
of our world (including in our digestive systems) and serve to produce
our food (and even synthesize nutrients in our digestive tracts -
"probiotics").



Just as through fear we have come to have prejudices against different
people, we also have learned a lot of fears of natural things that are
not true. Animals in and of themselves are not bad; it's the diseases
they can carry. It's a long established scientific fact that, just
as in a diverse ecosystem the hawks and the snakes keep each other in
check, predator/prey relationships and competition in the microscopic
world at soil level actually suppress disease because of the variety of
life in a healthy soil.

Take an organic waste like unpainted cardboard or plain brown paper,
soak it in water, and you have the beginning of an ecosystem.
Cardboard and paper are made from trees (an increasingly precious
resource at this point in history) and are mostly carbon. Add the
water and you've got food and water for some simple life forms. Place
your wet cardboard or paper somewhere in contact with the dirt and the
next thing you'll see is worms and bugs and mold multiplying on it.
Put a seed on top and cover with some more dirt and you've got a start.
Next thing you know you'll have a hungry crew of cardboard and paper
eaters - from "potato bugs" to "hundred leggers" and you'll have to go
get them some more food.

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Jim McCue

appropriatebiotech@yahoo.com

http://bioeverything.blogspot.com

http://facebook.com/alllifelover