Biodiverse

The real reason for the work.

To counter reductionist thought, I am purposefully going to jump around a little bit with this one. Nothing is actually linear. Nothing is actually simple. The point is, everything is true, all the time. Look how complicated gardening is, when forcing it into some linear scientific explanation, then try to actually imagine how complicated it is; it cannot be done. Just studying the bugs that affect one’s garden alone would be a serious endeavor.

Obviously the universe does not sleep. All of these things are happening no matter what we are doing, so we cannot actually afford to only focus on any one thing. We must be in sync with the universe to survive at all, but try to understand that when one is in sync, the universe is actually helping us along. You are aware of this with the loss of your garden to a pest I’m sure, and I’m sure you’ve considered that by not using pesticide you took a huge leap. It’s awesome that you did so, but consider now the many steps in between going from dependency on pesticides to not using them at all. The jump cannot be made in a single year, and one have a bountiful garden at the same time.

This is one of the downfalls of this public educated culture. We are given some kind of mental need for just one answer, one fix, one thing that will solve a problem. We are not taught to be complicated. Pesticide! That’s what you need! No, no, you need fertilizer! Ya, that’s what you need! Always something ready to be sold. As I’ve already mentioned; there is no such thing as some one answer: the universe is beyond complicated. This leaves us with one choice that will actually work, to be like nature itself, and that is to be complicated.  

It’s all about biodiversity. At every level. This is where monoculture farming get’s it so wrong. It’s why everyone is sick, and it’s why our current ‘science’ is so wrong; it’s all reductionist. Everything is practically forced down to some one thing or other. The easiest way to illustrate this is, factory made tomatoes, picked early, versus a homegrown tomato. There is not any one reason why the one is superior to the other. There is a whole list of reasons. Or use eggs, buy a store bought egg, and get your own from your own chicken; you already know they are not the same. They will not perform equally.

A chicken loved, or even just cared for simply, even if it’s fed the same thing as a factory chicken, will still produce a better egg. It has to do with way more than simply their diets, or environment. Science doesn’t really touch on this concept yet. Just about every article or scientific article I have ever read, reduced instead of expounded. Or at the least, made it’s deductions based off of other deductions; such things can never be more than a little true.  

All matter has memory. So using the chicken, that factory farm chicken egg remembers it’s situation. It knows from where it comes. It is a literal embodiment of its past. Evolution in effect. Proof of this can be found when studying organ transplant patients. There is some pretty overwhelming evidence that receivers of organs acquire memories of the donor. Why is this? The body IS the unconscious mind. Part of one person’s mind has been put into another's. If you were not aware of this phenomenon, let that sink in next time you eat an abused animal. The body is so much more than what reductionist science tells us. Our hearts do far more than just pump blood. It is much more than just muscle tissue. Our stomachs do much more than just break down food. That chicken egg is far more than just protein, vitamins, and minerals. It is the physical embodiment of all that was before it.

Imagine that we are North American Indians, before any of us knew what a white man was. We live in the open, with no cities, no stores, no roads, no nothing. Just our brothers and sisters, and Nature. Our entire lives with virtually no technology we would naturally be in touch with Nature. As I imagine it, we would be totally in touch with nature without even having had to try. Being sensitive to nature in this way, it would probably give us nightmares, or some other kind of body sickness, anxiety, if we ate an abused animal. If we did not send praise and thanks to the ‘gods’ before taking it’s life. There would be quite a ceremony around this process because of our sensitivity to life. We would be afraid to take life without permission. This form of ceremony, regarding life, is praying. It’s sending the bodies energy, and thoughts, into what we are doing, which matters greatly.  

The issue that most people are dealing with, is that their bodies are still very much in touch with nature, same as those North American Indians, but without the knowledge of it in their thinking. They don’t know why they feel like crap twenty four seven. We have not evolved physically enough for this ability to be lost, this sensitivity; it has simply been taken out of our culture and education, so that they don’t know that they don’t know. It would be completely impossible to domesticate us if we were all in touch with nature. Their bodies, which is our unconscious mind, knows it very much; it is just our thinking that is awry. Technically speaking, this means we are all very much aware of when we eat something abused, whether it be a plant or animal, and it affects us whether or not we realize it.

It is quite possible that most of this violence exists in the world for no other reason than that people are abusing animals then eating them. They are literally taking that energy and embodying it. People seem to love the taste of violence. It’s like eating a living nightmare. It would be a cool experiment. Take two groups of children, feed one group abused animals and one not, and see if they act differently in terms of violence and aggression.  I know for a fact their health will not be on equal terms after long.  

Surely you have been to a church, or some place similar and felt a different energy. Some churches leave one feeling quite calm. A feeling of peace. I believe this is because it is primarily older people going to churches, and over years and years, they change the matter of that place with their prayers. Prayer here, being directed thought. The best gardens have this same quality. Some of the reading I have done regarding quantum physics claims this phenomenon is quite real, and that material objects can store up energy in this way. It’s a feedback loop, that feeds on itself. For instance, you could find some object that is meaningful to you, then pray over it daily with peace and love. Revere it. Over time this object will take on its own synchronicity. Get groups of people to do it, focus on any object, and you amplify the effect. It will become it’s own thing. I mean it was already its own thing, but having constant energy devoted to it; changes it: in and of itself. This can be done with anything, but it is best to do it with one's whole garden.  

Imagine it, even if you only did it only once a week, imagine juicing dandelion greens, deadnettle, chickweed, plantain, lamb’s ear, and purslane. Then on top of those wild plants, you added your own, kale, collards, squash, melon, cucumber, broccoli, beet, radish, carrot, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, on and on, all those green leaves, just one each even. Juice it once a week. Pray over them, as they grow, as they die. Two months of this, and you will be the healthiest dude within fifty miles or more; easily.  

Now go even higher, and begin consuming their flowers, and seeds too, on the regular. At this point, chemically speaking, you will have the most diverse diet of most human beings alive on the planet. If you make this your goal it will be feasible for sure. Upon doing this you will find yourself eating less and less food. Using myself as an example, just being vegan, without all the extra biodiversity, that is, no garden; I cannot remember the last time I ate even close to two thousand calories in a given day. I rarely work out, yet most of my stomach muscles are visible. One can easily tell I am not in shape, but they can tell I am quite healthy.

With a biodiverse diet one simply does not need to eat as much. In this GDP driven culture, everyone is starving all the time because the things they need to feel healthy and alive simply are not in the foods they eat. I know more than a few people who are obese, and can do nothing about it, simply because they were malnourished as children.  They grew up eating processed food and were deprived of what they really needed, turning on a genetic switch which causes them to store everything they eat no matter what for the rest of their lives.  

Your plants are no different. This is the reason for the no till, no sunlight, mulched, and composted garden beds. It’s fractal. It’s the circle of life. Feed the soil biodiversity, which feeds the plants biodiversity, which provides you with biodiversity. When it is there at every level, it is amazing what happens. Maybe for every garden bed dedicated to your food, create one for the bugs which protect your food. Tit for tat. As we’ve discussed, you won’t need pesticide if you accommodate all life; nature will do it for you.

This kind of thing changes a person's life.  It will literally change everything in proximity to it. It will radiate outwards like all things do. Look at what humans do to the earth from above; we are exactly like bacteria spreading in a petri dish. It’s how you can know for sure we are monkeys. You would be surprised what you learn about humans studying ants. Nature is crazy. By putting one’s self in harmony with nature, one becomes lifted up by it; nature returns the favor.

You're going to want an apple tree

In the first one I mentioned planting trees that provide multiple purposes. The apple tree is a good candidate, and was the main tree I had in mind with that statement. The mulberry tree would be in second. Any native nut trees, like hickory or walnut, would be third.  

The following can be done with about anything, but we are going with apples. Before I get to the apples though, let me share a story I found somewhere along the way, I can’t remember where, about marigolds. I’m not going to give precise details because my memory is foggy. I got other things to remember, you know how it is. Anyways, once upon a time, all marigolds had a really strong smell. Turns out the smell prevented a lot of people from buying them. It’s not what one would call a pretty smell.

Some guy, somewhere, really liked them or something, and wanted a marigold that did not smell. This guy goes out and plants acres and acres of them. He was already a wealthy guy, so he was investing. His intention was to let the marigolds evolve. He replanted the seeds from flowers he let just pollinate in his fields. A single marigold plant will produce a lot of seeds by the way. Once his own seeds were flowering he paid people to go out in his fields and smell marigolds until they found one that did not smell, and they did. The dudes investment paid off. He basically just helped the marigolds do what they wanted to do anyways, and was waiting for the anomaly which always occurs. Anomalies are inevitable.

The thing about apples is, the ones that make the best cider are not necessarily the best to eat.  I think we both know one of the benefits to growing apples that produce cider, but there are quite a few actually. Apple cider vinegar is another. It’s so easy to make, and people will pay for the legit stuff quite readily. Coming from someone who loves to cook, the flavor absolutely matters. Also, the wood is preferred by smokers and grill masters, but I am that, so if it were me none of that wood would ever leave my land. Maybe as gifts, maybe.

It’s also been reported that of all the preferred leaves for worms, apple leaves top the list. They reportedly love them the bestest. I read somewhere, that someone studied this. They laid out a variety of leaves, and consistently the worms went for the apple leaves. A crazy side fact, somehow worms will consistently pull a leaf into their whole the exact same way. It is not random as one would think it would be.  Imagine that, little buggers are conscious of what they are doing!

There are some cool things that can be done with apple trees. They got tricks, and grafting is one of the coolest. Because the tree can be grafted one can have a single apple tree that produces four, five, six different kinds of apples.  Because of this ability to graft, many things become possible. Also, as a farmer, the ability to successfully graft trees becomes another way of making money from the trade. 

There are many trees that can be grafted, and other plants too. Tomato plants can be grafted even. Most of the apple trees one would find at a plant nursery are grafted. They will have a root base that does really well, from a wild tree I believe, then topped with a different apple tree that produces the kind of fruit desired. There is quite a history regarding the apple tree. If you became good at grafting you could easily sell your own trees with two, three, four fruits on them.

Another cool thing about the apple is that the seeds of an apple will not give you trees that will make that same apple. The seeds of an apple will each be a different tree, and they will be a mix of the apple in hand, and the one that pollinated it.  This is why I told the story of the marigold first. I say the apple tree has not been allowed to evolve here in Missouri, so that it can overcome the diseases it is susceptible to. Everyone is literally growing the same varieties of apples. I would imagine the first guy to find an apple tree that is not prone to cedar rust would make a bit of money. How many other kinds of delicious apples could there be if they were propagated for that reason; to develop a new cultivar. I would guarantee there are two different kinds of apples out there who have not yet met face to face. Who knows what potential their offspring would have.

Technically this could be done with any plant, this business of evolving one's own kind of a plant. I would imagine the apple tree family would like to be free of that cedar rust, and the other diseases that cause them to have to be sprayed.  Like an inbred dog, that’s any “pure” bred dog, they do not wish to be sick simply because we like how they look. The Golden Rule is not being applied in this situation. Why can’t we live in harmony with the apple, where both are happy, and both are providing for one another? We obviously can if we want to.

It’s too technical for this kind of short essay to really go into the apple tree, but the apples we have known in our life are not the best really. I’m quoting from a web page here….

”wild Malus orientalis—species of wild apples that could be an ancestor of today’s domesticated apples—are native to the Middle East and Central Asia.”1 The apple trees in this region are believed to be ancestral because they retain a robust, undifferentiated genome. They appear robust because many of them have not yet lost their disease resistances through generations of genome-thinning by artificial selection. They appear undifferentiated because they retain the potential to be bred back out into varieties like those that are spread around the world today. In that way they are similar to wolves, which are representative of ancestral dogs.”

http://www.icr.org/article/where-did-apple-trees-come-from/

So you see, if you had just one of these trees in your yard, and then planted a variety of the others, then started planting the seeds, no one knows what you are going to get. They have shown with purebred dogs, that as soon as you let one breed with a mut, the pups have dramatically less health problems. You would be playing the lottery here, but if you were mainly going in for the cider, all the apples will be of use to you. If you are mainly just growing fodder for your hugelkultur mounds, there is no pressure to turn a profit. Plus the leaves, the mulch, the wood. It could be twenty years before you scored a winner, it could be five.  It’s not like you couldn’t skip a year, or just let them all fall, and see which ones pull through. Survival of the fittest. Honestly it could be done so many different ways.

Imagine though, every time you find a tree you like, it can be grafted, infinitely, on and on and on. That’s money in the bank. Using the information from the previous posts, the apple tree is a win win. I don’t think it would be all that hard to get a branch, tree, or seeds from those wild apple trees in Asia, or Turkey. Surely, someone in the States has one already.

As far as that mulberry tree goes, they are for the chickens. Find one growing in the wild, take a branch from it, YouTube rooting a mulberry branch, plant that sucker, and then wait. As I said earlier, the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.  

If you had an acre or two worth of semi-wild apple trees growing in the middle of Missouri, getting drunk on your own hard cider; righteousness is the word that comes to mind.

Save the seeds

Evolution in effect. After the dirt, and the compost, with mounds in place; comes seed saving. There are a couple reasons for this, but the main reason for it is evolution. Our lives tend to be decades, but the majority of the plants we eat live a single year. You can turn over two generations of radishes in a single season if you want. This can be done with a lot of edible plants. Considering this, the changes in ten years can be quite dramatic, and because of this some botanist make money by simply evolving their own plants. They can even be trademarked. Google Biker Bill’s Jalapeno for one of my favorite examples. Cultivar.

Another positive about the seed saving is money of course. For instance the herb basil. A pack of seeds will be around the 2.00 range. One plant, i.e. one seed, will produce hundreds of seeds. This means hundreds of plants, which becomes thousands and thousands of seeds. In three seasons you can have more basil than you will know what to do with, for that two bucks you spent. With the arrival of your third generation of basil, you will be selling your own seeds locally. Basil could be considered a poor example because of the pain it can be to obtain the seeds from the dried up flowers. It would be righteous though, to make ones own version of a combine, but instead a kind of mini-tabletop kind for this purpose of getting seeds out of small flowers.

Applying the Golden Rule to the seeds requires empathy. Here we are this little seed, and if we come from a place like Baker’s Creek Farm, we are coming from a place of love. Once deposited in a completely new environment, your soil, on certain levels, we are stressed. It will be a generation or two before we are adapted to our new place in the world, and our new caretakers. Since the healthiest plants are the most adapted, our first couple of generations of plants will be more disease and pest prone. This is the primary reason to not buy seeds year after year, but to save your own.

Back to the kale. I let mine bolt. It bolts very similar to lettuce and all the other edible greens. I planted a bit more than I could eat, which was on purpose, but still I only planted three rows about six or seven feet long. All season while it was growing I would just fill my bag with the bigger green leaves I wanted, making sure not to ever over pick any of them. I’d say I never picked more than 25% of the leaves off of any one plant at any one time. I let them get big enough that they were blocking out too much light for their neighbors.

When I stood next to that kale patch in the spring, when it was flowered, all one could hear was the buzzing of honeybees. The flowers are delicious by the way. That kale also survived a winter with no help from me at all. I really do love that plant.  

Once it bolted it didn’t grow as much, but that will happen with any plant. Old age comes to us all. It’s also not the healthiest to eat a plant like kale all the time. I could have chopped it off just above the lowest leaves, and it would have started all over again, but I wanted the seeds. I got like a quart and a half of seeds off of those three rows. Bakers Creek charged me about two dollars for a tablespoon. I used less than that tablespoon to plant my measly three rows. Once I got the seeds, I chopped them all off at the ground with garden sheers. They weren’t making good leaves anymore. Coolest thing was, all the seeds that dropped naturally were sprouting up already. Harmony. No more rows. Ever again.

The only negative to seed saving can be the time it takes to obtain the seeds from certain plants. You know, like shelling black beans, or peas, or corn. Tomato seeds are a real pain. All the cucurbit seeds have to be carefully washed and dried. Those basil seeds are annoying as hell, but to me they are worth it. Basil is right there with cannabis with the health benefits. Juice a whole basil plant every day and you will probably live forever.  

It will also make you look like a legit farmer selling packs of seeds along with your produce, because you will be a legit farmer at that point.

The Case for the Hugelkultur Mound

You said in a message that you do not like to weed. Then my man, hugelkultur is all you should ever do. Mine were 3x14. If I kept a pace and had the wood ready to go, I could set one up in only a couple of hours. Perhaps exchange your Centurion workout for a spade shovel workout. It will keep you in shape, and they are quite rewarding because they are permanent tributes to the food that is to come. If you wanted to be righteous they can be done in the shape of designs. When I get a lot here in Springfield I am considering doing one of those big mandala type designs.  

I was doing my back yard brick style, with the 3x14. In the front yard I had a tree stump, which I was going to make a round mound out of, because I didn’t need to bury any wood at the stump. All those tree roots in the ground was the wood in the ground. I was then going to make it a sun, with mounds going out off of it in long triangle shapes. It was going to be really easy to grow orange and yellow flowers to complete my sun. I was going to make a smaller round mound without the splays, planted with white flowers on the other side of the yard; for my moon. People would have been driving across town to see my flower beds.

The brick style though is the most efficient. You are much better at math than I, and I don’t like to do it, so I don’t know the exact numbers. But imagine a 100x100 foot section of your yard. Now see it filled with mounds laid out brick style, leaving a foot or so between each mound. Let’s say, for the ease of example, each mound has the same arch, and height. What is the planting surface if all the mounds were laid out flat? This mounding business greatly increases planting surface. This is a critical aspect of hugelkultur mounds, and this point is the primary reason they are better than raised beds. As more and more roots are left in the mounds, their ability to achieve more height increases. I’ve seen photos of some really steep mounds with tons of stuff growing off the sides of them.

I dug my trench about a foot deep, which is usually when I would reach the clay. I then filled it with downed tree parts, all the big stuff in the bottom. In town people had piles of it everywhere in their yards. It was easy to find, because a lot of people are too lazy to haul it off, so they just have a pile in their backyard somewhere. Anyways, after the big wood is in, I removed, and piled the turf to one side, then the loose dirt to the other side. At this point a mass of food scraps, or manure, or anything really fresh, grass clippings, whatever, goes on top of the wood, getting it all around and down in the gaps. I also shoved a lot of leaves into mine; worm bait. Then the turf goes back over the wood, grass side down. Then on top of the upside down turf, all the small sticks, bark, and limbs that are say, smaller than your wrist, piled up. Then the dirt goes back on top, then mulch. It’s a nice little workout throwing one together.

Once done, it never gets tilled or stepped on again. I considered mine sacred ground. All one ever does is sow seeds, add compost, and add mulch to the top. A finished mound should be at least two feet high.  I immediately sowed seeds on mine once I watered them a few times. As I’ve said, they take a few years to truly develop, but immediately planting is essential because the mounded soil needs plant roots all throughout it to hold it all together. First couple of years of plants just aren’t going to be magnificent. A good mulch cover will prevent soil erosion, but still it is critical to get to tending that soil asap with plant roots. This will also lure in the worms which are desperately needed in a new mound.

Here is a critical step to prevent weeding. No rows, just freely sow the seeds, everywhere on the mound. Using my beloved kale as an example, my mound would be entirely covered with kale, with no light making it through to the soil.  And since I am never uprooting plants, I am only ever picking leaves, thinning them out as they grow, simultaneously feeding my family; that is harmony.

With a mass of kale, and some herbs and flowers mixed in weeds can’t grow really. You will only ever need to weed initially when the seeds are sprouting, and gaining some height. Once they are up and going, no weeds will gain enough hold to grow. Growing flowers and herbs all along the perimeter of the mound is ideal too. Now don’t get me wrong, you will have a few weeds still, but with the whole row crop thing, one is practically begging weeds to grow everywhere.  And like I said, nothing wrong with letting weeds grow big, just for the compost, and to have a larger root structure left beneath the ground.  Just make sure to keep the seeds out of the compost, or you will obviously just be propagating weeds. Depending on the weed though, sometimes it’s appropriate to propagate them.

One of the biggest benefits to the hugelkultur is that they never get walked on. As the years go by, with the plant roots always being left in the ground, with always being mulched and composted, with wood in the ground, in five years the plants growing out of these things will seem like they have been chemically fed, steroids even, yet will be fully nutritious and alive, healthy and harmonious, with no chemicals. This method really brings home the maxim that true rewards come from working hard first. There is some initial labor that most avoid, but the benefits down the road are worth the effort.

Remember though, I did not only plant kale on a single mound. I also mixed in herbs and flowers. This greatly improves aesthetics, and it greatly helps with pests. With kale for instance, it’s those little white butterflies that get you. They lay eggs, that hatch into little green caterpillars, which happen to love kale, collard greens, broccoli, etc. As you probably know they are voracious eaters. One way to keep an epidemic down is through biodiversity. Think of that little white butterfly like a bloodhound. It is smelling for its prey. If its prey is surrounded by powerful smelling flowers, it cannot necessarily find its prey. This is what Marigolds and dill are for.  

Those little green caterpillars, well, there are wasps that love those damn things.  I used to watch wasps hunt them down at the same time I was hunting them down. These wasps just hover around and purposefully duck under leaves searching for them. It was really cool to watch. Unfortunately I never got around to following those wasps home so I could figure out how to help them along better. Anyways, my fingers worked better than any pesticide ever did.  The herbs attract the wasps. So the trick to pesticide is biodiversity.

A trick for the trade. You ever see those really big ornamental grasses? Those ones that put on 10-12 foot tall stalks? I call those a gardener's best friend. First, they must be cut off at the ground every season; compost. Second, those stalks make great growing poles. Pole beans will grow right up them, peas too. I’ve made trellises with them and have grown small squashes up them too. Cucumbers too. Anything that vines, grows up, can be grown on them, just not the heavy stuff like watermelons, or big squashes obviously.

Some biodiversity. Say, you have that first mound planted with greens. I say greens, because they are the most important in our diets. Well, none of those greens like this heat. Solution? Ring that mound with those dead grass stalks, then grow pole beans, or cucumbers up them. Make the stalks like a tent, converging them in the middle. Whatever grows up the stalks will provide much needed shade for those much needed greens. There won’t be any weeding because it will all be your food.

Thinking long term, one is going to need to rotate what grows on what mounds, forever creating biodiversity in the soil via the different plant roots. Another way to create diversity, to confuse the insects, is to make each mound it’s own garden. Say you had twenty mounds, put two tomato plants on each mound, one squash, one potato, etc. Using kale as an example, say you cover a mound completely with kale, and one of those white butterflies finds it. Actually, it has found a whole buffet of kale. The whole patch is at a much greater risk of being over run. But what if the kale is spread out, over all the mounds, and a white butterfly finds one? All the other patches of kale will be safe. In other words, any time there is a mass of any one type of plant, one is at much greater risk of losing it all. It’s why farmers are the most welfare recipients people in this country, they lose all if one thing goes wrong.

If you think about all the stuff trying to kill plants, mono-culture is pretty miraculous in that they have managed to make it work at all. My brother is a forester. He told me once that if I thought there are a lot of things trying to kill a human, I should see all the things trying to kill a tree. Really though, they have just created and used more and more chemicals to compensate for their ignorance. I never use any chemicals of any kind, just to prove how unneeded it actually is.  

Aesthetically, everyone will be incredibly impressed by your hugelkultur garden. It is impressive after all, especially when compared to the methods others use to garden. Also, you lose nothing by leaving them alone for a year or two, or five. Remember what I said about the soil being alive, and like our skin it has different layers. This is another reason the hugelkultur mound needs time to set itself up, the soil, having been tilled from being dug up, must re-establish itself. This obviously will take it some time.

The Soil

Plants and animals are the same in terms of consciousness and awareness. Plants are very much aware and conscious of what is going on around them. They communicate with one another as well. You can literally develop a bond with them. Since the soil is a living thing too, then it too, with you, have this ability. If you need more about this let me know. I am assuming because of your spiritual adventures you know a bit about this already. We are all One after all. I can prove this using physics if needed. Give some more details, examples, what not.

The long haul is the focus here, just like a long term financial plan. Seven dollars saved now, is how much in ten years? Depends on the interest rate yes? I am assuming you will be living on your five acres for some time to come. One of my favorite garden sayings is, The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. Soil work is a minimum of five years, for noticeable results anyways, so the best time to have started was five years ago. This long term plan might make sense for you since you don’t have the time now for a full fledged garden. With this knowledge you can begin preparing for when you are ready.

You can easily begin investing in your soil, so that when you are ready, so is the soil, and you won’t have to spend a dime if you don’t want to getting it ready. A freshly chopped tree in the ground takes somewhere in the range of five years to decompose to the point of being fully useful to plants, minimum. I call gardening the soil itself the real miracle grow way, because when done right stuff grows like a miracle.  If one establishes their soil it will seem like Miracle Gro is being used. I’ve tested this by the way; Miracle Gro fed plants vs. not vs. compost pile fed plants.  Compost pile wins, so turning the soil itself into a fresh living thing is the ideal situation.

If you were to look around closely, you will find virtually no one doing this. I think you are like me though, in that we do not like to be like others. Because of this, I recommend applying the Golden Rule; Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. Virtually no one does this! If the soil is a living being, then shouldn’t we treat it as we would ourselves; feeding it the best, never disrupting it, never treading upon it?

Another way to look at the soil is like it’s a bank. Let’s use a small 8x8 garden, or raised bed. I’d prefer a 3x14 hugelkultur mound though. So let’s say we are using this bed for our own personal use, but metaphorically looking at it like our bank account. The soil of this bed is now our checking account. Every time living matter leaves that garden bed, money has been withdrawn.  Every time something is added, money is deposited. You see where this is going? If all we do is take, it will eventually go dry.  This is one of the major downfalls of mass monoculture farming; every kernel of corn, every bean, withdraws from the soil and is never replaced. The chemicals they use to replenish the soil for their mass farming is no different than you or I going to McDonald's to replace needed nutrients in our bodies. The very reason their food is so devoid of nutrients is because it comes from greasy chemicals. It’s fast food at every level; a vicious circle.

I watched a TED talk by a scientist who asked his audience a question. It blew my mind. He asked them how much of a tree, which he had a photograph of, came from the soil. It was a good sized tree. Most people guessed a large part of the tree was from the soil, but this is not true; Most of the tree is from the air. I had never really thought of this before, so my whole view of growing food changed. The scientist even said most kids coming out of college with biology majors get the question totally wrong. He pointed out the obvious, that if the tree come from the soil, there would now be a hole in the ground where the tree is. My jaw dropped, why had I never thought of this before.

If you didn’t know this, let it sink in: most of the mass of a tree is from the air. Now relate this to purposefully allowing stuff to grow simply to compost it. If you are only gardening and tilling a small part of your lot, consider allowing a section to grow trees for no other reason than to bury them years later in hugelkultur mounds and for their leaves every year.  There is little work on your part allowing trees to grow on a single acre of your land. Consider of course planting trees that serve multiple purposes, but more on that later.

If it is true what you said about the land you live on being row cropped, carefully consider that tree roots is exactly what your soil needs. Lots of them. Actually it needs a lot of plants growing period, then being either trampled, or cut off at the ground like hay and left lying; leaving all the roots in the ground. The trees and plants will be acquiring the majority of their mass from the air and placing it directly into your soil. Just make sure the trees you grow never leave the land. This will be your way of depositing money in the bank free of charge, if you know what I mean.  Literally grow them to later bury in hugelkultur mounds.  

This is why acquiring as much organic material as possible is a main priority at all times. If you were to pay attention virtually no one does this either. It is why so many, have so many problems gardening and making money; they are perpetually making withdraws, and never depositing. Here in Springfield whenever I drive by a big commercial lot that is vacant I think to myself; if I were already set up I would be charging those people to clear that lot, then take it all back to my place and chip/shred it into a compost pile. You see, if I were selling food out of my gardens I would be constantly withdrawing ‘money’ from my soil. I would want to stay on the plus side of deposits by purposefully acquiring composting material.

Say you knew farmers with old hay they never used or sold, get that! Say your neighbors do not compost; get it all. Have everyone and anyone you know dumping their yard ‘trash’ at your place.

The one thing to avoid in this situation is obviously diseased plants. If you had walnut trees on your property, and say someone brought a diseased walnut tree over for composting that would potentially be a problem. One way around this is solarizing stuff, which amounts to buying a huge sheet of UV protected greenhouse plastic, then laying it out over shallow piles of compost. At my place I used a 20x20 sheet. The stuff is not overly expensive. In this summer heat, the sun will literally sterilize everything between the ground and the plastic. This is a good way to clear an area for future planting too, because it keeps one from having to till, or use chemicals, to clear away the living ‘weeds’ as they are called. It also kills seeds. It’s a relatively work free way of clearing ground for a future bed.

Anyways, anytime one is in doubt about diseased materials just add them to the solarize pile. There is a plethora of videos on Youtube about how to get a compost pile to 160 degrees. Another option is simply burning any questionable materials, then using the ashe like fertilizer.  I burned all weed seeds in my fire pit on a regular basis. I would clip the seed pods into the burn pile, and the rest of the plant into the compost.

Ultimately, the roots of plants, and the worms are the tiller. Scientists have shown that plant roots will literally grown down old worm tunnels and feed off of worm castings. Try to think of the soil like your skin. It has layers, and there are different things going on at each level. Over millions of years of evolving, plants have come to expect certain things from the soil. And just like us, if we are unhealthy, that is, not getting the things we need; we get sick. Any diseased or pest infested plant is a plant not getting what it needs. It is not healthy, even if it appears to be so on the outside. Can you tell which human has high blood pressure, or high cholesteral, just by looking at them? This is why pesticide and fertilizer was developed, so the work of soil gardening could be skipped. Why? Because doing it correctly isn’t profitable to any corporations. You know the drill. They sell chemicals to kill weeds, and it’s weeds that you need.  

There are a fair number of ‘weeds’ that make great living mulch in a garden and are also edible. Like I said earlier the sun should never actually shine on the soil. Dandelions are a perfect low growing, ground covering plant. They are beautiful too, and bees like them. There is a certain clover that works great too, the low growing white flowered one.  I say you need them all. Purslane, chickweed, deadnettle, are all edible low growing plants.  Marigolds are another; totally edible. I’ve heard it is really good for chickens to have marigold flowers in their diet. I put them in my salads. Just cut the base of the flower so all the petals are loose and toss. There are many levels of benefits to doing this. These plants keep pests down, are juiceable/edible, low growing, ground covering, living mulches. Just never uproot them; always cut them off at the ground. The soil and worms want those roots.

A garden maxim for you. Humans get only what grows above ground, except with the obvious; potatoes, radishes, beets, what not. All others should always be cut off right at the ground, disturbing the soil as little as possible. The soil needs those dead roots.

Leaves, leaves, more leaves. Leaves are like pennies, while a single leave is not much, an entire tree worth of pennies is something else. I even collected acorns, smashed them, and composted them. They were nickels, or dimes, perhaps. All those green skins off of walnuts; gold! I found so many people in Clinton that just throw it all away. I had people who bagged it for me, I just went and picked it up, then gave them their bags back. They loved me for it. Mountains and mountains of leaves turns into a very little dirt, but that dirt is gold. It is also perfect mulch cover to keep the dirt in the dark. Leaves are designed by nature to suffocate out any wannabe plants thinking they can compete with the living trees. I used leaf mulch in all my walk ways. I had problems with the leaves suffocating my stuff it does the job so well.  I keep my leaves separate from my main compost for this purpose of using it as mulch. Leaves mixed with wood chips are the best mulch available.

Another major benefit regarding leaves is that they are a preferred food for worms. That is, worms prefer them. A lot of worms surface and pull leaves back into their holes.  The only thing they love more than decomposing plants is poop. Most major worm farmers feed their worms poop. If you are not already, consider pooping in a hole in the yard, for a couple years, adding sawdust, or wood chips over it as you go, then plant a tree: start a new hole. It is much more righteous to squat over a hole in the ground than to shit in cleaned water. They say it is healthier to squat when pooping anyways. It’s a win win. Regardless, poop is second on the list after living plants.