Soils too depleted now - organics is not enough...

[raina]

...results of recent tests of organically-grown produce of sugar/nutrient content have shocked longtime organic producers. They're saying organics is not putting enough back into our soils to produce truly "medicinal" food. There's a growing revolution happening at the moment which I've been fortunate to have had a taste of - a system of raised concrete beds using drip fertigation combined with knowlege of what/when/how to apply any extra goodies.

[Daniel Andrews]

Is this an off shoot of bio dynamics i was reading in a magazine about a farmer who is totally biodynamic and he had amazing results, letters from watties saying his crop was the biggest and most lucious corn they had seen, flour mills reporting they had to go up a gear cus the grains were so hard, telecom came to lay cable and they reckoned it would take them 2 days but their horizontal borer only took half a day as the soil structure was so good. Amazing results but there is a lot of prep to this method of growing was wondering if any home gardeners had tried it out yet?

[raina]

Daniel Andrews said:

Is this an off shoot of bio dynamics i was reading in a magazine about a farmer who is totally biodynamic and he had amazing results, letters from watties saying his crop was the biggest and most lucious corn they had seen, flour mills reporting they had to go up a gear cus the grains were so hard, telecom came to lay cable and they reckoned it would take them 2 days but their horizontal borer only took half a day as the soil structure was so good. Amazing results but there is a lot of prep to this method of growing was wondering if any home gardeners had tried it out yet?

It's called Organoponics, initiated by Grant Steven who workshopped at the community gardens on Waiheke end 2007 - see yesterdaysfuture.net/blog/?p=44 where the following extract is from:
"Grant has studied and trialled methods of most of the well and lesser known gardening authors and their practices, and developed his method, called Organiponico. He embraces elements from organics, permaculture, no-dig and grow-box gardening, bio-intensive, bio-dynamic, chemical and biological farming, Amazonian terra preta soils and biochar, seaponics, Cuban organiponics, Irish and other European gardening, and of course Maori farming. Grant has just completed a period of teaching at the Northland Polytech, and is now spending more time building beds and teaching people how to grow food."

[Daniel Andrews]

As to your original statement i am constantly adding and building up the soils with whatever i can get my hands on, my compost bin is right next to my plot so that whatever seeps out of the heap as it breaks down is returned and added to the soil, its a big one about 1.5 meters square the bigger the better, as it gets a lot hotter and cooks all the nasty weeds. We add all the kitchen scraps to the heap and even add toilet rolls and non glossy card board such as egg boxes to the heap. We burn rubbish that is difficult to dispose of such as old timber and honeysuckle as it cant go through a shredder and we add the ash to the soil along with the charcoal lumps, i hope to be able to get a source of manure to dig in to the plot in the winter to build up the soil, but am having difficulty finding some.

[James Samuel]

Kay Baxter has written some things about this, and a term being used is "Mineral Dense" food, which can only come from minerally balanced soils. Well worth exploring.

[raina]

thanks for that, had forgotten the connection there. Not everyone wants to keep testing their soils (incl. me!) so my approach would be to apply the techniques/knowledge of these intrepid growers, and everything will be sweet (apparently the taste/sweetness of produce oooobys is indicative of goodness...)

[Laura]

In a high rainfall subtropical area - which applies to Northland and Auckland and some other areas in NZ - the soil will be losing nutrients through this high rainfall alone. So if you decide to use organic methods then its not much use to keep making compost from plants which have grown on the same depleted soil that you are trying to feed. Sure - you will get nice compost, but not much extra nutrients, even though the biodyn people will disagree with this.

So it pays to have a soil test done and then add whatever is missing. This can come out of a sack from the fertilser works, or from seaweed, crushed basalt rock or anything else you fancy. As long as you add what is missing you can then "recycle" these nutrients through the compost heap back to your garden for some years.

However after a while you will find that due to the high rainfall (see above) and the habit of not using your "night soil" on the garden you will have to repeat the performance, as the fertility will have dropped again - especially if you have built a raised concrete bed and then filled it with imported compost from somewhere else. The compost will seem to become less and less in volume each season and the plants get stunted failry quickly if you do not keep it topped up, if you can make that much compost from your section.

So as long as there are fertiliser works and petrol to drive to the beach for a trailer full of seaweed, or to get some crushed rock delivered, this topping up of fertility will work well. However "organic gardening" will always deplete one area to feed another by gathering materials there and then composting them.

The only way out of this and to make it a truly sustainable system would be to add whatever is missing now and then use all your compostable materials including all the toilet waste back on the land you harvest from. Then you can increase fertility simply by adding fish waste and mussel shells from your sea harvests and the land should be fertile for ever after.

A system however whereby you buy organic compost in and sell or give veges away then flush your wastes through the toilet into the ocean will never be sustainable in the long run. Which is why organic vegetable growers can only survive by mining some good volcanic soils, as they keep exporting their fertility to the cities and there its flushed down the toilet into the sea.

[Robyn Wolfe]

I use a product called Rok Solid. It is a mixture of ground basalt rock, whole fish and herbs. A handful per square metre. It looks like black sand. It has more than 60 minerals and trace elements in it. It costs about $60.00 a 20 litre bag which would last for ages. Go in with some neighbours. Look up their website.

[Katharine]

Do you have a link or reference to the tests you are referring to? I would like to read more because most the the studies and tests I have read about indicate the opposite.
Many tests show that organic produce can be much higher in nutritional content compared to conventionally grown food. I have also read reports that indicated soil health and fertility are often improved under a well managed organic growing system. If you would like to find out more you could check out the Biological Farmers of Australia website www.bfa.com.au. They have a consumer resource and media resource section that contains a lot of information about the benefits of organic produce and farming practices. I would also reccomend googling "soil food web" and "biochar" if you would like more information about successful ways to increase soil fertility.
The idea of feeding a plant it's nutrional requirements via a drip irrigation system seems very un-natural. It is like keeping someone alive on an IV drip with vitamin tablets as a supplement. Sure it meets all the nutritional requirements but it is not food. Plants need real food and the only natural way they can be provided with that food is through the soil.
I wouldn't give up on organics just yet.

[Earl Mardle]

Robyn Wolfe said:

I use a product called Rok Solid.

Great stuff. I have a mate who is a soil specialist who took one look at it and declared it was damned near perfect. The high silicon makes for beautiful crunchy greens.

Also look up stuff on soil remineralisation for thiniing on returnign the soil to something near worth growing in.

One of the keys is to get fertiliser that is not water soluble and more susceptible to washing out. Rok Solid is soluble in citric acid which is what plants use to dissolve minerals so they can be absorbed by the roots.

[Earl Mardle]

Laura said:

The only way out of this and to make it a truly sustainable system would be to add whatever is missing now and then use all your compostable materials including all the toilet waste back on the land you harvest from. Then you can increase fertility simply by adding fish waste and mussel shells from your sea harvests and the land should be fertile for ever after.
A system however whereby you buy organic compost in and sell or give veges away then flush your wastes through the toilet into the ocean will never be sustainable in the long run. Which is why organic vegetable growers can only survive by mining some good volcanic soils, as they keep exporting their fertility to the cities and there its flushed down the toilet into the sea.

So the logic is to go to composting toilets, which we have on our development plan. But in the meantime there is a very cheap option.

It turns out that 80% of all the nutrients we flush away are in urine, what Anna Edey calls "Peace on earth". That is relatively easy to collect and is a great activator for compost and can be diluted and used direct on fruit trees etc.

Another great permaculture tool is comfrey which mines nutrients that have been leached deeper into the soil and returns them to the surface for other plants to use. They are also great living mulch and astonishingly easy to propagate from roots. Too easy if you are not careful about where they go.

[Earl Mardle]

Daniel Andrews said:

As to your original statement i am constantly adding and building up the soils with whatever i can get my hands on, my compost bin is right next to my plot so that whatever seeps out of the heap as it breaks down is returned and added to the soil, its a big one about 1.5 meters square the bigger the better, as it gets a lot hotter and cooks all the nasty weeds.

Koanga gardens has an even better solution, build the heap on the garden. They got fed up with having the soil under the heap being more fertile than anywhere else in the garden so they just shifted the heap.

[Robbie Deighton]

I don't take too much care about turning my compost, and I put connifer clippings in it which need time to break down, so I usually keep a pile for 2 years before turning it out. when I turn it out, I put the new one in a different place in the garden and grow rhubarb on the spot where it used to be. And yes I do 'activate' my compost with urine :). Just make sure there's enough browns in there that need activating. I also use it diluted straight on decorative plants, but I'm a bit too much of a wimp to use it straight on veg.