Steve Solomon

“ It quickly became clear to me that composting with worms conveniently solves several recycling glitches. How does a northern homeowner process kitchen garbage in the winter when the ground and compost pile are frozen and there is no other vegetation to mix in? And can an apartment dweller without any other kind of organic waste except garbage and perhaps newspaper recycle these at home? ”

“ Recall my assertion that what is most important about organic matter is not how much is present, but how much is lost each year through decomposition. For only by decomposing does organic matter release the nutrients it contains so plants can uptake them; only by being consumed does humus support the microecology that so markedly contributes phytamins to plant nutrition, aggressively breaks down rock particles and releases the plant nutrients they contain; only by being eaten does soil organic matter support bacteria and earthworms that improve productivity and create better tilth. ”

“ I believe that the purpose of food is not merely to fill the belly or to provide energy, but to create and maintain health. Ultimately, soil fertility should be evaluated not by humus content, nor microbial populations, nor earthworm numbers, but by the long-term health consequences of eating the food. If physical health degenerates, is maintained, or is improved we have measured the soil's true worth. ”

“ William Albrecht, chairman of the Soil Department at the University of Missouri during the 1930s, was, to the best of my knowledge, the first mainstream scientist to thoroughly explore the differences in the nutritional qualities of plants and to identify specific aspects of soil fertility as the reason why one plant can be much more nutritious than another and why animals can be so much healthier on one farm compared to another. By implication, Albrecht also meant to show the reason why one nation of people can be much less healthy than another. ”

“ By focusing on increasing and maximizing soil life instead of adding chemical fertility, organic farmers are able to grow excellent cereals and fodder. On richer soils they can even do this for generations, perhaps even for millennia without bringing in plant nutrients from elsewhere. If little or no product is sent away from the farm, this subsistence approach may be a permanent agricultural system. But even with a healthy ecology few soils are fertile enough by themselves to permit continuous export of their mineral resources by selling crops at market. ”

“ For a few years, perhaps a decade, or even twenty years if the soil carried a higher level of mineralization than the average, crops from forest soils grew magnificently. Then, unless other methods were introduced to rebuild fertility, yields, crop, animal, and human health all declined. When the less-leached grassy prairies of what we now call the Midwest were reached, even greater bounties were mined out for more years because rich black-soil grasslands contain more mineral nutrients and sod accumulates far more humus than do forests. ”

“ In most parts of the country, enough organic materials accumulate around an average home and yard to make all the compost a backyard garden needs. You probably have weeds, leaves, perhaps your own human hair (my wife is the family barber) , dust from the vacuum cleaner, kitchen garbage and grass clippings. But, there may not be enough to simultaneously build the lushest lawn, the healthiest ornamentals _and _grow the vegetables. If you want to make more compost than your own land allows, it is not difficult to find very large quantities of organic materials that are free or cost very little. ”

“ The easiest and most sure-fire improver of compost quality is time. Making a heap with predominantly low C/N materials inevitably results in potent compost if nitrate loss is kept to a minimum. But the C/N of almost any compost heap, even one starting with a high C/N will eventually lower itself. The key word here is eventually. The most dramatic decomposition occurs during the first few turns when the heap is hot. Many people, including writers of garden books, mistakenly think that the composting ends when the pile cools and the material no longer resembles what made up the heap. ”

“ Large-scale holistic farmers must grow their own humus on their own farm. Their focus cannot be on buying and bringing in large quantities of organic matter; it must be on conserving and maximizing the value of the organic matter they produce themselves.
Where you do hear of an organic farmer (not vegetable grower but cereal/livestock farmer) building extraordinary fertility by spreading large quantities of compost, remember that this farmer must be located near an inexpensive source of quality material. ”

“ HEALTH = NUTRITION IN FOOD DIVIDED BY CALORIES IN THAT FOOD If the food that we eat contains all of the nutrients that food could possibly contain, and in the right ratios, then we will get sufficient nutrition while consuming the calories we need to supply energy. However, to the degree that our diet contains denatured food supplying too much energy, we will be lacking nutrition and our bodies will suffer gradual degeneration. This is why foods such as sugar and fat are less healthful because they are concentrated sources of energy that contain little or no nutrition. ”

“ There will be as many mammals as there can be, as many insects, as many worms, as many plants growing as large as they can get, as much organic matter in all stages of decomposition and the maximum amount of relatively stable humus in the soil. All these forms of living and decomposing organisms are linked in one complex system; each part so closely connected to all the others that should one be lessened or increased, all the others change as well.
The efficient decomposition of leaves on a forest floor is a fine example of what we might hope to achieve in a compost pile. ”

“ Just as in a compost heap, within days bacteria and fungi can multiply to match any food supply. But to construct their bodies these microorganisms need the same nutrients that plants need to grow—nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, etc. There are never enough of these nutrients in high C/N organic matter to match the needs of soil bacteria, especially never enough nitrogen, so soil microorganisms uptake these nutrients from the soil's reserves while they "bloom" and rapidly consume all the new carbon presented to them. ”

“ Whenever I want to buy something it has become my habit first to ask myself if the desired object could possibly bring me as much pleasure as knowing that I don't have to get up and go to work the next morning. ”

“ Most fungi are soil dwellers though some eat downed or even standing trees.
Most people do not realize that plant roots adsorb water and water-soluble nutrients only through the tiny hairs and actively growing tips near the very end of the root. The ability for any new root to absorb nutrition only lasts a short time, then the hairs slough off and the root develops a sort of hard bark. If root system growth slows or stops, the plant's ability to obtain nourishment is greatly reduced. Roots cannot make oxygen out of carbon dioxide as do the leaves. ”

“ Conserving the manure and composting the crop waste allowed him to increase the soil's organic matter which increased the soil's release of nutrients from rock particles that further increased the production of biomass which allowed him to make even more compost and so on. What I have just described is not surprising, it is merely a variation on good farming that some humans have known about for millennia. ”

“ If the organic matter has a low C/N, like manure, a tender green manure crop not yet forming seed, alfalfa hay or grass clippings, quite a large volume of material can be decomposed by warm soil in a matter of weeks.
However, rotting large quantities of very resistant material like sawdust can take many months, even in hot, moist soil. Most gardeners cannot afford to give their valuable land over to being a compost factory for months. One way to speed the sheet composting of something with a high C/N is to amend it with a strong nitrogen source like chicken manure or seed meal. ”

“ Is this much humus the only way to grow big, high-yielding organic vegetable gardens and two, are vegetables raised on soils super-high in humus maximally nutritious. If the answer to the first question is no, then a person might avoid a lot of work by raising the nutrient level of their soil in some other manner acceptable to the organic gardener. If the answer to the second question is less nutritious, then serious gardeners and homesteaders who are making home-grown produce into a significant portion of their annual caloric intake had better reconsider their health assumptions. ”

“ We can't increase the carbon supply outdoors. But we can loosen the soil eighteen to twenty-four inches down (or more for deeply-rooting species) in an area as large as the plant's root system could possibly ramify during its entire growing season. I've seen some GROWers dig holes four feet deep and five feet in diameter for individual plants. We can use well-finished, strong compost to increase the humus content of that soil, and supplement that with manure tea or liquid fertilizer to provide all the nutrients the plant could possibly use. ”

“ Building higher than normal levels of plant nutrients can be done with large additions of potent compost and manure. In semi-arid parts of the country where vegetation holds a beneficial ratio of calcium to potassium food grown that way will be quite nutritious. In areas of heavier rainfall, increasing soil fertility to vegetable levels is accomplished better with fertilizers. The data in the previous section gives strong reasons for many gardeners to limit the addition of organic matter in soil to a level that maintains a healthy soil ecology and acceptable tilth. ”

“ Plants grow, die and finally fall to earth where soil-dwelling organisms consume them and each other until eventually there remains no recognizable trace of the original plant. Only a small amount of humus is left, located close to the soil's surface or carried to the depths by burrowing earthworms. Alternately, the growing plants are eaten by animals that do not live in the soil, whose manure falls to the ground where it comes into contact with soil-dwelling organisms that eat it and each other until there remains no recognizable trace of the original material. ”

“ Once each year, leaves are available in large quantity, but aren't the easiest material to compost. Rich in minerals but low in nitrogen, they are generally slow to decompose and tend to pack into an airless mass. However, if mixed with manure or other high-nitrogen amendment and enough firm material to prevent compaction, leaves rot as well as any other substance. Running dry leaves through a shredder or grinding them with a lawnmower greatly accelerates their decomposition. Of all the materials I've ever put through a garden grinder, dry leaves are the easiest and run the fastest. ”

“ People who are comfortable disagreeing with Authority and that believe there is a strong connection between soil fertility and the consequent health of plants, animals, and humans living on that soil tend to side with the organic camp. People who consider themselves "practical" or scientific tend to side with the mainstream agronomists and consider chemical agriculture as the only method that can produce enough to permit industrial civilization to exist. ”

“ When growing vegetables we have to restore organic matter beyond the amount the garden itself produces. The curves showing humus decline at the University of Missouri give us a good hint as to how much organic matter we are going to lose from vegetable gardening. Let's make the most pessimistic possible estimate and suppose that vegetable gardening is twice as hard on soil as was growing corn and removing everything but the stubble and root systems. ”

“ I sadly observe what happens when farmers allow soil organic matter to run down every time I drive in the country. Soil color that should be dark changes to light because mineral particles themselves are usually light colored or reddish; the rich black or chestnut tone soil can get is organic matter. Puddles form when it rains hard on perfectly flat humusless fields and may stand for hours or days, driving out all soil air, drowning earthworms, and suffocating crop roots. ”

“ Visual appeal is the primary benefit of making compost in a container. To a tidy, northern European sense of order, any composting structure will be far neater than the raw beauty of a naked heap. Composting container designs may offer additional advantages but no single structure will do everything possible. With an enclosure, it may be possible to heat up a pile smaller than 1' x 4' x 4' because the walls and sometimes the top of the container may be insulating. This is a great advantage to someone with a postage stamp backyard that treasures every square foot. ”

“ Mulch gardening does not succeed everywhere.
This easy method mimics decomposition on the forest floor. Instead of making compost heaps or sheet composting, the garden is kept thickly covered with a permanent layer of decomposing vegetation. Year-round mulch produces a number of synergistic advantages. Decay on the soil's surface is slow but steady and maintains fertility. As on the forest floor, soil animals and worm populations are high. Their activities continuously loosen the earth, steadily transport humus and nutrients deeper into the soil, and eliminate all need for tillage. ”

“ On a diet of living things in a natural ecology even very difficult species began breeding.
Organic and biological farmers consider modern "scientific" farming practices to be a similar situation. Instead of imitating nature's complex stability, industrial farmers use force, attempting to bend an unnaturally simplified ecosystem to their will. As a result, most agricultural districts are losing soil at a non-sustainable rate and produce food of lowered nutritional content, resulting in decreasing health for all the life forms eating the production of our farms. ”

“ Fertilized with sacked steer manure or mulched with average-to-poor compost, most ornamentals will grow adequately.
But vegetables are delicate, pampered critters that must grow as rapidly as they can grow if they are to be succulent, tasty, and yield heavily. Most of them demand very high levels of available nutrients as well as soft, friable soil containing reasonable levels of organic matter. So it is extremely important that a vegetable gardener understand the inevitable disruption occurring when organic matter that has a C/N is much above 12:1 is tilled into soil. ”

“ The outside is then covered with a thin layer of crumbly, black soil scraped up where the pile had originally stood before I turned it.
Using hand tools for most kinds of garden work, like weeding, cultivating, tilling, and turning compost heaps is not as difficult or nearly as time consuming as most people think if one has the proper, sharp tools. Unfortunately, the knowledge of how to use hand tools has largely disappeared. No one has a farm-bred grandfather to show them how easy it is to use a sharp shovel or how impossibly hard it can be to drive a dull one into the soil. ”

“ The activities of fungi and bacteria are the most potent forces making nutrients available to plants. As useful as tilling rock powders into soil may be, the intense biological activity of the compost pile accelerates their availability. And the presence of these minerals might well make a compost pile containing nutrient-deficient vegetation work faster and become better fertilizer. Were the right types of rock dust available and cheap, I'd make it about 5 percent by volume of my heap, and equal that with rich soil. ”

“ Stout, who discovered mulch gardening in Connecticut where irregular summer rains were usually sufficient to water a widely-spaced garden, also mistakenly thought that mulched gardens lost less soil moisture because the earth was protected from the drying sun and thus did not need irrigation through occasional drought. I suspect that drought resistance under mulch has more to do with a plant's ability to feed vigorously, obtain nutrition, and continue growing because the surface inches where most of soil nutrients and biological activities are located, stayed moist. ”

“ Moist soil during the growing season encourages plant growth and thus organic matter production. Where the soil becomes dry during the growing season, plant growth slows or stops. So, all things being equal, wet soils contain more organic matter than dry ones. All organic matter eventually rots, even in soil too dry to grow plants. The higher the soil temperature the faster the decomposition. But chilly (not frozen) soils can still grow a lot of biomass. So, all things being equal, hot soils have less humus in them than cold ones. Cool, wet soils will have the highest levels ”