ATOMIC GROW™ GARDENING
We’re Growing With Atomic Grow™
July 2009
"I have a theory about the human mind. A brain is a lot like a computer. It
will only take so many facts, and then it will go on overload and blow up."
-Erma Bombeck
KA-BOOM!!!
... the sound of my brain this past month. I plowed through two non-fiction books
on “alternative agriculture”, two issues of ACRES USA (an “alternative-ag” magazine)
as well as on-line research. The booktops and magazines sport little yellow Post-It
Notes™ fringes marking stuff to go back and write up. A pillow-high mound of
printed internet info to pencil through threatens to slide off my desk.
Yes, I’m a nose-in-the-book type geek ... but a Geek bearing gifts: a basket of
knowledge from the “gardens” I harvested in.
Alternative Agriculture: ten thousand years of growing food
“naturally”, putting Mother Nature in charge. Civilizations prospered, blessed with
great wealth from the bounty of fertile soil, stewarding that soil to provide for
generations after.
Traditional Agriculture: a tad over one hundred years of chemically mining soil to
the point it no longer grows abundant crops, of poisoning it with toxins that end up
in our food ... and bringing more and more farmers to bankruptcy. Where will the
soil come from to feed our future generations?
Seems to me they got definitions mixed up a bit, just like they have with “alternative” medicine.
Sustainable Agriculture: the key to unlock continuous production for present and
future generations. “Organic” is included in that, but not exclusive to it. None of it
involves man-made chemicals.
Chemical agriculture with its poison sprays for “pests” is actually the “new kid on the block”. And
it is destroying our soils.
“Nations endure only as long as their topsoil.”
- Henry Cantwell Wallace
7th United States Secretary of Agriculture, 1921 to 1924
As Wind billows our topsoil heavenward, we stumble to the brink of hard-scrabble,
hungry times. These times speeded up in poor countries where folks got pushed to
take on “modern” Western ideas of growing food. Especially hard hit are folks
whacked off at the knees by rising prices of fossil-based chemicals ... this includes
our own family farmersforced to take second jobs so they can afford continuing to
bring food to our tables. If they can’t make payments on chemicals and machinery,
our plates get a bit emptier.
And if the laden ships crossing the seas to replace our farmers run into storms of one
kind or another, we’ll have even less to stab our forks into. Our “food chain” is
wrought of a thin and pocked metal.
Chemical farming - touted as the easy path to growing food – offered a wide road:
it’s narrowing as the years pass, walled in by bottles and bags of expensive
toxins. Hm.m.m. Kinda reminds me of something I read in another book about
where the “wide path” leads...
Insects breed resistant strains (just like infectious organisms). Nematodes wipe out
crops and there’s nothing that works on them (just ask our Florida fern growing
nurseries,users of the most toxic chemicals in agriculture). Weeds tap into the
genetic engineering of GM plants, morphing into superweeds that weed killers can’t
take out. Soil turns to hard-packed dirt when chemicals burn out humus and the
microorganisms residing there.
In early 1900, small family farms supplied most of the food for our nation, usually
selling it locally. Many raised animals for food, labor and the “end product” that
fertilized their fields.
Use of chemicals to push plant growth started in the 1800’s when a scientist fella in
Germany burned some plants, analyzed the residue, coming up with nitrogen,
phosphorus and potash as the main ingredients. This is the NPK on both chemical
and organic fertilizer bags.
Justus von Liebig (father of chemical agriculture) confidently pronounced to the
world, That’s all plants need to grow.
While it wasn’t the truth, the whole truth and nothin’ but the truth, it was the truth
as he saw it. And he worked to promote what is now known as an “un-truth”. A
very big un-truth that promotes killing soil for a living.
Just as Pasteur realized shortly before he died that he was wrong about bacteria
“causing” disease, Liebig discovered that organics and humus promoted growth ...
but he was too late. Artificial fertilizer companies had grabbed both handles to the
wheelbarrow and flattened anything straying into the path of their “work”.
Chemical use picked up after WWII. Stockpiles of chemicals invented in WWI and
WWII needed a new purpose other than killing men.
Scientists started fiddling with the living things that couldn’t scream...least, not so’s
they could hear it.
Chemical corporations expanded their influence, funding agricultural colleges ...
guess what they taught? Not stewardship of the soil. Their lobbyists pressured
congressmen (usually with a few greenbacks attached) ... and suddenly government
policy promoted the chemical way as “modern”. After all, the advertisements said,
“Better living through chemistry”, didn’t they? We’ve all been duped by slick admen.
We’re winning the prize as the sickest peoples on the planet.
Chemical NPK mined the soil, destroying it in the process. In some parts of the
country they now use humongous machines to break up concrete-hard dirt: these
machines compact the dirt even more! The “dirt lumps” can weigh 50 pounds or
more. And it is now dirt, not soil.
Even “mined sand” develops a hard crust, impervious to showers. Only torrents can
penetrate them ... after the top layers get washed into ditches and canals that carry
toxins to our lakes, down into the aquifer.
Many farms lay abandoned, no longer “mine-able”. If Mother Nature can’t take it
back, it turns to unyielding desert. There’s a limit to “virgin soil” for mining. We’re
reaching that limit.
Soil: a thin shawl of complex weave covering the shoulders of Mother Earth. The
bottom of the food chain. Microorganisms, rotting vegetation, mineral bearing rock,
earthworms, vibrations of earth and beyond, all forming the Soil Food Web
Cycle essential to the continuation of all animal life (this includes us, folks).
Chemical fertilizers allow in-ground hydroponics gardening. The soil provides a place
to anchor weak roots that suck up the incomplete nutrition just a few inches below
the surface. Roots don’t venture too far in search of food or water.
It takes a lot more water to grow plants this way. Water we’re diverting to car washing, big
inedible lawns, swimming pools, kiddy pools, long and leisurely showers, water parks, etc. Thus,
no water for drought-stricken crops ... think California.
Just as we turn flabby and sick on diets of soda pop, ice cream and chips, plants get
sick and flabby on chemicals. Their lush growth belies their condition. What appears
healthy is lacking in vitamins, minerals and proteins. Insects “see” through the
disguise and do their job: taking out the weak before they set seed. Disease also
feasts on weakness. Drought and frost have no problem squeezing the pitiful life
from undernourished plants. Turn dirt into soil and things change.
The spongy structure of healthy soil holds water long after rain ends. Beneficial soil
organisms that proliferate in this sponge help plants obtain nutrients and water,
prevent nutrient losses, protect them from pathogens, and degrade compounds that
could inhibit growth.
Each class or type of microorganism plays a unique part in the
process. A dynamic living system can do all these things: proper management of the
soil is the key for best plant growth.
Functional soil: the healthy end product of millions of microscopic decomposers,
their predators, and the predators of those predators, all beneficial. Bacteria, fungi,
protozoa, microarthopods and nematodes (yes, there are good ones) that never
become pests or cause disease. Their dead bodies compose about 50% of a highly
functional soil. More than that in Amazonian dark earth where the soil grows in
depth constantly.
Earthworms populations explode in this soil, making excursions deep into the earth
to bring up minerals, all the while depositing “starter colonies” of soil organisms,
adding manure rich in fertilizer value. Their tunnels provide channels for excess
water, and roots searching for that water.
All of these root zone workers perform vital functions, maximizing plant health.
My stroll through the information garden has filled my basket to overflowing with bits
of extra-nutritious stuff. It’ll take me some time to get it all washed up and dressed
for a tasty salad to present you. Atomic Grow™ is a “seasoning ingredient”. I’ll send
this month’s newsletter out piecemeal in the next couple of weeks as I get each
article into a cohesive form...and because it’d be so long otherwise, it might get
bounced as spam.
My intent as the harvester is to present you with “produce” that will help you grow
the best garden possible. Queen Elizabeth of England, and the First Lady, have
organic gardens ... but someone else is tending it for them. The rest of us have to
fend for ourselves.
If the planet dies, we’ll also croak. Where else could we go?
Space colonization is a weak hope held out by blind science-fiction fans (I used to be
one of those blind ones). Where are the space ships to take us all off? There isn’t
enough metal on the planet to make those ships. Who gets left behind ... and who
makes the choice?
More and more folks on the Web are agreeing with Rita’s and my assessment of the
economic situation. It ain’t gonna end soon and Earth herself has some nasty
surprises in store for us this year. Each of us needs to strive to ready ourselves and
our families. Gardening is a good place to start. If we go down, it can be with a full
belly.
The information we need is popping up like weeds in the path since I got smacked in
the head with a wake-up call a number of years ago. I gather this information for
my extended family to help our survival. You are now part of my extendedextended family.
Our shaky global economic and weather situation calls for one of three actions: we
can watch “reality” TV and ignore it ... we can flop on the bed and weep ... or grab a
shovel and rake to take action. No matter how small. Do it with conscious
joy. Mother Earth feels those vibrations.
There may still be a chance...
"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path
leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let
us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly."
- Woody Allen
Grits and Grunts,
Pris & Rita
Priscilla Curry Hale
Rita Curry Porter
The Sisters Curry