Organic Gardening

Many farmers today are adopting no-till methods of planting, in an effort to reduce the horrendous loss of topsoil that is threatening many farms around the world. Wind and water erosion of bare soil that has been recently plowed is responsible for the bulk of physical soil loss. Loss of soil fertility is another issue, currently most commonly redressed by increased chemical fertilizer use.

To reduce the physical soil loss, many farmers have decided to skip the plowing stage, and simply plant in unplowed soil. This is by no stretch of the imagination an eco-friendly or organic method — the weeds are controlled by pesticides and soil fertility (what there is of it) is due to chemical fertilizer application.

Almost ten years ago USDA scientists set out to demonstrate the benefits of this no-till method, and included a study comparing results from organic and no-till methods. To quote from a recent report of their findings:

Plant physiologist John Teasdale, with the ARS Sustainable Agricultural Systems Laboratory in Beltsville, was surprised to find that organic farming was a better soil builder than no-till.

While those results come as no surprise to organic farmers, it proves once again that organic methods are best for ensuring long-term soil fertility and stability. The use of composting and manuring more than offset the loss of soil due to plowing. Not only was there more organic soil, it was more fertile. After eight years of studying the contrasting methods, the scientists used no-till methods to plant corn in all the study plots — the plots that received organic treatment in the preceding years produced 18% more corn than the others.

Ten years from now we expect to see even better results reported when comparing the use of biochar plus organic methods, versus any other technique — but can we wait that long to begin a serious program of carbon sequestration? Dr James Hansen of NASA doesn’t think so, and he’s like a rocket scientists isn’t he? (Well, not exactly, but he is a physicist, astronomer and mathematician, and one of the first to warn us about the potential for global warming, in the early 1980’s, so I think I’ll take his word for it…)

Growing up in Michigan, it was usual to see long rows of common orange daylilies lining the sides of the ditches along dirt roads, between mid-May and mid-July. I’d often stop and gather a paper-bag full of blossom buds — the big ones that would be the next day’s flower — and take them home for lunch or dinner. If I was being lazy I’d just boil them as a vegetable, but they were really much better when dipped in a light flour batter and fried in oil.

Clump of daylilies.

I’ve also eaten the root swellings, commonly called bulbs, though technically they aren’t. Those taste fine, but are small, so you need to dig a lot to get enough to make a serving. I only ate them when the garden patch of daylilies got too large and needed serious trimming-down, to keep them from taking over the whole garden.

Some people are sensitive to something in the daylily, and have diarrhea or stomach cramps it they eat these, so be sure to try out just a little if they are new for you. Some varieties affect people more than others, the wildest (plain yellow or orange) seem to be strongest. My wife has a similar reaction to tomatoes — you never know what personal food allergies you might have!

Daylilies have come a long way from their wild plain-jane ancestors. There are tens of thousands of cultivated varieties (cultivars). In additional to the orange, yellow and pink colors of the originals, they now come in reds, purples, lavenders, greenish tones, near-black, near-white, as well as a great variety of mixed-colors.

Orange and Red Daylily with wavy-edged doubled petals (photo used by permission of madnzany from Flickr)

There are also various physical forms, with wavy edged petals, double or even tripled petals, and different leaf characteristics.

Most daylilies like full sun and rich, well-drained moist soil. Some of the darker varieties do best in slightly shady areas, because the darker flowers absorb more heat and may wilt in a hot sun.

They like to grow in thick clumps, and can be easily propagated by dividing up those clumps, roots, plants and all. The flowers produce seed pods, which produce fertile seeds in the wilder versions, but may be sterile or bear no seeds at all in some of the cultivars.

Red and Pink Green-throated Daylilies with wavy edged petals (photo used by permission of WxMom from Flickr)

• They grow thickly and flower profusely
• Some varieties will flower all summer long
• They are heat and drought tolerant
• They come in an amazing variety of colors and shapes of flowers
• The flowers and thickened root parts are edible and tasty

The only draw-back of daylilies in your flower garden is that they are easy to grow, and we all know how the snobbish haute-gardeneurs look down their noses at easily grown plants, no matter how beautiful.

Not to be confused with …

Daylilies are in the genus Hemerocallis and as such are not true lilies. Most people see lily-like flowers, and if they are drooping assume they are true lilies, and if they are upright assume they are daylilies. That general rule often works, but some Oriental varieties of true lilies have upright flowers.

Oriental Lily (photo by permission antigone78 on Flickr)

To tell the difference, you need to look at the inner parts of the flowers, those stamens and pistils. The pistil in a true lilly usually sticks way up, while in the daylily they are not so long and remain deeper down in the flower. But the real give-away is the anthers — lily anthers have three lobes while daylily anthers have two (which being opposite usually look like just one long anther, but notice it is at a right angle to the stamen filament).

Common Purple Iris (photo used by permission of WxMom from Flickr)

I have heard anecdotes about people confusing between daylilies and irises, usually in the context of using the plant for food. Irises are not edible, and may even be poisonous — but they don’t resemble daylilies very closely. The leaves are stiff and upright, rather than long and droopy, and the distinctive fleur-de-lis of the iris is not at all like a daylily.

If you have not already seen the YouTube video on Lesotho Keyhole Gardens, check this out. I especially like the idea of building the garden wall up to waist-height, and making it just deep enough that the tender can reach every square centimeter. The tin cans seem a bit odd to me, perhaps the soil in Lesotho is iron-poor. In most parts of the world, the organic wastes we use for composting probably have enough iron in them.

I would think the garden might need some porous material at the bottom if you live in an area with heavy rainfalls. The walls of open stonework or loose bricks would be porous enough under most circumstances, but here in the sub-tropical monsoon zone we would probably want a layer of loose gravel at the bottom, just to be safe. Don’t want to drown those beautiful veggies now do we?

And to keep all those rich compost-nutrients from leaching out of our soil, adding about 15% (by volume) biochar is just the ticket. We are moving in September to a little village near the ocean in Colima — and I think one of these keyhole gardens near the front gate might be ideal for demonstrating the usefulness of biochar. I’ll put biochar in 1/2 the soil, on one side of the arc, and not on the other — plant the exact same thing on each half — then see if the difference is visible in the plants.

Wouldn’t these gardens be ideal for Senior residences? Many folks love gardening, but when you reach a certain age it gets difficult to get down to ground-level to till and weed by hand. Well really it’s not the getting down so much as trying to get back up. Having a waist-high garden would be attractive, stimulating and provide good exercise for the elderly. Plus they could grow some healthful fruits and vegetables. We don’t have many old-folks homes here in Mexico — families tend to take care of their own — but those of you in ‘more developed’(?) countries might want to consider this as a landscaping option. As well as a teaching tool for schools. As well as a convenient intensive gardening option for urban or suburban homes on small lots, or in dry climates. Just about anywhere, really, that the space is available.

The whole organic gardening movement stems from a desire to live more lightly on the earth, and to have nutritious food that is free from pesticides and chemicals. But today there is a more pressing concern that needs to be addressed, or there will not be enough food to feed everyone living in just ten to twenty years. Already, rising food prices have put nutritious food out of reach for the poorest residents of this planet, and the future looks like things can only get worse. The outlook is bleak indeed.

The largest culprit is global warming, driven in large part by the excessive amounts of CO2 that we pump into the air by burning fossil fuels. Ironically, just as the world is beginning to feel the effect of hundreds of years of fossil-fuel exploitation (originally coal, later oil), oil production has passed the peak of its production capability while demand continues to rise, spurring rising prices for gas, oil and chemical fertilizers, all of which are involved in the food production and delivery systems.

Climate scientists have been warning for the past couple decades that it is imperative that we reduce CO2 emissions in order to prevent further warming of the planet. The global ice caps are beginning to melt, raising sea water, the oceans are becoming acidified by dissolved CO2, hurricanes and other storms are becoming more intense and probably more frequent, and climates — especially precipitation patterns — around the world are changing, to the detriment of current farming practices.

Various solutions have been suggested, from shifting to 100% renewable energy sources to installing CO2 scrubbers on ocean shorelines around the world. None are practical in the short-term due to high costs and the natural human tendency to avoid changes. Poor people of the tropics will not switch from free wood from the forest to expensive solar energy — they simply can’t afford to. Even the wealthiest country in the world, the USA, has a very poor record of adopting renewable and sustainable energy, because they do not want to pay the costs.

Enter biochar into the picture. I can not describe the full history, research and effects of this amazing substance in this blog post, but I’ll outline some of the highlights. If you are interested, and you should be, search the Internet (I recommend using Scour for your search) for the terms biochar, agrichar and Tera Preta.

Plants typically take CO2 out of the air, and through photosynthesis produce oxygen and the various carbon based compounds the plant needs to live. When the plant dies and  rots or is burned, the CO2 is released back into the air. Hence, the carbon-cycle for plants is considered to be ‘carbon-neutral’ — they absorb and release equal amounts, so they have little over-all long-term effect on the amount of CO2 in the air. When we burn fossil fuels, we release CO2 that has been tied-up for thousands of years –  stored underground.

Biochar is basically charcoal — the left-over carbon that remains when you heat organic matter in the absence of oxygen. If oxygen were present, the material would burn at those temperatures, leaving nothing but ash. When biochar or other charcoal is produced, the organic material (typically wood for charcoal, but biochar may be anything from horse manure to corn-stalks or rice hulls) gives off flammable gasses, which may be burned on the spot to help reduce the outside energy needed to produce the biochar, or in a more technological process can be converted into fuels to run automobiles, power plants, or anything else.

Thus biochar may be a by-product of clean energy production (the energy comes from plants, its carbon would have gone back into the atmosphere when they rotted anyhow, and hence is carbon-neutral — it does not add to the CO2 problem), or it may be produced for its own sake. While not itself a fertilizer — it is mostly inert when mixed with soil — biochar has amazing properties that help enrich soil and make it more productive.

The biochar added to soil is typically a very fine powder. It can be tilled directly into the soil, or added to water and put on the soil as a slurry, or (best option) mixed with compost and incorporated into the soil that way. The effects of biochar are:

• Increase availability of nutriments to plants through cation exchange
• Promotes beneficial soil bacteria which also helps the plants
• Retains moisture, so less-frequent irrigation is required
• Makes fertilizers (whether organic or chemical based) more available to plants, so less is needed
• Helps retain those fertilizers in the soil when water-washed, again meaning that less is required, but also reducing run-off of polluting fertilizer into waterways
• Improves the texture of high-clay or high-silt soils (as does compost, so combined they are even more effective), so they can be productive
• Helps move highly acidic or highly alkaline soils closer to neutral pH
• Stays in the soil for hundreds or even thousands of years — effectively sequestering the carbon it contains (and it is mostly carbon)

That last point is very important. Many highly-touted alternative energy sources are carbon-neutral, and that is great — we need to pursue those long-term. But biochar is the only option available that is actually carbon-negative while being economically beneficial. Other carbon-negative suggestions all have a price tag attached — and often a very high price at that. Biochar increases crop yields and reduces fertilizer costs, enough to more than offset the cost of its production. The environmental benefit and carbon sequestration ride-along as free side-effect benefits.

All that is needed is education. Tropical farmers need to replace slash-and-burn agricultural practices with slash-and-char — so they don’t need to keep moving to a new plot of forest each year. Infertile lands in many areas may be reclaimed through the addition of biochar and compost, to make them fertile food-producing farms. Farmers need to abandon the every more expensive chemical fertilizers in favor of sustainable organic methods — plus add biochar to help maintain that soil fertility, and help clean our rivers by reducing fertilizer run-off. Everyone acting together, in their own self-interest, can produce and use enough biochar to offset the industrial CO2 pollution, buying us time to convert to sustainable energy sources.

Before we can trace the history of composting, we need to define the term. Just what is composting? If one reads the various definitions, there seems to be two different definitions available. Composting may be defined simply as the process of making compost, and compost in turn may be defined as a noun:

A mixture of decaying organic matter, as from leaves and manure, used to improve soil structure and provide nutrients.

or a verb:

To fertilize with a mixture of decaying organic matter.

If that is all compost is, then we can take forest soil, and add it to our garden as compost. I don’t think so.

My American Heritage Dictionary gives the word origin for compost as:

from Old French composte, stewed fruit, and compost, mixture, respectively from Latin composita and compostium, feminine and neuter of compositus, put together, COMPOSITE

So by these definitions, composting, or making a mixture of organic material, can be the equivalent of manuring — adding animal manure to the soil. If that were what composting is, then it certainly has an ancient history. By those terms, mankind has been composting for many thousands of years, and ants and birds have been composting for even longer. There are birds who incubate their eggs by bringing together such a large pile of leaves and similar organic matter, so that the bacterial heating from decomposition warms the eggs to the desired temperature. Material is added or removed as required to maintain the ideal temperature.

A more modern definition describes composting as:

controlled aerobic decomposition of biodegradable organic matter, producing compost.

That seems a more accurate definition of what we think of today as composting. I think I might prefer to add the word ‘mixed’ before biodegradable organic matter, to be more precise, since there is an effort in composting to combine high nitrogen and high carbon materials in the desirable proportions to produce the most fertile soil supplement for plant use.

It is possible to pre-treat material for composting, either by breaking it down physically (shredding, mowing) or biologically (anaerobic digestion: biogas fermentation, bokashi), but even so when it reaches the composting stage, aerobic decomposition is usually the goal of true composting. The ancient practice of adding manure, fish, and similar organic materials directly to the soil to enrich it does not seem to fit the modern definition of composting. Manuring is a better term for those practices. Since the material is usually buried underground, we can presume that anaerobic bacteria prevail in most such cases, and is primarily responsible for rotting the material.

So when, then, did the modern practice of composting develop? Most histories of composting refer to it as ancient, and are clearly using the more general definition which includes manuring. One reference mentions that New Englander farmers

made compost as a recipe of 10 parts muck to 1 part fish, periodically turning their compost heaps until the fish disintegrated (except the bones).

The citation does not give a date or source for that information, but implies Colonial times from the context. This certainly sounds like true composting, but such practices do not seem to have been widespread. Nor have I seen any mention of similar practices using manure during that period.

As late as 1912, in the book The Art and Craft of Garden Making by Thomas H Mawson, little more than one paragraph in the 400 page book mentions intentionally enriching the soil:

Much can be done to improve a poor soil by draining when water-logged, by incorporating lime, road scrapings, burned ballast or sand where it is heavy or clayey, by the use of clay where the ground is sandy, and by deep and careful trenching as described above, adding to the soil already on the ground that taken from the site of the house when house and garden are being made together, also that from the new walks, the site of the glasshouses or potting sheds, or anywhere it can be spared. To enrich the subsoil, add liberal supplies of manure, cow manure for light land and horse manure for heavy land, and old lime and screened rubbish from old buildings for heavy clay or peaty land.

It is only when we come to the 1940s that we find references to modern-style composting. In a 1943 book the Englishman Sir Albert Howard introduced the Indore method of composting, which he developed while working in India:

He found that the best compost consisted of three times as much plant matter as manure, with materials initially layered in sandwich fashion, and then turned during decomposition.

In the United States, Jerome Irving Rodale promoted composting in his magazine Organic Farming and Gardening, which began publishing in 1942 and was later renamed simply Organic Gardening. That created a small following for organic ways, but the movement did not really take-off until the 1970s when Mother Earth News and other media aimed at the ‘hippie’ generation began to promote composting as one component of a sustainable lifestyle.

In the 1980s and 1990s the environmental movement began to recognize the benefits of composting, and the practice became widespread among home gardeners. But even today, only a small minority of farmers have adopted composting, despite evidence that it improves physical soil quality and water retention, as well as fertility. And tea made from compost has been shown to suppress many plant diseases when sprayed on the growing plant. Perhaps the introduction of biochar into compost (said to hasten composting, as well as its many benefits to the resultant soil) will be enough to spur farmers to adopt this environmentally essential technology.