Why Small-Scale Regenerative Agriculture is so Important

For the last several months, I have been throwing down a whole lot of information. Thank you, loyal readers, for sticking with me. I am going somewhere with this. There are a great number of techniques that can be used to repair our degrading ecosystem, and do so while providing a comfortable living for those doing the repairs. But people need to understand how this all needs to work. We live in a society that is separated to a great extent from nature. In order to fix what needs to be fixed, we need to first bring people back to nature, to help them understand it and learn how to heal it.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. As I mention regularly, this is an engineering blog. I do my best to use engineering problem solving techniques. And the first and foremost among those is this: if you wish to solve a problem, you first have to define the problem. So, what is the problem we are facing? And I don’t mean global warming, degrading farm land, or carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Those are symptoms. What is the problem? Let me offer my viewpoint on this.

The problem, as I see it, is an ultimate flaw with the changes made during the Industrial Revolution. Bear with me here. See, prior to the Industrial Revolution, some 90% of humanity lived a pastoral existence on small family farms. When the Industrial Revolution hit, it needed two things to function and grow: it needed workers, and it needed consumers. It is basic supply and demand. So farmers were encouraged, and sometimes forced, to leave their land and move to the cities. They were promised a better life and more prosperity. For the most part, that prosperity was finally realized during the 50s with an expansion of the middle class.

But it proved to be short-lived. As an economy grows, it builds wealth, actually creates it. For the last 15 years, those gains have largely gone to the elite and the middle class has seen no appreciable increase in earnings. Prices have continued to rise, though, so the difference between the two has caused a contraction of the middle class, with millions of people watching their standard of living decrease with little hope of reversing the slide. 

There is also a more insidious problem. The Industrial Revolution taught us that we could be separated from the land and that even our food production could be automated. The consequences have been disastrous. Ultimately, humans are biological beings and are intimately connected to the environment we live in in ways we are just beginning to understand. Land needs to be managed or the biological processes that keep it alive degrade. 

Industrial agriculture is a great example. If you take farmland with excellent soil containing lots of soil carbon and add synthetic fertilizers, the production goes through the roof. Profits increase wildly. But the reason it becomes so productive is that the synthetic fertilizers increase soil biological activity and they use all that stored soil carbon as a foodsource, burning through it in as little as a few years, or maybe a few decades at the outside. It is a perfect example of short term profit at the expense of long term viability.

So here we are. The profits that can be extracted have been. The rich are richer than they have ever been in the history of the world. They are trying harder and harder to find ways to increase profits. Wages have stagnated to the point that large swathes of humanity are barely making it paycheck-to-paycheck. Our environment is forfeit. We are looking at the looming threat of technological unemployment as more companies try to further cut expenses by automating as many tasks as possible. The outlook is bleak.

Or is it? Maybe this is exactly what we needed right now. See, momentum is the biggest obstacle to change. As long as everything is going along great, people won’t make changes. Comfort is hard to compete with. But discomfort and uncertainty, well, that has people craving change. Heck, a presidential candidate used it as his campaign slogan a couple of years back. The trick is for people to get to a very difficult realization: that they are on their own. As long as you rely on those in power for your livelihood, you are subject their whims and have little control. But when you decide to take control of your own life, that’s where the magic happens.

The question is, how? We live in an urban, and largely suburban, landscape. We like our connected, technological lifestyle. Who wants to give that up to move back to the country and pursue a homestead lifestyle? Well, lots of people, actually, but I am talking to the rest of us here. How can we live our modern lifestyle and still pursue some measure of self-sufficiency. Personally, I think that small-scale regenerative agriculture is the key here.

Small-scale regenerative agriculture is the perfect solution for the predicament we have ourselves in. It solves the problems on pretty much every level. There have been a number of significant advances since the last time we were an agrarian society. And I don’t mean in the technology of the tractors currently tearing up vast swaths of farmland. Things like organic farming (if you think this one is ancient, you probably don’t understand it), aquaponics, and mycoculture have all come a long, long way in the last 200 years or so. Technology can be employed in ways never dreamed of even 30 years ago. With careful layout and design, more food than ever can be grown in a smaller space all while regenerating the environment.

So what can small scale regenerative agriculture do to solve the problems at hand today? Let’s tackle them one by one and see.

Climate Change/Environmental Degradation

This one is probably the easiest to justify. Regenerative agriculture is, by definition, regenerative. This means reducing monoculture, increasing environmental diversity, and building soil. The simple process of building soil means adding carbon to the soil, a process also called Carbon Farming. With enough practitioners of this practice, significant amounts of carbon could be sequestered into the soils of the earth. Plus, the restoration of life to soil helps mitigate pollution and further increases environmental diversity, which will breathe life into ecosystems beyond the farming operation.

Stagnating Wages

In a household budget, there are two sides to the flow of money: income and expenses. Most people are struggling through increases in expenses while their wages have virtually stagnated for decades. It can be very frustrating to find more and more ways to cut expenses just to make ends meet. Introducing solar dollars to the household budget can breathe new life into the flow of money. With new methods and technologies, this can happen with only minimal additional effort on the part of the homeowner, but can result in a much tastier and healthier diet.

Technological Unemployment

As most are aware, machines are going to be taking all the jobs. I have heard projections as high as 60% of jobs will be lost over the next 20 years to automation. Personally, I think this move is highly shortsighted. While there will be a huge savings in production costs, that doesn’t really help if everyone is unemployed and can’t afford to buy gadgets at the new low cost. Regardless of how bad this move will allow companies to shoot themselves in the foot, it is coming. So, what can be done about it?

Simply put, people are going to have to become more self-sufficient. They will need to stop relying on employers for their livelihood. This used to be the way nearly everyone lived before the Industrial Revolution and they did so by living primarily off of solar dollars. Sustainable agriculture allows a return to this paradigm, allowing individuals to reduce or eliminate reliance on employers.

Urban Malaise

I read a comment recently that I thought was spot-on: You don’t hate Mondays. You hate capitalism. Maybe it is capitalism. Maybe it is our lack of connection to the natural world. Maybe it is a lack of meaning in our lives. Maybe it is knowing that we spend our days toiling away to build value for someone else. Maybe it is pollution. Whatever the cause, a general feeling of malaise, discontent, unhappiness, and restlessness are prevalent in our society. Small-scale regenerative agriculture hits pretty much all of those causes head-on. You are building value for yourself on your own land. You are working with and regenerating nature. I don’t think it is that hard to understand why gardeners are a happy lot.

Nutrition

As the nutrients are increasingly extracted from farmland, our food loses its nutritional value. We become disconnected from the nutrient cycle. By regenerating our own land and building nutrient-rich soil, we increase the nutrient content of the foods we eat. And by doing that small-scale, we reconnect ourselves to our own nutrient cycle.

Health

Gardening is a great way to keep active. There is definitely work involved. This can help with fitness and flexibility. Reconnecting our bodies to the natural nutrient cycle will also help as our bodies will be getting all the nutrient-rich foods they need.

The best part of all this is that we don’t need to drop our modern lifestyle to realize all these benefits. Technology can play a big part in reducing the labor on gardening while still improving output. Universal availability of the internet means you can still ply your trade or profession by working part time online throughout the week to bring in additional income. We really can have the best of both worlds.

So, tell me, what did I miss? Are there other ways small-scale urban agriculture can change the world?

Phoenix ASH & Regrowth

For the last several months, I have been hinting at this grand project I have been working on. I have felt it more important thus far to lay the foundation to talk about some of the concepts being implemented onsite. But I think I am in pretty good shape right now in terms of concepts being out there, and before I jump into my next series of posts, I wanted to take a moment to talk about the project I am currently working on.

The site is called Phoenix ASH & Regrowth. It is a half acre site in the Sunnyslope area a little north of downtown Phoenix. The project is an attempt to achieve as high a level of self-sufficiency as possible while simultaneously repairing the ecosystem onsite. The project site will also serve as a demonstration site to help promote these ideas and make significant improvements on a wide variety of fronts including food production, nutrition, flood prevention, urban heat island effect, air pollution, economic resiliency, erosion control, biodiversity, and much more. To achieve this, nearly everything we do onsite is to achieve one of  two goals: 1) Restore soil carbon, and 2) Promote biodiversity. While this may sound a little overly simplistic, these two things, when working in conjunction, cause a cascade of healthy biological functions that achieve everything else.

Let me take a moment to describe how this cascade works. Increasing the amount of carbon in the soil does two things primarily. The first is that it increases absorption of rainwater. This increases biological activity and helps mitigate flooding. The second is that it increases the fertility of the soil. As I have explained previously, carbon in the soil feeds the soil biome and increases the fertility of the soil and the availability of nutrients in the soil. By increasing the available moisture in the soil and fertility of the soil, plant growth is encouraged. Remember, as a gardener, my job is not to take care of the plants. My job is to take care of the soil and the soil takes care of the plants.

Once we have widespread growth of plants, we move to the next level. As I have already mentioned, the driver of ecosystem processes is the cycling of living matter from one organism to the next. This is where diversity comes in. Different organisms make use of different food sources and bring different benefits to the system. Rather than trying to dig through the science of biological systems, most of which doesn’t really exist yet (don’t even get me started on the faults with reductionist thinking employed by modern science), it is best to let the ecosystem find its own healthy equilibrium. We do that by including everything in the whole. There really are no weeds. The only caveat is that they must provide more benefit than they detract. So a pine tree was removed from the site because all it provided was shade. Oleanders were removed because they are highly toxic. And there are a couple of weeds we remove because of toxicity. Otherwise, everything is welcome.

Once the plants are growing, each one is valued for the benefits it brings. Edibles are harvested for human consumption. Grass and forbs are used for forage for the animals. Dead leaves and grass are harvested for compost. Trees are pollarded to provide wood to build more soil. At each level, the plant material runs through its cycle and is returned to the soil, increasing soil carbon and helping plant growth and diversity.

So let me talk for a moment about the various methods we employ onsite to achieve all of this:

Holistic Management

Holistic Management, as taught by the Savory Institute, is more of a guiding principle. Everything we do is viewed through the lens of Holistic Management and its principles. It is through Holistic Management that we can make the best decisions for how to weave the myriad methods together into one cohesive structure. The site also serves as the Arizona Savory Hub (ASH) and the first urban demonstration site for the Savory Institute. We are very excited to demonstrate that Holistic Range Management, which is typically managed on large tracts of land in rural areas, can be applied in an urban setting.

Permaculture

Permaculture is another guiding principle. The permaculture core principles are also core values and guide what we do and how we rebuild a complete ecosystem onsite.

Animal Impact

Animal Impact, as described in Holistic Management is an important part of how nutrients are cycled through plants and back into soil. Right now, we just have chickens and are using them to process forage and create compost. However, long term plans include goats and sheep, and maybe even miniature cows or rabbits. Each animal will have its own impact on the ecosystem, improving diversity and nutrient cycling.

Organic Gardening

Organic gardening, in its ideal form, builds soil carbon, reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. By not using chemistry to manage a biological system, the biological system is allowed to flourish, encouraging diversity and growing topsoil. Everything we do onsite at Phoenix ASH & Regrowth is organic.

Composting

While some of the organic matter is either processed in place (as in animal impact) or allowed to lie where it falls, much of the organic matter produced onsite is processed through the composting facility onsite. This turns decaying organic matter into high quality topsoil more rapidly so it can be spread back out where it is needed most. In addition, we use the chickens (Animal Impact) to process the compost. This allows the chickens to feed off of whatever they deem edible in the compost, including insects that are attracted to the rotting material. It also allows their droppings to be immediately incorporated into the compost. This helps the compost get hot and complete its cycle quickly. And when it is time for the compost to be turned? The chickens help with that, too.

Rainwater Harvesting

At just 9” of rain a year, Phoenix is a desert. But with careful planning and a little infrastructure, the rain can be stretched really far. To do, this, we use two primary strategies at Phoenix ASH & Regrowth. The first is rainwater barrels. There are two rainwater barrels on each of the three buildings onsite. The two smaller buildings have smaller, flattened barrels that sit up against the building. These each hold a little over 500 gallons. On the largest building, there are two larger barrels, each holding about 2600 gallons. The smaller tanks are perhaps a little undersized for the areas they catch, and the larger tanks are a bit oversized. However, with a little planning and some plumbing, we are able to drain the smaller tanks into the larger as they fill up, assuring that no rain is lost. This water is used to water the gardens.

The second type of rainwater harvesting comes from offsite flow, or water that is flowing onto the property. The property has a wash flowing through it. While this was a major problem for previous owners, it is seen as an advantage at Phoenix ASH & Regrowth. With a little regrading, the site was turned into a series of retention basins. As each retention basin fills, it overtops into the basin below it. By doing this, all, or nearly all, of the offsite flow can be captured and stored in the ground. This has the added benefit of reducing downstream flooding. The best part is that the first basins built are already growing lots of vegetation and thus building soil carbon. The change in water infiltration is already visible, with no water standing in these basins a mere 24 hours after a big rain. The newer basins, which haven’t had much of a chance to grow vegetation yet, take 3 or 4 days to drain, even though they get less water.

Nitrogen Producing Trees

In desert ecosystems, and in particular degraded desert ecosystems, there is often a lack of nitrogen in the soil. This can be a limiting factor for the growth of plants and thus the ecosystem as a whole. Nitrogen producing trees, such as palo verde, acacia, and mesquite can make a big difference in this area. Not only do they fix nitrogen from the air and make it into a usable form, but many are well adapted to dry climates with poor soil. They are drought tolerant and fast growing.

Pollarding/Coppicing

As the trees grow, they produce a great amount of biomass. Every two years, the trees at Phoenix ASH & Regrowth are pollarded, and a few select trees are coppiced. The branches and twigs that are cut off are used for a variety of purposes. They are used as feedstock for growing mushrooms, some are used to produce biochar. The bulk are chipped to either produce mulch for various areas around the site or as a bulk carbon source in the compost bins. The biomass produced by pollarding and coppicing becomes a large portion of the biomass we use to feed the soil.

In addition, trees typically have a root structure that mimics the size and extent of the canopy above. When the tree is trimmed back, the tree abandons roots and pulls back, adding as much carbon down in the soil as is harvested from above.

Hugelkultur

Some of the branches that are either trimmed out or are the result of random pruning throughout the year are used to create new garden beds. This use of hugelkultur adds a long-lasting source of carbon to the soil and provides a lasting source of food for the soil biome where it is needed most.

Biochar

Woody debris that is too big for the chipper, unusable for mushroom feedstock, or otherwise scrap material is processed into biochar. The biochar is added to the compost. Once there, it collects nutrients through the processing process. Then it is added to the soil with the rest of the compost where it is used to improve soil quality in perpetuity.

Mycoculture/Mycoremediation

Growing mushrooms is difficult in the desert, but it can be managed. Mushrooms are used in the intermediary process between wood chips and soil creation and provide an additional product. We are also working to find ways to use mushrooms to improve degraded areas of the site. This is a technology that has a lot of potential and we are working on finding a way around the challenges to best make it work.

Aquaponics

Phoenix ASH & Rebirth is located in a very brittle environment and the bulk of the site is being managed with this in mind. However, many of our common vegetables require quite a bit more water, thus necessitating a non-brittle microclimate. In this interest, we are looking for technologies that help use the water resources available onsite to their maximum utility. Aquaponics has some great potential in this respect, being particularly efficient with both water and nutrients. However, as a soil-less technology, it doesn’t fit as well with the goals of the site. We are exploring other options to improve the technology to be more organic.

As you can see, we have a whole lot going on for just a half acre. But combined, these techniques work closely together to make some significant changes in a degraded environment. Please help me in spreading the word. If we can turn a half acre in downtown Phoenix into a productive food forest and organic farm, it can be done anywhere. We just have to have a way to get these concepts out there and teach people to implement them. This world is fixable, and it can be done using the techniques provided to us by nature. Let’s get on this.

May You Live in Interesting Times

There is an old Chinese curse that goes "May you live in interesting times." And yes, it is a curse. As humans, we crave stability. Interesting times are uncomfortable. But they also present opportunities. Real change is difficult for people when they have to step out of their comfort zone. But when their comfort zone has disappeared out from under them, they start looking for a new one. That is when you can introduce them to a better way. But before we get into better ways, let's take a step back. As I have mentioned before, this blog looks at the world through an engineer's eyes. Engineers solve problems. The first step in solving the problem is always to define the problem. So let's start by doing that.

So, what is causing these interesting times we live in? Personally, I think it is several things converging at once. The one thing that has most people worried these days, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and the violence that accompany those, is perhaps not a cause, but rather a symptom. When people are thrust out of their comfort and stability, they tend to lash out and look for someone to blame. It is just human nature. The less savory aspect of our nature, sure, but part of our nature. So let me list the things that I think are at cause. To be clear, this is just my opinion, and I am sure there are many other opinions.



Extraction of Wealth
Capitalism is a system where corporations are set up specifically to extract wealth. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting yet another article talking about how the stockholders of X Corporation are pushing the leaders to cut salaries and benefits to increase shareholder value. And that practice has been going on for decades. While wealth is continually increasing, it isn't infinite. Those at the top now hold obscene amounts of wealth, but it isn't enough. They are always grabbing for more. They use their wealth to change laws and mold minds. They tell people that they are job creators and shouldn't be taxed. They create laws to reduce their tax burden. They create laws that make the public pay for their expenses while they keep the profits. All that money has come at the expense of the majority of people. We have seen costs increase and wages stagnate. We have seen our quality of life decline.



Environmental Degradation
As the population of the world pushes towards 8 billion, we are increasingly trying to find a way to feed all the people. Just as the wealth was extracted from the middle class, the nutrients have been extracted from the most productive farmland in the world. The soil, our most valuable resource, was destroyed. As the soil was depleted, the crops stopped growing so well, so we sprayed synthetic fertilizers on them. Those further damaged the soil while running off and damaging our rivers and our oceans in the process. We bunched our livestock up so they could be treated like anything else in a factory and their waste piled up and fouled the land and rivers. That carbon that was once stored in our soils was lost to the air and no more carbon was added to the soil. Combined with carbon from fossil fuels and other sources, it built up in the atmosphere, warming our planet.



Lack of Connection
I read an article recently that suggests that the root cause of addiction is a lack of connection. Ideally, this is a connection to other people, but I would argue that there should also be a connection to nature as well. Why else would so many people feel so good by heading out for a hike or camping or other versions of communing with nature? When the connection isn't there, it creates a hole. People try dumping all sorts of things into that hole to fill it, most of them unhealthy. We live in a society that has grouped us all into big cities but broken our connection with our fellow man. We paved the ground, crammed the houses together, and drove out all the vibrant natural world. It isn't healthy for us, and it creates anxiety.



I am sure the list goes on, but this is, in my opinion, the crux of the matter. So how do we solve these issues? Obviously, some structural changes are needed in the way we do things, but there are plenty of people working on that. I will let those fine people do what they do best. I am going to work on what I do best, which is technical solutions. So, you ask, what technical solution will solve all of that?



A better way to garden.



Yes, you read that right. I really think that gardening needs an upgrade. And yes, I truly believe that it can make that big of a difference. Let me break it down for you to demonstrate how this one solution addresses each of these concerns.



Extraction of Wealth
As we look at our rising monthly expenses and our dwindling paychecks, we do a simple bit of mathematics. How can I either increase income or decrease expenses? Food is a major expense for most families. On top of that, somehow the garbage foods have gotten really inexpensive and the healthy, organic vegetables have gotten really expensive. Gardening hits the expense side of that equation really hard. For a little land and a lot of work, you can grow most of your food. But what if modern technology could come into play. What if a better way to garden was introduced? What if you could grow more food with a little land and not so much work? What if you could be so productive that not only do you not have to quit your job, but you could even sell produce back. What if we created a network on this new fangled internet thingy and sold that excess zucchini and tomatoes that you previously couldn't give away. I mean, it is local and organic, right? Now it hits both the income and the expenses side of the equation while completely cutting out Big Agriculture and the other corporate interests.



Environmental Degradation
Plants pull carbon out of the air. It is as simple as that. Plants turn carbon dioxide from the air into sugar. It is their most basic of process. They then turn that sugar into all kinds of good things. Edible things. Tasty things. If more people gardened, we could accelerate that process. And we could compost the parts we don't eat and turn it into more soil. What if we gardened in 95% organic matter, adding just enough inorganic matter to satisfy some of the mineral needs of our plants. What would that look like? Healthy farmland has soil that is 5-10% organic matter and only in the top 3 or 4 inches, usually. What if you gardened in a foot or two of pure organic matter? And you make that organic matter on your own property. It comes right out of the air your children breathe. And plants don't only get rid of carbon dioxide in the air. They also scrub the air of just about every other kind of pollutant there is. Better yet, what if this new kind of gardening produced organic soil as an output? Every couple of years, you scoop out amazing, black soil and spread it elsewhere, starting over fresh in your garden.



Connection
What better connection to the earth and to nature is there than a garden? You work the soil with your own hands. You breathe of its goodness (getting lots of Mycobacterium vaccae in the process, I might add) and it brings you health. You eat the plants you grow and further that connection to the earth. It is a wonderful cycle. Beneficial insects, birds, and other wildlife are drawn to the garden. It creates something wonderful. But what about the connection to other people, you might ask? I have been gardening for almost two decades now, and I can tell you that gardeners are some of the most connected people there are. It is a great thing to have in common with people. You never lack for things to talk about. You share seeds and success stories and failures and heartache. It is a bonding experience.



But these aren't the only things that more gardening will create. As more and more people garden, especially with a network in place to sell the excess produce, it takes from the industrial agriculture machine. We know where our food is coming from. We take back control. A community space could be created to aggregate and sell the produce. People could learn what is in demand and grow to demand. A whole new market would develop with locally grown produce. Side markets could develop, like mushroom growing and local cafes. With a good enough garden technology, the labor could be reduced to the point where a service could be hired to maintain the garden, leading to more employment. The list goes on.



So what would this new garden technology look like? Well, first of all, it would use modern technologies. There are some great innovations out there now. But most people who grow food seem to be running in one of two directions right now. The first is to go all the way back to nature. It is the homesteading way. Cut out most of the technology and restore the land back to a highly productive ideal. The other way is the technological way. Cut nature out entirely and use the technology available to provide the plants with exactly what they need. Personally, I think that the answer lies in a combination of the two methods. Combine a thriving, living ecosystem at all levels with the labor saving of modern technology.



Yes, I am working on something like this. My prototype has been running for 3 years now and has performed fabulously. I am currently working on building a larger system and testing it on a grander scale. So bear with me for a little while. I need a little more time. But there are good things on the horizon. Let's make the world a better place through gardening.

Nutrients

My current garden

In business, the key to success is understanding your business. And I don’t mean that we know exactly where we file our TPS reports. I mean understand the core of the business. In one philosophy, this is achieved by asking five very simple questions: 1) Why do we exist? 2) How do we behave? 3) What do we do? 4) How will we succeed? 5) What is most important right now?

While these questions seem very elementary, answering them can be anything but. To correctly answer these questions requires a level of introspection that many people are uncomfortable with. It requires the leaders of the business to boil down the business, its core purpose, and its core values to a simple sentence, one that rings absolutely true and one that the members of the organization can identify with.

I have been thinking recently about applying these questions to the management of ecosystems. As I have mentioned before, I am constantly experimenting to construct ever more complex ecosystems. But the more I travel down the path, the more I am finding myself asking those same questions businesses are encouraged to ask themselves. Why does an ecosystem exist? How does it behave? What does it do? How does it succeed? What is most important in an ecosystem, and what is most important right now in this ecosystem I am trying to build? But first I need to catch you, my reader up a bit. Let’s start by asking the question, what is an ecosystem?

In nature, an ecosystem is a series of living organisms that live together, forming a series of relationships. In a healthy ecosystem, the relationships are predominantly mutually beneficial. Sure, it might not seem that the coyote is providing a mutually beneficial relationship with the rabbit, but a broader look shows this to be true. The ecosystem seeks balance. The rabbit evolved as a prey species and has a reproductive rate that reflects this. In absence of predators, the rabbits overpopulate and starve when they run out of food. The predator-prey relationship is mutually beneficial to the species as a whole, if not that individual who got converted into coyote poo.

So these organisms create mutually beneficial relationships. How? What about them is mutually beneficial? The more I ask myself this, the more it comes down to nutrients. An ecosystem functions though a healthy exchange of nutrients. How do those nutrients cycle through an ecosystem?

The mycorrhizal fungus pulls the raw materials from the ground, sometimes going so far as to mine them from the bedrock below, and feeds them to the plants. The plants incorporate them into their bodies as they grow. Herbivores consume the plants and incorporate them into their own bodies. Carnivores consume the herbivores and receive the nutrients in turn. All through this process the various animals produce large quantities of feces. That feces contains not only the nutrients that passed through the animal, but also the ones that the animal “used up” and needs to dispose as waste product. The scavengers and decomposers move in and take those same nutrients and cycle them into their own bodies. The fungus grows mushrooms, the insects grow and reproduce, the bacteria multiply. These are in turn consumed by other decomposing organisms, such as earthworms. Some of the nutrients head back into the birds from here, while others continue to be broken down further into their component parts. Eventually, they get gathered back up by the mycorrhizal fungus and fed back to the plants, completing the cycle. The better this cycle functions, and the more nutrients it has to cycle through the ecosystem, the healthier the whole ecosystem is.

There is an important distinction I want to point out here. When considering the food options for an organism we are conditioned to look at caloric inputs. Where does the organism get the energy it needs to continue its own biological processes? But this is really only half of the equation. Food serves two purposes. Well, actually it serves a lot more purposes, but we are going to just focus on the big two. When an organism ingests food, it breaks it down as far as it can to get both the energy for sustaining life and the raw materials it needs to build, rebuild, and repair its own body. The foods that supply the energy are the calorie dense foods while the foods that supply the latter are the nutrient dense foods.

The nutrient dense foods are arguably more important in the long run. Sure, you need energy to live, but it is the nutrients that give health and vitality. It is the nutrients that prolong life. Nutrients are much more than making sure you are getting enough potassium and calcium in your diet, though. The form they come in also matters. There are a number of phytochemicals that have wildly diverse impacts on the body. Some stimulate the immune system. Some are medicinal. Some help organs function better. I think I can safely say that the list of phytochemicals and their impact on the human body is far from fully understood. Their impact on the rest of the ecosystem is even more poorly understood. Let me offer an easy example. Catnip has a mild, minty flavor. The phytochemical that produces that flavor is a powerful insect repellant, particularly effective on cockroaches. To cats, it has a narcotic effect. In humans, it tastes kind of nice, nothing more.

Let’s jump to the fourth question above, “How will we succeed?” To restate what we have learned: 1) The purpose of an ecosystem is to cycle nutrients, 2) The health of the individual as well as the health of the ecosystem are determined by the sheer volume of nutrients available for cycling, and 3) The diversity of form for those nutrients matters. The first thing is that the nutrients need to be present in the soil. In the long term, this is a little less important. In most soils, the necessary raw materials can be mined from the soil particles by the mycorrhizal fungus or from the air by the plants. Compost helps a lot. The addition of organic matter helps a lot. What is probably most important, though, is to not remove anything from the ecosystem that you don’t have to. You ate that cucumber and your waste is going down the toilet? I’d say that is a regrettable but acceptable loss. But those peels need to go back into the soil. That plant, when it dies, needs to go back to the soil. That’s how you retain nutrients.

How do you achieve a diversity of nutrient forms? You do that with a diversity of organisms. Different plants uptake different nutrients from the soil. They then form them into different phytochemicals. Those different plants attract different insects. Those different insects form a complex web of predator and prey. The insects in turn feed the birds. The connections go on. But the diversity of life encourages and invigorates life.

Let’s now jump to the last question above: “What is most important right now?” Given the information here, I think the most important thing right now is to increase diversity. Take another look at my garden in the picture above. Those felt bags cover about a square foot each. Given the principles of traditional gardening, each of those bags should hold about one plant: one tomato, one chard, one pepper, one bean. But they are planted much more densely than that. And they are thriving. If I have a square inch of soil, I find something to put there. It takes a little careful planning on the companions, but it can be done.

The other thing to do is to stop spraying. Yes, those aphids are killing your spinach. Give them a quick spray with the hose. If you have healthy, diverse soil, your plant will make it through. But wait, just wait. Those aphids are prey species and they are ringing the dinner bell loud and clear to baby praying mantis, ladybugs, lacewings, and a huge number of other beneficial insects. Those insects bring more insects. A healthy population of insects brings toads, birds, and lizards. Together they start to form an ecosystem. It may take a few years, but that ecosystem will balance and get down to what it does best: cycling ever increasing quantities of nutrients. And that’s the best you can possibly hope for.

Biochar

Soil in the rain forest is some of the poorest on earth. Plants absorb the nutrients they need through their roots, relying heavily on the plants being soluble in water. A rain forest, true to its name, rains almost constantly. That rain picks up the nutrients in the soil and washes them away. The various living organisms try to hold on to those nutrients by locking them away in their bodies, but eventually those nutrients are returned to the soil. The soil cannot hold on to them. So when explorers discovered lenses of dark, black, fertile soil in the interior of the Amazon Basin, it came as a big surprise.

The soils came to be called terra preta soils and have been the subject of much study. Due to the high concentration of pottery sherds, bones, charcoal, and other indicators of human life, it was obvious that the soils were made by a previous civilization. But it was initially unclear why the soils retained such a high degree of fertility, with fertility possibly even increasing over time instead of degrading as would be expected. It turned out that the cause was the concentration of charcoal in the soil that was doing it.

The study of this soil led to the discovery of biochar, a form of charcoal produced by pyrolysis, creating the charcoal at high temperatures and in a relatively low oxygen environment. The physical and chemical structure of biochar acts a lot like the carbon commonly used in water and air filters. It is extremely porous, leading to a high surface area, one that is really good at cation exchange. For the lay person, that means it bonds with a wide variety of compounds, holding them in place. In a carbon filter, this means it bonds with soluble lead, arsenic, and chlorine, things you want removed from the water so it is safe to drink. In soil, this capability is more applicable to nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Biochar in soil can hold on to the very nutrients that plants need to survive and thrive.

The benefits don't stop there, though. Because of biochar's porosity, it is also very good at retaining water. Interestingly, the open structure of biochar seems to be an ideal support for microbial life. Beneficial bacteria and fungi thrive in the environment created by biochar. The nutrients bound to the biochar are easily accessible to the microorganisms crawling all over the surface, where they can become a part of the life cycle of the soil, eventually to end up in plants.

So what does it mean for food production? Biochar has a huge potential in agriculture. One of the great frustrations of modern agriculture is that soil fertility is falling. To combat that, soils are heavily treated with synthetic fertilizers. Those fertilizers wash away readily in the rain, meaning that more need to be added. But it also causes a problem downstream. All that fertilizer in the water causes an algae bloom. That algae bloom is followed by the algae dying. As the algae in the water column starts to rot, it steals oxygen from the water, killing fish, crustaceans, and anything else, creating a dead zone. The annual dead zone on the Gulf of Mexico reached 6400 square miles in 2015. All that fertilizer used to make that dead zone was purchased by farmers, each one hoping that that fertilizer would go to their plants.

So what if something could be added to the soil that helped all that fertilizer stay in place? What if that amendment also increased water retention, thereby increasing drought tolerance? What if it also increased beneficial microbial activity, the very activity that supports plant growth? And where does it come from? We really like having trees in our cities, and we like them to be well trimmed. Those trimmings typically head for the landfill. What if we diverted that waste product instead and made our soils better? That biochar could be added to farmland, and just like in the Amazon Basin, that fertility could be realized for hundreds of years. Biochar can take hundreds or even thousands of years to degrade in a natural environment, and it improves the soil that whole time.

But what about more modern, higher tech growing methods? Could biochar be used as media for hydroponics or aquaponics? I have seen a lot of discussion of the possibility online, but very little actual data on whether it works or not. I think that an analysis of what biochar does and how it would apply to hydroponics and aquaponics might be in order.

Again, biochar absorbs nutrients and holds on to them. It will do this with huge amounts of nutrients. Now, biological activity can access those nutrients (remember the "exchange" part of cation exchange) and help feed them to the plants. But that means two things for aquaponics and hydroponics. The first is that the biochar is going to absorb a LOT of nutrients until it is filled up. In land-based agriculture, the biochar is typically "charged" or pre-filled with nutrients before being added to the soil. In hydro- and aquaponics, that doesn't necessarily have to happen, but the grower needs to know that the biochar will take its fill before the plants can get it, and that process can take some time, perhaps weeks or months.

The second thing to recognize is that it is the biological activity that exchanges all those cations. Fungi is particularly active in that process, but bacteria are also important. Without that living system, the biochar will just act as a nutrient sink that will have to be filled before a regular nutrient profile can be maintained.

Biochar in a properly alive media would have a stabilizing force on the nutrient load of the media. Once it is full, the bacteria and fungi can access it if nutrients drop too low and it will absorb when nutrient loads are too high. Adding it while a tank is cycling might help lessen the stress on the fish, but the grower might want to refrain from adding plants until the nitrate level starts to climb, indicating that the biochar filter is full. Also, adding it as a supplement to the media rather than as a media in itself would be a good idea, perhaps 20% or less.

As for me, I do aquaponics with soil. The soil I create is a vibrant, living community that holds its own nutrients pretty well and should have no trouble accessing nutrients held in the biochar. I am working on expanding and creating new aquaponics beds and will be trying biochar as a supplement to the soil in the system, probably at around 20% of total volume. I will report back on how that worked when I have more information.

The Most Important Concept

Let’s say you discovered a concept. This isn’t even a new concept, just one new to you. And let’s say it caught your eye, changed your worldview, and occupied your thoughts for some time. And let’s say that through that thinking process you discovered that this is the most important concept that there is, that without this, life on Earth would cease to exist. Then you look around and see that despite this concept being fairly well understood in the scientific community, almost no one else understands it. And not understanding it is driving people’s actions in a way that is causing a huge amount of long term harm. What would you do? Would you harp on it quite a bit? Me too.

So what is this concept? Quite simply: Soil is a living organism.

Okay…that doesn’t seem so ground breaking. But let’s take a moment to examine this, maybe look at it from a slightly different angle that might clarify things. You are a living organism. You are composed of a tight association of smaller organisms that all have the same DNA. Each organism has a job, a purpose, to help the whole system function optimally.

Soil is composed of a tight association of smaller organisms that all have different DNA. Each organism has a job, a purpose, to help the whole system function optimally.

Let’s take the biological approach. To understand an organism, you need to understand its food source, how it acquires its food, and the role it occupies in the ecosystem it occupies. Let’s deal with those one at a time.

What is soil’s food source? Well, nothing, you might say. The different organisms eat each other. Well, yeah, sort of. But what happens to an animal when you stop giving it food. It begins consuming its own body, losing weight in the process. As it loses weight, it loses functionality, until the whole system is no longer able to function and it perishes. Our soils worldwide are doing exactly this. Soil feeds on decaying organic matter. Wood, roots, leaves, and sticks form the bulk of soil’s diet, but dead insects, rotting mushrooms, and feces provide sustenance as well.

How does soil acquire its food? In a natural ecosystem, it falls to the ground from the vegetation growing above. It doesn’t matter whether it is a forest or a grassland or something in between. Everything dies eventually and gravity delivers it to the soil to be consumed.

That little pile of mostly decomposed vegetation at the top
was living clover just one month before this picture was taken

What role does soil play in its ecosystem? Disease causing organisms aside, the organisms that evolve in an ecosystem evolve to play a role in the healthy version of that ecosystem. Soil needs decaying organic matter to survive, right? So why doesn’t it just kill all the plants and feast? That’s a lot of food in the short term and no food in the long term. So it could just keep the plants sickly and they would drop small numbers of leaves frequently and die early. That is a better long term solution, but it is a recipe for a permanent diet of not quite enough. No, anyone who has tried to maintain a landscape in their yard knows that the more plants you have and the more lush and healthy they are, the more debris they drop to the soil surface. So soil has a vested interest in keeping the plants lush and healthy and growing as fast as possible. How do they do this? They break down the nutrients in the decaying organic matter and feed them back to the plants so they have what they need to grow more.

Just how poorly is this concept understood? In 1975, Masanobu Fukoka wrote The One Straw Revolution. The book chronicles his decades long quest to get academia to understand the concept that the organic matter needs to be returned to the soil. We still aren’t there. In fact, I recently found this great video from a soil scientist at the Soil Conservation Service trying to convince farmers that soil is alive and needs to be treated as such. We are just not getting it.

 

And as we starve our soils, they become emaciated and unable to do their job, so we dump fertilizers on them, hoping that the chemicals will make up the difference. But it can’t really. Living soil does so much more than just hand out nutrients. It stores massive amounts of carbon in its body (finished humus, the final form of organic matter in soil is over 50% carbon), it serves as a sponge to soak up rainwater and reduce runoff and erosion. It works with the plants to increase resiliency and reduce the impact of diseases. As we let our soils waste away and die, our fields lose productivity, and right at a crucial time when we are trying to figure out how to feed a lot more mouths.

So remember, take care of your soil and feed it with lots and lots of decaying organic matter. Our lives all depend on it.

Coppicing and Pollarding

My moringa trees pollarded for the new year

I recently read a great article about a concept that is new to me: coppicing and pollarding. The concept is that both are methods of pruning trees such that the wood is harvested continuously without damaging the tree. The branches are cut off at a smaller size and used for whatever they are needed for, usually firewood or crafting, like basket weaving. The only difference between the two methods is that coppicing is done at ground level while pollarding leaves a length of trunk that is topped. As far as method, I am assuming the central trunk is cut just above a junction in the first year. After that, multiple branches grow from just below the cut and those are left for several years until they are harvested. 

The more I learn about gardening, the more I realize that soil is a living thing and needs to be fed properly. Think of it like people, but with a longer metabolic cycle. While people's metabolic cycle is measured in days, soil's is measured in years. Adding synthetic fertilizer is like you eating a candy bar (well, crystal meth is probably a better comparison), where you get a quick rush and lots of energy, but then you crash afterwards. Compost is a little better, probably a little more like whole wheat bread. It is still a carb. The body uses it up, just a little slower. Wood, though, wood is the ultimate complex carbohydrate. And I don't just mean that metaphorically. Wood is actually a whole lot of sugar molecules chained together, just like starch. The only real difference is that those chains are a lot harder to break. Good chunks of wood will feed your soil for years and years. 

Coppicing and pollarding seem like a great way to get that wood. So how do you add it to the soil? Just grind it up and mix it in? Well, no. Adding sawdust directly to soil in large amounts can be deleterious to your soil. Surface area is the key. Sawdust and wood chips have a lot of surface area and mushrooms will jump in and take advantage of that, but in doing so they draw the nutrients they need to make that jump. They completely deplete the soil of available nitrogen, which is really bad for the plants.

On the other side of the spectrum, there is burying logs. A log over 8 inches in diameter can feed the soil for decades, but it won't release any nutrition at all for several years and when it does, it releases really slowly. Plus, if you don't plant it deep enough, that large chunk of wood just below the surface looks like a wall to a small plant and suddenly your plants don't have soil deep enough to meet their needs.

How I create garden beds. This one was inoculated
with king stropharia mushrooms

With coppicing and pollarding, you can generate a lot of small branches in the 1-2 inch range. Dug down into the soil, hugelkulture style, can give you soil a long burst of really good nutrition and really help build the soil web of life for 5 or more years. Plus, those branches can be used to grow mushrooms. The usual recommendation is to grow mushrooms on logs over 4 inches in diameter, but smaller logs will work if they are bundled tightly. Better yet, the branches can be inoculated and then buried once the mushrooms have taken hold, giving the gardener the ability to harvest several flushes of mushrooms from their consistently improving garden soil. 

The article mentions oak, hazel, ash, chestnut, and willow as good candidates for coppicing and pollardiing. From my experience, I can say that elm, palo verde, and elm would also be great. If you live in Arizona, scrub oak would be one of the best for coppicing. But there is a tree I have only recently been growing that I think could possibly be the best for this method: moringa. The moringa tree is an insanely fast growing tree. From a seed sprouted indoors in the spring, a moringa tree can reach 12-15 feet in height and have a trunk diameter of 2-3 inches. They are completely intolerant of frost, but in cold climates they grow fast enough to be treated as an annual. In warmer climates, if the root ball can be kept from freezing, they can die all the way back to ground level and grow back bigger each year. I have seen a tree get killed back to the ground by a 20 degree F cold snap, only to grow to over 15 feet tall and have a 3 or 4 inch trunk the next year. Plus, the pods they grow, which taste like asparagus, are only edible on new wood. If the tree is left full size, the pods that grow on old wood will be bitter. As you might imagine, any wood grown by a tree this quickly, isn't very hard. In fact, it about as soft as balsa wood. In the garden, it will probably last 2-3 years. That means that 5 trees could feed you and your garden for years to come. 

Moringa

Moringa trees in my back yard

I am always looking for something new and amazing to include in my garden. Novelty is good. Edible novelty is even better. My search for new and novel plants led me to the moringa tree. Moringa olifera is a fast-growing tree that is native to SE Asia and commonly used as a food source. It has a couple of features that make it ideal for growing in your garden.

First of all, it is actually the leaves you eat. I know, that is pretty unusual for a tree, but the leaves of the moringa tree are incredibly nutritious. Moringa leaves are very high in protein, calcium, iron, magnesium, vitamins A, B, and C, and more. They are also an antioxidant and possibly even reduce inflamation. Flavor-wise, the leaves taste generically green, but with a little stronger flavor, similar to kale, but not as stong as arugula. The leaves are commonly found in health food stores dried and powdered, but I like them fresh in my morning smoothie. They can also be cooked into just about anything you put spinach in, including spinach itself. They just give a little more flavor and a lot more nutrition.

But it isn't just the leaves that are edible. The flowers supposedly taste like mushrooms. In my family, though, the pods are definitely the favorite. Moringa seed pods are long, sometimes over a foot. When they start growing, they elongate first, then start to thicken. If picked while they are full length, but still soft and floppy, they are sort of like green beans, though they have a distinct asparagus flavor. When they get a little larger, the exterior of the pod becomes fibrous. It can still be eaten, though peeling is required. The seeds inside are rather like peas. I also particularly like the pulpy matrix around the peas. It has a sweet flavor. When eaten raw, all parts of the seed pot have a slightly spicy flavor, kind of like nasturtium, though the spiciness goes away when cooked.

As a landscape plant, it is a fast growing tropical tree. I know, that sounds like you northerners are out of luck. Not true. When I say fast growing, I really mean it. This is a tree that can be treated like an annual. Planted in the ground after the first frost, in most zones it will reach 8 to 10 feet or more before first frost. When I planted my first trees I started with seeds in May and it reached over 12 feet high by fall. If started in a pot indoors, it could go even higher. When I lived in Prescott, Arizona, I had a lemongrass. I could get the plant to overwinter in all but the harshest winters if I trimmed it back almost to the ground and covered the plant with a foot or two of mulch. I suspect the same could be accomplished with a moringa tree. The lightest frost, which we get a couple of times a year here in Phoenix, kills the top of the tree. But it can die to the ground and, assuming the root doesn't freeze, come back larger and stronger the next year.

As far as usefulness in the landscape, moringa trees fix nitrogen in the soil. (edit: Or perhaps not. See comments) This shows up most notably in the high protein content of the leaves. But they also add nitrogen to the soil. The wood of moringa trees is also very interesting. Being a fast growing tree, "wood" is almost a misnomer. It is actually a spongy, stiff material that makes balsa wood look strong. But being so light and fast growing, it is actually a great source of organic material for the garden. Any pods that grow on wood older than a year tend to be particularly bitter and inedible, so the tree is usually trimmed to three feet tall every fall or winter. As the trees can get up over 15 to 20 feet tall in a single year (they do come back stronger every year), they end up producing quite a bit of "wood." It is easily processed in an electric chipper, or by hand if you don't have one. 

I know this is a plant that will be gracing my garden for years to come. I hope you give it a try as well.

Mycobacterium vaccae

They say that everyone gets their fix. There is always that one thing that gives you a burst of satisfaction, of happiness. Everyone has their thing, whether it be exercise, food, religion, alcohol, drugs, tinkering, whatever. We all need that little burst of serotonin to stave off depression.

For some people, though, being outside, specifically in nature, is the drug of choice. There is even a group on Facebook called Gardenoholics Anonymous. This time of year, they mostly talk about pouring over seed catalogs with longing. The rest of the year, they wax poetic about the wonders of dirty hands and conquered weeds. We have all known the outdoor enthusiasts, as well. The ones who couldn't imagine a weekend without camping and go for a hike in the nearby wooded area almost daily. I have known lots of both kinds and have noticed that overall, they tend to be a pretty happy lot. But what if the key to happiness for both groups is the same? What if they are getting their high from an all-natural source?

It turns out that they just might be doing just that. Scientists have discovered a bacterium called Mycobacterium vaccae. M. vaccae has been shown to trigger the release of serotonin in the brain when live bacteria are inhaled. Scientists aren't quite sure why just yet, but the results of studies have been undeniable. And the release of serotonin is significant enough that it is referred to as antidepressant. Is it harmful? It doesn't appear to be even a little harmful. It might actually be very beneficial. Is it addictive? Well, probably. Just about anything that can trigger the release of serotonin is potentially addictive. But that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Exercise can be addictive.

So, you might ask, this sounds like some pretty good stuff. Where might I get some? It turns out that M. vaccae is a bacteria that commonly occurs in healthy, living soil just about everywhere in the world. It also tends to aerosolize easily, becoming suspended in the air we breathe with minimal disturbance of the soil. Cool stuff, right?

Now do me a favor, please. Scroll back up and look at the top of the page. What is this blog called? Mad Bioneer, right? So you KNOW we aren't going to leave well enough alone. Now that we know something new, how can we use it? There is an air filter some brilliant soul (no, it wasn't me) invented several years ago called the Andrea Air Purifier. It puts a plant inside a clear plastic case, with vents at the top. Air is pulled down through the vents, over the plant, down through the soil, over a water source, and then through the fan that pulls it all through and back out into the room. Not only does the plant help purify the air, but the soil helps as well, through both filtration and microbial action in the soil.

What if we were to modify this wonderful piece of technology just a little. First we find out what the M. vaccae uses as a food source in the soil and make sure there is plenty of it. We get the soil good and alive. But with just a few design and maintenance tweaks, the air wouldn't just filter out the bad stuff. It could also be used to load the air inside a building with all that wonderful M. vaccae goodness. You get the wonderful benefit of breathable, healthy antidepressant filling your home.

But who is to say we need to stop at home? Want people to come to your coffee shop? Get them addicted to the antidepressants you pump into the air! The uses are endless. But the benefits, if something like this were to be put into widespread use, would be to increase happiness on a broad scale. How awesome would that be?

Soil as a Living Organism

Sometimes, looking at something commonplace with new eyes, new perspective, and new insight can be one of the hardest things there is to do. And sometimes there is nothing more important to do. What can be more commonplace than soil? We walk over it every day. Yet to dismiss its importance, its power, is to miss a great deal. Sylvia Bernstein, in her book Aquaponic Gardening, printed a quote from Kobus Jooste from South Africa that attempted to strip down soil into its constituents, ending in the following conclusion: “UBERFACT: Soil is an anchoring medium to plants that may or may not, over time, release some of the stuff plants need to grow.” I nearly stopped reading the book at that line, but powered on for the other wisdom the book has to offer. Still, that sentence comes back to me often. Rarely have people been more wrong.

The first thing to realize when looking at soil with new eyes is that soil is a living thing. True, it is not a single organism, but rather a complex media filled with tens of thousands of different organisms. But the organisms work so well together that they can almost be treated as one organism.  So, when a biologist studies an organism, what are the first couple of things they look for? Two of the most important aspects in understanding an organism are what it eats, and what role it fills in the ecosystem.

First let’s tackle the food source for soil. Yes, soil needs to be fed. Like any other living organism, soil breathes air, drinks water, and consumes a food source. In the absence of any of those, the soil will fail and die. As for what soil eats, it is really simple. It eats whatever organic matter falls to the soil surface. From there, through a series of digestive processes of different organisms, the particles of decaying organic matter get broken down into smaller and smaller pieces, the larger organic molecules digested into smaller ones. Mass is lost as carbon from cellulose and lignin and a host of other molecules are slowly turned into carbon dioxide. But the process is so much more complex. The cellulose and lignin were locked in what used to be the body of a plant, a plant that had metabolic processes and scent and its own DNA. All of those complex molecules that created the things that made the plant alive came with their own chemical signature. As they break down, the carbon is lost to the air, as is some of the nitrogen. However, the phosphorus and potassium and calcium and iron stay behind. They get recombined and further broken down by that wonderful process of decomposition and soil creation. What they finally create is exactly what the plants need to take up and start all over again.

The pile of mostly decomposed plants in the background
was living white clover two months earlier. The heat of
summer killed them and the soil gobbled up the readily
available food source.

 As an engineer, understanding soil isn’t just enough. What does it DO? What can I use it for? In order to tackle that question, I need to answer the other question: what role does soil play in its ecosystem? You probably learned in grade school science class, as I did, that soil provides nutrition and structure for plants. While this is true, it is a tiny portion of what is really going on. Soil plays an incredibly important role in the ecosystem. To work that out, let’s look again at soil’s food source. It needs decaying plant matter to feed on. Where does it get decaying plant matter? Well, it first needs healthy plants to grow, so they can drop leaves and eventually die. What produces more decaying plant matter, a lush growth of plants, or a few spindly plants that are already dying? Anyone with a lush landscape in their yard can tell you the answer to that one. The more plants there are, the more waste they drop.

So now we know that the soil organisms have a vested interest in growing a lush stand of plants. How do they do this? Again, we will answer a question with a new question. What is the biggest problem facing the plants? Plants need sun, water, air, and a good source of all the minerals and micronutrients they need to grow. The first three are outside the control of the soil organisms, but the last is fully within their control. There are two primary sources for the nutrients the plants need: decaying plant and animal material and the minerals in the soil around them. The soil needs to be effective at releasing those nutrients from both sources and getting them to the plants.

That brings up the next problem. How does the soil retain the nutrients long enough for the plants to get them? Have you ever performed a soil test? You put soil in a jar with water and shake it really well, then test the water for nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Why is that? Well, the shaking is because the soil is working really hard to hold onto those nutrients. You test the water and not the soil because those nutrients are soluble in water. The soil has to find a way to lock those nutrients in, and where they fail, filter them back out of the water before they are lost to the water cycle.

It turns out that soil is remarkably good at doing just that. The bacteria produce polysaccharide glues that hold soil particles together. Fungal strands also serve to bind soil particles together. Fungal networks are shaped like a tight net, and have proven to be very good at filtering water.

There is another function of soil that is often overlooked. There is an old gardening addage: If you want to raise the pH of your soil, add compost. If you want to lower the pH of your soil, add compost. Plants are only able to absorb nutrients within a certain pH range. The problem is, different compounds work best at different ranges. Since the organisms in the soil have a vested interest in getting those nutrients into the plants, they also want to make sure the plants can absorb the nutrients. So they also take on the task of balancing the soil chemistry.

Naturally, all this is a gross oversimplification, but it has to be. There have been volumes written on tiny portions of this process. There are whole fields of science that study nothing but soil chemistry and biology. But when you think of the problems you have, think of what soil needs to do and how a healthy, living soil can help you and your plants. Then go out and feed your soil.

Water Spinach

I like to fill every possible niche in my ecosystem. Whenever I see a hole, I start looking for the right organism to fill it. So when I started a garden with a big tank of water, I immediately started looking for plants that would grow in water. I started by pointedly ignoring watercress (blech!), then moved onto water chestnuts. I found some and grew them for a year and a half before I went to harvest them and found they had all rotted away. But I digress.

Really, the holy grail for me is edible greens that will grow through the summer here in Phoenix, AZ. I love greens and would prefer to eat a lot of them. The problem is, most greens, like spinach and all of the various lettuces, go immediately to seed as soon as it gets over 80 degrees. Kales tend to be bitter in the heat. Chard actually does pretty well, but I would like a little variety.

My search for edible plants to grow in the water led me to one that meets both goals. Water spinach is the American name for a semi-aquatic, vining plant native to southeast Asia. The scientific name is Ipomoea aquatica. Known as ong choy in China and kangkong (LOVE that one) in the Philippines, it has many names. It isn't actually related to spinach, though. Ipomoea is the family that also contains morning glory and sweet potatoes. 

Water spinach has hollow stems that allow the plant to float on top of the water. An aggressive grower, it will spread across the top of whatever water you give it, forming a dense mat. It then shoots a thick canopy of leaves up above the water and a dense mat of roots down into the water up to two feet deep. In ideal conditions, which seem to be over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, full sun, and lots of non-stagnant water filled with abundant nitrogen from fish, it grows at an amazing rate. I have seen individual vines grow over a foot a day. I have harvested three pounds of leaves, leaving the plant looking picked completely clean, only for it to look like nothing at all happened four days later. It is far and away my most productive plant and I probably eat an average of 1/2-1 pound off of it a week, mostly as the greens for my morning smoothie.

While the flavor tastes quite like spinach, it is a little stronger, somewhere between spinach and kale. The texture isn't crispy like spinach nor tough like kale, though. It is more tender, like lettuce. About the last foot of the vine can also be eaten as well. The older vines are tough and somewhat woody, but the tender new growth is quite tasty when lightly stir-fried. Nutritionally, I haven't been able to find too much information, but it seems to be very similar to spinach. 

One of my favorite parts is that it is also a favorite edible of my tilapia. Any leaves that dip down into the water are quickly nibbled off. They also eat the roots, having a particular fondness for them. I once caught a tilapia fingerling and brought it inside so I could watch it grow. On a whim, I pulled off some water spinach roots and brought them in. The fingerling rushed to the roots and took a bite, Then it swam around erratically in what I can only describe as a happy dance, then rushed back and took several more bites. I accidentally killed my water spinach last year about this time and started some new from seed this summer. The new plant is almost as big as the old one was, but it still doesn't have any noticeable roots. The fish in my tank keep them well trimmed. I figure it is only a matter of time before the plant develops enough of a mat that it will get ahead of the fish. In the meantime, it doesn't seem to be suffering at all. 

There are a couple of precautions I would give. First, in its native habitat, the hollow stems are often a host for an intestinal parasite. The parasite isn't native to the United States, but be careful where you get your shoots. Or just start from seed. It is also considered an invasive and has become a problem in parts of Florida and Louisiana. So be careful where you grow it. As for my system, I really think that it is both an incredible boon and a bit of a nuisance. It grows in my main tank, and as such, gets first crack at the available nitrogen. I suspect the rest of my plants just get the little bit that is left after the water spinach is done. Also, while the floating mat provides great shelter for baby fish and shade in the heat of the summer, it also blocks access to oxygen exchange, necessitating an air pump if you have more than a few fish. 

Overall, though, I highly recommend water spinach for any sort of aquaponics or similar system. It feeds the fish and gives a steady supply of fresh greens for you all summer long.

Creating a Circular Economy with Mushrooms

Palm fronds from my back yard

Modern life poses an increasing number of complex problems, necessitating our coming up with ever better solutions. We know that our typical linear economy, that of manufacture, consumption, and waste, cannot be a long term solution. It is wasteful and inefficient. Mushrooms provide one very simple service that, with a little thought and planning, becomes a very powerful tool. Mushrooms use our waste materials as inputs, giving food and, with a little extra work, soil as an output.

I recently went to a presentation on creating a circular economy, where a city official talked about difficulties with palm fronds in the waste stream. Most green waste gets chipped, shredded, and composted. Palm fronds pose a unique problem, though. They are very fibrous and tough to cut down to a size that can be composted. Since the area in question, Phoenix, Arizona, is subtropical, there are a lot of palm trees around, providing lots of palm fronds to the waste stream. During the presentation, the city official mentioned that they have requested proposals for finding new ways to dispose of the palm debris, without much response.

After the presentation I asked him if anybody had suggested growing mushrooms on the palm debris. No one had. I told him that the palm fronds have a density somewhere between straw and wood and aren't particularly aromatic. They should break down pretty well with the right mushroom. When I got home, I did a little research. Pink oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus djamor) are a tropical mushroom that grows best in warm climates. Like most mushrooms, the pink oyster mushroom has certain preferences on what sorts of organic matter it prefers to grow on. It prefers to grow on tropical woody debris like palm wood and palm debris. Also, being a hot weather mushroom, it grows fast in hot weather. I wasn't able to answer detailed questions, like how long will it take to break down the palm fronds, but I am currently working on an experiment growing pink oysters on some palm fronds from my own back yard.

The whole interaction was actually weird for me. Normally, when I mention that mushrooms might be used to solve a problem, get a LOT of eye-rolling. People hear the word "mushroom" and mentally add the word "psychedelic." I didn't get that in this crowd. The talk was about creating a circular economy. It was a very receptive crowd.

When looking to create a circular economy for most sorts of green waste, mushrooms are a natural fit. In natural systems, the inputs come in the form of good soil, fertilizer (sometimes the soil and the fertilizer are one and the same) and sunlight. Progressing through the system, the plant grows, produces whatever product is desired, then dies. The end result is slightly depleted soils and dead plant matter. In order to create this into a circular economy, all you have to do is find a way to turn the plant waste back into fertile soil. Compost is the simplest way to achieve this, but it is labor intensive and doesn't add any value other than closing the loop to improve the soil. Adding mushrooms to the process helps considerably. By adding the production of another saleable output, the whole process gets improved. It becomes more profitable to close that loop and provides incentive.

Mature garden bed with mushrooms growing between plants

The problem is, this is still short-sighted. There are many more opportunities here. It isn't as simple as "just grow mushrooms on the waste product." Mushroom growing as a business is very equipment intensive, labor intensive, and knowledge intensive. But it doesn't have to be. Just as seed production is a separate business that helps farmers, mushroom spawn production could be centralized. Mushroom production involves several levels of spawn production before the final inoculation to produce the flush of mushrooms. Most mushroom businesses today create their own spawn, but that doesn't have to be the norm. A business could be created that helps farmers set up an outbuilding on their properties for mushroom production. Rather than each farmer creating their own biology lab, they would just buy the final run of spawn and use it to inoculate their waste. That process is pretty simple and easily learned.

But what about yard waste? What about those palm fronds, not to mention the logs, leaves, and other yard debris? Again, a business could be built out of it. They could be local, community centric organizations that somehow collect yard waste and turn it into mushrooms. It could provide for community employment. Again, the spawn production could be done elsewhere and just sold or distributed as needed.

Garden bed pictured above, before planting

Let's look again at that circular economy. What if you could contract that circle a bit, and overlap functions? In my last post I mentioned a different way of gardening. It just so happens that this type of garden allows you to decompose organic matter WHILE growing plants in it. I will get to how all that works soon, but trust me, it can be done. I have been doing just that for a couple of years. Through the addition of mushrooms to the living ecosystem that you are recirculating water through, you can increase the production of the whole system. As the mushrooms decompose the plant matter, they produce quite a bit of carbon dioxide. Might as well put plants right there to gobble it up as a food source, right? As the mushrooms decompose the organic matter, they release nutrients. Might as well sink some plant roots in it to take advantage, right? Mushrooms also function as a really effective water filter. They will help catch even more of the nutrients you are cycling through the system in the water. All of a sudden that little community mushroom growing business is also pumping out fresh produce as well.

So what do we need to get all this going? First of all, we need research. I only know of two experiments that have been done that test plant-mushroom pairings. Certainly some mushrooms are going to be harmful to plants and others will be beneficial. We need to find out which is which. What about climate differences? Paul Stamets, who has done a lot of the mushroom growing research to date, lives in the Pacific Northwest. One of my favorite lines is when he calls king stropharia mushrooms a summer mushroom, preferring to fruit at temperatures up to 90 degrees. Where I live, that is a winter mushroom. But there are others, actual heat loving mushrooms, that would probably thrive here. Pink oysters (Pleurotus djamor), king oysters (Pleurotus eryngii), black poplars (Arocybe aegerita), milkies (Calocybe indica) and paddy straws (Volvariela volvacela) are all native to warmer regions and could do well in southern settings. We just need to work out how best to grow them.

There is one more thing, though. It isn't just the science we need to work on. We need to also work on the marketing side of things. If we all of a sudden start flooding the market with mushrooms, we need to create a market for them. We live in a society that has a lot of phobias around mushrooms. We need to teach people about the new kinds of mushrooms hitting the market. We need to teach them how to cook them. We need to teach them how healthy they are. Most of all, we need to rebrand mushrooms as the food that helps the environment.