I got into Creation-centered gardening due to a lack of funds. I decided to garden in Midland, Michigan and went to the store. The inorganic products being sold, from fertilizer to bug spray, were going to add up to a lot of money, so I came home empty-handed. My church was blocks from Dow Chemical headquarters, so there is no little irony in my transformation.
I read all the gardening books at the Midland Public Library, then searched the children's books for all the books about nature. The children's books were often better, because they explained some of the most basic concepts better. I subscribed to the Rodale Press magazine and bought their books as well. One WELS gardening couple ended up with about 20 of those books. I won't mention their names, lest they be stretched on the rack to reveal all they know.
Although the infinite complexity of Creation is impressive, God's design for recycling is even more astonishing. A speaker on bird rescue reminded me of that when she mentioned the abundance of owls in Bella Vista. She brought a barred owl along to show us. In the big city of Bentonville, there are few owls because they view dead trees as litter. In Bella Vista, with so many ravines and tress, the dead trees are left alone. What man sees as litter, the creatures view as condos.
Dead trees provide living rooms for birds and mammals, but they also feed the soil as they rot into the ground. God uses rot to recycle. In fact, the lack of rotting spells trouble for certain areas of the world. Dung beetles were brought to Australia to deal with the sheep droppings from their vast ovine herds. In Alaska and Siberia, the cold prevents the rapid rotting we enjoy without noticing. In the desert, decomposition is slowed down by a lack of moisture.
Nitrogen is the basis for all protein, and God uses that building block for all kinds of tasty food. All we need for recycling those chemicals is moisture, soil, and shade. The creatures of rot start first. Molds break down cells to make them more receptive to decomposition (the receptivity axis in nature).
A good pile of moist organic material will heat up as bacteria attack those cells. Once the pile shrinks down and cools off, creatures will rush in to eat and be eaten. Sowbugs, pillbugs, centipedes, millipedes,--and ultimately earthworms--will work over the pile. Soil provides the home and the chemicals to advance the process. Soil will rot any piece of wood left in it, but it will also destroy harmful bacteria.
Fresh-dead wood, like sawdust, will absorb nitrogen and bind it for a period of time. That is why fresh sawdust on a garden can be detrimental. It will also attract every cat within a square mile. The binding and loosing keys are chemical, so that which the woods binds is also loosed when the chemical process is over. Thus old rotten wood is a superb soil conditioner and a great soil amendment. Woodsy gardeners will actually push every possible twig into the soil to aid this process.
Sawdust used to absorb fallout in a horse or cattle stall will have a booster built-in. The added nitrogen will make up for the binding quality of fresh wood rotting and speed up the rot. In addition, animal products add variety to the soil in the form of minerals.
Nitrogen is the key to the heating up and breaking down cycle. Plenty of nitrogen (grass clippings, chicken and rabbit manure) will heat up and break down fast. Low nitrogen materials (leaves, wood, cow manure) will break down more slowly. The ultimate compost pile will combine everything for diversity.
My yard renovation in Midland began with a professional cleaning up and taking away about 10 bags of organic material. I slapped my head when I realized that Midland citizens spent all their time giving away free soil remedies while paying for chemical fertilizers and insecticides.
I recycled all my grass clippings and leaves, borrowing more from the neighbors. I put rotten hay and ground up trees (utility company treat) around bushes. Our yard became party central for all the birds. They had bugs under every piece of litter and prowled the yard constantly for food. Spiders grew fat and fertile from fly-bys. I used no inorganics at all, but I had healthy crops and very little damage from insects.
Some of the smallest details are free and yield great results. Butterflies like mud, and so do birds. I realize that one creature is the enemy of the other, but I let God sort that out. Shallow water is good for birds and insects.
The good insects, which are legion, bring down the number of bad ones. For instance, a cottony maple scale insect invasion was halted by a lady-bug invasion feasting on it. Asparagus beetles became lunch for a preying mantis I hatched for that purpose. If a dog snags some fur on a bush while chasing a squirrel, a bird will treasure it as a soft lining for her nest.
Plants have companions and need them too. I will write about that later.
