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| Tropicana is blooming again. |
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| The new Yale Divinity dorm could feature the compost drum. Lutheran School of Chicago dedicated this compost drum about 6 years ago. |
Yale Divinity School sent me a glorious color magazine that features the regenerative dormitory they want to build. I can fund it and name it for $10 million. Although Yale Divinity chokes at talking about Creation, they are really dealing with the concept of God's magnificent handiwork, His engineering, and His management of all that He fashioned through the Word. He invented re-cycling, no?
Another buzzword is sustainability, although that includes quite a bit of Left-wing political activism. Increasing carbon for the soil is linked with absorbing greenhouse gasses (Carbon Dioxide), global warming, fake statistics, and the rants of Al Gore and Company.
New Insights about Creation Gardening
I have been reading about organic gardening since Dow Library days in Midland, in the 1980s. I read many books from Rodale Press and bought quite a few as well.
I am going to condense some new insights that I learned from Gabe Brown and others.
Armor for the Soil
God covers the soil - always, but man often leaves it bare. Although I was aware of all the benefits of mulch, these people argue - through research - that cover crops prevent drought by increasing the ability of the soil to absorb rain and snow.
Cover crops, if diverse, also host a wide variety of beneficial bugs. "Why use pesticide when fewer than 1% of the bugs are pests?"
Cover crops mine nitrogen from the soil. "Above one acre of farmland are 35,000 tons of nitrogen. Why buy nitrogen when God provides it for free. Plant legumes - peas, beans, vetch."
Cover Crops Suppress Weeds, Add Energy
I have been considering using more tiny plants to occupy territory in the rose gardens. One reason is that mulch attracts wind blown seeds and bird-donated seeds. Weeds are easily pulled or suppressed, except a couple that vex me - English ivy and Bermuda grass.
Buckwheat, White Clover, and Wild Strawberries are low growing, not obtrusive. Studies show that much of the soil improvement comes from the activity of roots. Some can also exclude weeds entirely - as Buckwheat has proven, while adding food and shelter for beneficial bugs.
Dutch White Clover has excluded almost all the grass in the backyard, simply by surviving the extensive rain we have had.
Carbon for the Soil
The chemical gardening books pooh-poohed manure. To wit - "Manure and tree leaves are just carbon, etc. No real NPK." These farmers realize that carbon feeds the fungal jungle, and these fungi grow from the carbon, feeding and watering the roots.
Some videos argue that rich soil absorbs carbon from the atmosphere. I find that whole line of "greenhouse gasses" bizarre and fraudulent. I have no idea what chemistry they are talking about with CO2 being absorbed.
The fact is, when I was reading everything possible about soil in the 1980s, fungus was mentioned largely as a problem - not as the most basic activity of soil.
A farmer with thousands of acres has to figure out the cost and benefits of his actions. Gabe Brown freely confesses that four straight disasters in farming forced him to learn about the soil and discover the value of natural methods, building the soil that builds the farm.
