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| Carbon Cowboy Gabe Brown found he had to use the roots of cover crops to hold water in the soil and also to drain excessive rainwater downward. |
A gardening or farming leader will often emphasize one particular concept and make that central to the plans made:
- Beneficial insects
- Adding organic matter to the soil to very large amounts
- Companion plants
- French intensive gardens and similar wide row gardening.
All of these work well and I try my hand at them. This year, when I was tempted to dig up all the wild roses, I remembered #5 from the Carbon Cowboys - keep living roots in the soil as long as possible.
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| Buckwheat is a great cover crop, except when it rains and rains and rains. Then it is a shroud crop, covering entire rose bushes with luxuriant growth. Cutting them unleashes the seeds for a second crop of the same shrouding effect. |
I did not really want to dig wild roses out of clay soil and there was no clamor to do so, not even from the small but influential altar guild. I remembered the Fifth Irrefutable Truth of Gardening - living roots improve the soil with stupendous growth and pathways for microbes and worms.
I could cite the astronomical figures for total root hairs or the length of fungus connecting plants in the soil. However, big numbers are so gigantic that they stop meaning something. That has to be reduced to - Living Roots - Good!
My solution for a big, mysterious and fast-growing plant where it was not invited: try to identify it, then lop it off at ground level. Poke Weeds are not a mystery and they can grow 7 feet in the garden, so I let them grow a little in the rose garden and chop them off at the base. They will grow more but not dwarf the roses the way the Buckwheat did in the summer of endless rain.
Face-saving conclusion about the Buckwheat - the plants engulfed the roses twice, but the roots were great for the soil.
Lots of rain means lawn duties tomorrow, so I will lop all the big plants that need lopping - most wild roses, Poke, and mystery plants. The roots will continue to improve the soil.
Hold the presses! Here is another double-blessing from the Carbon Cowboys. Deep roots are not only
- Humus producers, but
- Drought stoppers and
- Flood quenchers.
Deep roots take rainwater deep into the soil and keep it there to refresh all life. The nature of Creation is to thrive on water and therefore to serve as water and fertilizer units.
The test for this is simple and startling. Take a large bucket of water and pour it on a deeply rooted plant, whether a bush or sunflower or Poke Weed. The water disappears as if poured through a grating over the storm sewer. The plant does not move b because it is deeply rooted.
In contrast, the tiniest amount of water on a young plant will flatten it and threaten to wash it away. But that also applies to those deluges of rain that we have had the last two summers and again this year. Rain tends to wash topsoil away, as people can see from the rich growth of weeds on their front sidewalks. Deep roots are just as much a solution for drought as they are for standing water and gully-washer rains.
One might think this was all planned in advanced and engineered to perfection. Like Jesus, the Lord of Creation, the Biblical authors move effortlessly from the Creation to faith in the Savior.
Ephesians 3: 16 That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man;
17 That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love,
18 May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height;
19 And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.
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| Norma Boeckler's Christian Art |
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| Norma Boeckler's Christian Art Books |
