Next Best - Stored Water. Plus Bacteria and Fixing Nitrogen

I knew my mother's secret for having the best houseplants at Garfield Elementary School. She filled her watering container early, let it evaporate out the chlorine, and then used it. No other teacher had so many flowers in their classroom.

She told me about it with a big smile - "Give it at least 24 hours. Flowers do not like chlorine." Later, when I bought her bare-root roses to grow in St. Louis, she ended up with the best ones in the condo area, and people asked her how she did it. She said, "I grew up on a farm."

Now that regular rains have departed, and the rain-barrels are empty, I have done the same to build up a supply of stored water. When I was done with some routine watering, I filled one barrel almost to the top. Some replacement roses are coming, so they will be soaked in stored water before planting. The $2 rugosa roses will get daily watering from the same supply.

What seems like a lot of water is soon gone when gallons are used here and there. I have four large rain-barrels and four 5-gallon painting buckets (clean).

People gasp at Big Bertha,
which is an expensive copy of the earthworm
they take for granted.

Avoiding chlorine in the water is short-hand for favoring the bacteria cycle. As readers know, earthworms graze on bacteria. The earthworm's rings of muscle and bristle propel them through the soil. They are like the giant tunnel-boring equipment used to create space for subways and underground pipes. From the mouth to the disposal area, the earthworm is one straight digestive track, with little grinding stones to pulverize the intake.

When man tries to imitate Creation, a much more elaborate device is needed, and it can choke on a pipe found in the wrong place.

But earthworms patiently continue the work assigned them, which brings us back to bacteria. The earthworm does not digest the food taken in through its mouth. The bacteria digest the food for the earthworm and get a free ride.

Since most bacteria are not dangerous and help keep disease organisms at bay, they are good and useful.

Nitrogen fixing bacteria are the foundation for improving the soil. I visited the office of a company that drew nitrogen from the atmosphere in Midland, Michigan and sold it to Dow Chemical. Nitrogen gas is handy for preventing fires and explosions in chemical reactions.

Pulling nitrogen from the atmosphere without changing it is an elaborate and noisy operation, but the bacteria do the same and make a compound at the same time. I am no chemist, just a chemnitz, so here is the explanation -

Wiki:

Legume family[edit]

Plants that contribute to nitrogen fixation include the legume family – Fabaceae – with taxa such as kudzu, clovers, soybeans, alfalfa, lupines, peanuts, and rooibos. They contain symbiotic bacteria called rhizobia within nodules in their root systems, producing nitrogen compounds that help the plant to grow and compete with other plants. When the plant dies, the fixed nitrogen is released, making it available to other plants; this helps to fertilize the soil.^[1][12] The great majority of legumes have this association, but a few genera (e.g., Styphnolobium) do not. In many traditional and organic farming practices, fields are rotated through various types of crops, which usually include one consisting mainly or entirely of clover or buckwheat (non-legume family Polygonaceae), often referred to as "green manure".

Inga alley farming relies on the leguminous genus Inga, a small tropical, tough-leaved, nitrogen-fixing tree.^[13]

Cow Vetch is a legume that produces
seed loved by budgies and other birds.

Vetches are not glamorous because they grow on their own,
but Cow Vetch has a delicate flower that would be prized if rare.

Raining on Our Bacteria and Fungi - Good News for the Creation Garden

I am studying a fascinating book about the components of good soil and how to use them for better and easier gardening. The rainstorm is helping build up the bacterial and fungi right now, and compost is...composting.

The book is Teaming with Microbes, The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web, Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis. Timber Press, Portland. 206pp. $17.

http://www.amazon.com/Teaming-Microbes-Organic-Gardeners-Revised/dp/1604691131

The next book is Teaming with Nutrients.

Soil research has provided many new insights about all the chemical components  and creatures working together. The relationships are far more complex than most of us realized, even if we read about each part of the puzzle before.

Old view - which I shared - bacterial are good because they break down organic matter as one part of decomposition.

New view - *Bacteria and plant roots have an essential relationship with each other, the roots exuding food for the little ones and the bacteria giving food back to the roots. About 80% of all the nitrogen used by plants is created in the immediate root zone.

Old view - which most books still advocate - *Mix inorganic chemicals (NPK) into the soil to boost the plant's growth and health.

New view - which I held long ago, using manure and compost - *Organic matter, which once lived, will break down and stay in the root zone to feed the plants. NPK fertilizer passes through the zone and enters the aquifer, potentially polluting the water supply.

Old view - which I rejected - *Fungi are found in soil. So what? Many organic gardeners and poet Walt Whitman thought this was a significant role for soil.

New view - *Fungi are not only essential in killing disease organisms in the soil, but also in moving nutrition to plants in a complex relationship.

Old view - *When in doubt - rototill. Break up the lawn with a 12 horsepower rototiller. Weed with a little rototiller. When the garden is done in the fall, osterize the garden until it looks like coffee grounds.

New view - which I adopted gradually - *Soil structure is essential to the health of all the creatures below the surface, Blending the soil kills many of the creatures and ends their complex relationships until they rebuild them on their own. Organic material on the top of the soil will be pulled down by the earthworms. Lawns can be converted to compost-on-the-spot by covering areas with newspapers and mulch.

Old view - which I rejected as too limited - *Earthworms (one per shovel of soil) are a sign of good soil.

New view - which is adding to what I learned from Rodale Press and experience - *Red wiggler earthworms should be introduced to the lawn, garden, and compost, because they are most active in the top 12 inches of soil. However, they should be viewed in light of the complex relationship between bacteria and earthworms, not to mention all the other living components of soil. In short, earthworms should be maximized in the soil. The ancient Egyptians were right - killing an earthworm should be a capital offense.

As I wrote before in my review of Teaming with Microbes, scientists may see all this as the result of evolution, but I defy anyone to show how protozoa have figured out they should not eat all the bacteria (in the book) or how plants devised a way to get bacterial and fungi to deliver usable chemicals in exchange for food they need.

Unintentional humor in the book - we should be concerned about bacterial producing methane (global warming!). How are we going to stop that? and where is the proof of global warming? - already proven to be a hoax.