Nah. Burying ox bladders filled with corn isn't really my style. But I do think that it makes a lot of sense to invent one's own biodynamic system. What is the difference between burying an ox bladder full of corn, and burying a bunch of wildflowers dipped in water that has the full moon reflected in it?
Probably nothing. Anyone who is going to do either of these things is not going to dump used motor oil on the ground, or bring Miracle Gro home from the store. Those are the kinds of things that matter. If Biodynamics doesn't have a causal effect on good gardening, it may have a corelary one.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Compost Tea
So we've made some compost tea, and I have a lot of thoughts about it as my 1 year old climbs around making it hard for me to type.
It's almost a spiritual thing, where soil science and gardening meet witchcraft, and witchcraft is vindicated as a legitimate lens through which to understand nature (which really only makes sense if you aren't torquing yourself into knots trying to fight it).
I read something once about native hunters who used a kind of divining rod to determine where they could find game to hunt. It had worked for countless generations, no one knew why, and no one really questioned it. Of course, any kind of superstitious nonsense that isn't officially sanctioned by Christian churches recieves near unanimous scorn from our Western culture, so someone set about the task of determining how this could possibly have worked in a way that we could understand.
The explanation that was arrived at (by whom? I can't remember - it could be made up for all I know) was that the divining rod randomized the direction that the hunters went each year, allowing populations in the other directions to recover in off years. There wasn't a predictable pattern, which the animals may have been able to adapt to, but there was, over time, an averaging out of the number of times the hunters visited breeding grounds in each direction.
I've got to read more about biodynamics but it seems to me that we can (and did for all of human history) arrive at an understanding of nature that is intuitive - which the science in turn will support whether we choose to care about the science of it or not.
A word on science - it is political of course, something that scientists, many of them convinced of their objectivity, struggle to recognize. What research you choose to fund, what conclusions you pursue, what you hypothesize in the first place - none of this is objective. The bad and sloppy science that gets published regularly does little to advance the case of the objective nature of science (which we only understand through our objective perception). For all the good science, nothing that is published can be considered a foregone conclusion. Anyway-
Back to the compost tea. It appears that an agency called the National Organics Standard Board put together a task force to set regulations for compost tea (this must apply to commercial operations). The tests that were run involved putting material containing ecoli bacteria in conditions where it was encouraged to multiply (compost tea involves multiplying "good" bacteria), and then proclaiming compost tea dangerous because it contained ecoli. This information comes from a seven year old post on some list serve, but it looks credible, and seems to come from a credible person, Elaine Ingham of Soil Foodweb (decide credibility for yourself). She gives the analogy of banning coffee because some tester put manure in the coffee filter and the resulting brown liquid contained ecoli (ergo: coffee must be dangerous).
Compost tea, however, seems to me to be as much about magic as it is about science. You can measure what is in compost tea, all the microbes and bacteria and fungi and other little life forms that inhibit the soil. Then again, you can only measure what you know is there, so there may be all sorts of unknown activity that may as well be magic for all of our ignorance of what is going on in the soil. After all, breastmilk is that way. We think we know what is in it, but who knows what we have yet to learn.
If you search the internet for information on compost tea, there is a lot of conflicting information out there. A series of Youtube videos of a compost tea seminar by a guy named Bruce Deuley that put it all together for me. Aside from the basics, that microbes need air to grow and multiply, but there is a limit to how long they can grow and multiply before they outpace the available oxygen and start dying, causing undesireable conditions, there is a way of thinking about compost tea that reminds me of the native hunters. There is no one "formula" for compost tea. "Diversity is the formula" says Bruce Deuley. Aside from keeping your microbes alive, doing different things all of the time will create, over time, a diversity of microbes in the soil that provides a complete microbial spectrum for the soil.
When making compost tea, as long as you keep your microbes alive by giving adequate oxygen and not brewing for too long (shorter times in warmer weather when microbes multiply faster), the rest may as well be magic. Whether you use earthworm castings, homemade compost, fish emulsion, seaweed, molasses, oats, alfalfa, or whatever else people put into compost tea, you can use a divining rod, you can consult the I Ching, you can meditate on the ingredients until the choices of what to add come in some sort of vision - over time it will all work out.
And isn't that what magic is, in a way?
It's almost a spiritual thing, where soil science and gardening meet witchcraft, and witchcraft is vindicated as a legitimate lens through which to understand nature (which really only makes sense if you aren't torquing yourself into knots trying to fight it).
I read something once about native hunters who used a kind of divining rod to determine where they could find game to hunt. It had worked for countless generations, no one knew why, and no one really questioned it. Of course, any kind of superstitious nonsense that isn't officially sanctioned by Christian churches recieves near unanimous scorn from our Western culture, so someone set about the task of determining how this could possibly have worked in a way that we could understand.
The explanation that was arrived at (by whom? I can't remember - it could be made up for all I know) was that the divining rod randomized the direction that the hunters went each year, allowing populations in the other directions to recover in off years. There wasn't a predictable pattern, which the animals may have been able to adapt to, but there was, over time, an averaging out of the number of times the hunters visited breeding grounds in each direction.
I've got to read more about biodynamics but it seems to me that we can (and did for all of human history) arrive at an understanding of nature that is intuitive - which the science in turn will support whether we choose to care about the science of it or not.
A word on science - it is political of course, something that scientists, many of them convinced of their objectivity, struggle to recognize. What research you choose to fund, what conclusions you pursue, what you hypothesize in the first place - none of this is objective. The bad and sloppy science that gets published regularly does little to advance the case of the objective nature of science (which we only understand through our objective perception). For all the good science, nothing that is published can be considered a foregone conclusion. Anyway-
Back to the compost tea. It appears that an agency called the National Organics Standard Board put together a task force to set regulations for compost tea (this must apply to commercial operations). The tests that were run involved putting material containing ecoli bacteria in conditions where it was encouraged to multiply (compost tea involves multiplying "good" bacteria), and then proclaiming compost tea dangerous because it contained ecoli. This information comes from a seven year old post on some list serve, but it looks credible, and seems to come from a credible person, Elaine Ingham of Soil Foodweb (decide credibility for yourself). She gives the analogy of banning coffee because some tester put manure in the coffee filter and the resulting brown liquid contained ecoli (ergo: coffee must be dangerous).
Compost tea, however, seems to me to be as much about magic as it is about science. You can measure what is in compost tea, all the microbes and bacteria and fungi and other little life forms that inhibit the soil. Then again, you can only measure what you know is there, so there may be all sorts of unknown activity that may as well be magic for all of our ignorance of what is going on in the soil. After all, breastmilk is that way. We think we know what is in it, but who knows what we have yet to learn.
If you search the internet for information on compost tea, there is a lot of conflicting information out there. A series of Youtube videos of a compost tea seminar by a guy named Bruce Deuley that put it all together for me. Aside from the basics, that microbes need air to grow and multiply, but there is a limit to how long they can grow and multiply before they outpace the available oxygen and start dying, causing undesireable conditions, there is a way of thinking about compost tea that reminds me of the native hunters. There is no one "formula" for compost tea. "Diversity is the formula" says Bruce Deuley. Aside from keeping your microbes alive, doing different things all of the time will create, over time, a diversity of microbes in the soil that provides a complete microbial spectrum for the soil.
When making compost tea, as long as you keep your microbes alive by giving adequate oxygen and not brewing for too long (shorter times in warmer weather when microbes multiply faster), the rest may as well be magic. Whether you use earthworm castings, homemade compost, fish emulsion, seaweed, molasses, oats, alfalfa, or whatever else people put into compost tea, you can use a divining rod, you can consult the I Ching, you can meditate on the ingredients until the choices of what to add come in some sort of vision - over time it will all work out.
And isn't that what magic is, in a way?
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Hell Hath No Fury
like I had after I got back from the Kilbourn Park Garden Sale that only happens once a year and sells out in two hours with four heirloom tomoto plants with buds about to open, only to plant them and find not TWO HOURS later that my child had, working closely with the kids from next door, thrown toys out the window into the beds below and destroyed three of the four plants. Will they come back? Sure. But our season really isn't that long.
I was so happy about those plants, and so enraged to see them destroyed. Then I got depressed. And I haven't really gotten over it. It is a small thing, but in tough times all you have are the small things. I can handle big dissapointments as long as I get to keep my tomato plants.
Is that really so much to ask?
I was so happy about those plants, and so enraged to see them destroyed. Then I got depressed. And I haven't really gotten over it. It is a small thing, but in tough times all you have are the small things. I can handle big dissapointments as long as I get to keep my tomato plants.
Is that really so much to ask?
Friday, May 15, 2009
Severe weather
Advisories from the National Weather Service:
-Flash Flood Watch
-Flood Advisory
-Hazardous Weather Outlook
From the Hazardous Weather Outlook:
WEATHER HAZARDS EXPECTED:
HEAVY RAINFALL AND LOCALIZED FLASH FLOODING.
THUNDERSTORMS...SOME MAY PRODUCE:
HAIL TO THE SIZE OF QUARTERS.
HEAVY RAIN.
DAMAGING WINDS IN EXCESS OF 60 MPH.
AND POSSIBLY A TORNADO
Not much gardening going on today.
-Flash Flood Watch
-Flood Advisory
-Hazardous Weather Outlook
From the Hazardous Weather Outlook:
WEATHER HAZARDS EXPECTED:
HEAVY RAINFALL AND LOCALIZED FLASH FLOODING.
THUNDERSTORMS...SOME MAY PRODUCE:
HAIL TO THE SIZE OF QUARTERS.
HEAVY RAIN.
DAMAGING WINDS IN EXCESS OF 60 MPH.
AND POSSIBLY A TORNADO
Not much gardening going on today.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
An idea for those pumpkins...
Thinking about what to do about all of these pumpkin plants, I realize that there are places all over the neighborhood where I can surreptitiously plant them. Vacant lots, the lawn of a foreclosed house up the block, the defunct train tracks where nobody walks (that I am aware of, anyway - but it isn't as though I'm up there either). So I'm thinking that this will be a good thing to do with them. They won't all survive, but some will, and this autumn we'll have pumpkins all over the place if the plants do well and can be left alone for the most part. As long as I plant them in as many places as possible, they will be visible around the neighborhood.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Pumpkins
Today I opened the lid of the compost bin to find roughly 100 pumpkin plants sprouting out of the compost. In digging them out, we lost maybe 5. The other 95 have been planted, for now, in shallow flats designed for seeding, doubled and quadrupled up in pots, and stuck in the dirt of the containers our tomatoes are growing in. They were absolutely thriving in there, but they weren't going to last much longer without sunlight. I guess I could have left the lid off for a week or so, but the sooner these pumpkins find a home the better. The thing is, they are the lumpy kind of pumpkin gourd that make the rounds on Halloween. Who is going to want 100 of those?
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