THE DISRUPTED CARBON CYCLE

and its Relevance to Global Warming and Agriculture

Carbon is not the problem – Carbon is the Consequence

Everything in the world is carbon based. Everything in this world requires carbon to grow and to live. So, why have we made carbon the enemy?

Because if you simply look at the data, refusing to think further, all you see are carbon levels rising in our atmosphere at a rate never before seen, followed by Earths temperature rising past the typical warming and cooling trends at the same time – this makes carbon the enemy.

Or does it?

No, the root cause is not carbon, it is not even the carbon inputs that have been drastically rising since the industrial revolution (although, I do support finding new ways to reduce carbon emissions and the pollutants from industry and cars). Let’s dive into what is the root cause and the fix that will save our planet.

The Data

As you look at this information does anything jump out at you?

https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data

https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/

As I look at this, and some others, the atmospheric carbon levels seem like natural cycles up until 1950 when we see the levels abruptly spike! Yet, if we look at carbon emissions, it does not tell the same story. Emissions have been steadily rising since the late 1800’s and the start of the industrial revolution. If emission levels were rising at a constant pace, carbon in the atmosphere should have been paralleling the rise, there should have been some correlation. However, the atmospheric carbon did not see a rise, but when the levels finally did rise, it was as if a pressure valve suddenly burst open.

Nature never jumps.

The same appears true for global temperatures, with little real change showing until after 1950. Why would there be a gradual rise in carbon emissions and a delayed, massive jump in atmospheric carbon? We know the reasons behind emissions, it is baffling why atmospheric carbon would present as expected based off history (despite rising emissions), only to spike suddenly to catch up for all the years it had been apparently within normal limits. Science has largely ignored this spike and instead it allows the data to be used as a political ploy to attack industry, causing division, and denial of the issue by many parties.

Division is not what we need on this issue. Global warming is happening, just as sure as the rise in carbon is happening, but as I’ve eluded, the reason is not what the narrative would have you believe. If we refuse to acknowledge and correct the underlying cause, Earth has shown it can no longer cope. We need to see this spike for what it truly is, a dire warning. Humans broke something in 1950 that stopped this world from filtering the worlds carbon.

A Little History to Uncover the Culprit

War brings change, sometimes advances in technologies, but modern war has brought a change, which at first seemed incredible, but if truly evaluated, could be responsible for issues greater than both world wars.

Our world changed forever when German scientist, Fritz Haber, invented the process to make synthetic nitrogen, both for agricultural purposes and for use in explosives. His work would continue for the war effort, developing chemicals as pesticides that would then be used for chemical warfare. Eventually, Haber would develop the chemicals used in the gas chambers of the Holocaust.

America would take these same chemicals and turn them into an arsenal of pesticides, fertilizers, and herbicides, to wage a different war on our farms. Little did they realize, they were not just fighting the pests and nutrient deficiencies brought on by industrial agriculture, but they were waging a war against the living soil itself. And when did industrial agriculture move into full swing?

The 1950’s

What could possibly go wrong, spraying chemicals over a vast portion of our country, chemicals originally designed to kill insects and humans? What about the collateral damage? We never stop to think about potential consequences when progress is happening.

One such chemical is Glyphosate, which has now been linked to cancer, with billions of dollars being paid out to victims. This water soluble product that is now found everywhere, in our streams, rivers, even our rain, and yes our drinking water. The product, that at the same time they started spraying it to kill and dry the wheat, we see gluten sensitivity and Celiac rates began rising at incredible rates, even occurring in people who never had gluten issues in the past.

But this article is about carbon. How does carbon relate to our agriculture and the chemicals used there? You need look no further than our soils. Soils were once the lungs of the Earth, working with plants to take and store vast amounts of carbon, but we have killed our soils through the use of chemicals in industrialized agriculture, making our soils merely dirt. To understand how our soils have undergone this change, it is crucial to grasp that soils are far more than their definition.

“The unconsolidated mineral or organic material on the immediate surface of the Earth that serves as a natural medium for the growth of land plants.” – Soil Society of America

This is not the definition of soil, rather, it is the definition of dirt. Our soil scientists must come to accept that dirt does not become soil until there is a thriving presence of microbial life. The actual definition of soil should be.

“The unconsolidated material and organic material on the immediate surface of the earth, which supports and includes an active microbial presence, enabling it to serve as a natural medium for the growth of land plants, and the active sequestration of carbon.”

If you were to go to any conventionally farmed land in the U.S. and dig into that soil, put that sample under the microscope, then you would discover next to no life. There would be little bacteria and fungi, few or no nematodes, worms, or arthropods.

Why is this of utmost importance? Agricultural lands make up around 37% of the Earths land surface, many of which are heavily sprayed with chemicals

Map depicting the area of cropland in the United States. Light green and Red are all the cropland areas, blue are waterways and wetlands, and brown is barren or fallow lands. Created with data from, https://gdg.sc.egov.usda.gov/

A vast amount of our lands are agricultural. If we have killed 1/3 of our soils, what does that cause?

1. The natural carbon processes which use to occur during photosynthesis, is disrupted, and no longer occurs.

2. Photosynthesis is the process plants use to get their energy to grow, but the mistake is believing that this process only involves the plants. Before the advent of chemicals, plants would use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and water from the soils, into sugars and oxygen.

6CO2 + 6H2O + Light energy → C6H12O6 (sugar) + 6O2

The oxygen is release back into the atmosphere, but much of the carbon (in the form of sugars now) goes not only to the plant to help it grow, but interacts with the microscopic world, living in our soils to sequester the carbon into the Earth.

This happens in soil, not dirt. The microbiome of the soils need the carbon to thrive. The bacteria and fungi form a symbiotic relationship at the roots where they are given root exudates. The microbes further break down organic matter in the soil, taking up the nutrients into their bodies, keeping the all important nutrients from leaching or washing away. Then these bacteria are eaten by the nematodes, worms, arthropods, etc. and then, through these creatures waste, the nutrients are returned to the soil for the plants to uptake and grow.

What this all comes down to is in healthy, living soils, carbon is sequestered from our atmosphere at a rate of 2.5 times that of the next leading technique! There is no need for expensive machinery to take carbon from our atmosphere, we currently have a vast, natural sequestration ability residing below our feet and all around us!

We have nearly completely eliminated our soils ability to sequester carbon over roughly 1/3 of our soils, and it all started in 1950, when a massive spike occurred in atmospheric carbon levels, the exact same time when industrial agriculture began using chemicals from war to wage war not just on pests, but on the soil microbiome, leading to the death of soils. In America alone we spray 1 Billion pounds of chemicals on our food supply – every year!

This has caused:

1. Massive loss of carbon sequestration
2. Loss of Nutrients in the soil
3. Death of the soil microbiome
4. Loss of water retention in our soils, leading to:
   1. Erosion
   2. Storm water runoff
      1. Leading to the historical flood events that have occurred on a far more frequent basis than in the past. We have to ask, is it really the storms that are worse, or the fact that 1/3 of our lands have lost the ability to take in and store most of the rains? The evidence is growing for the latter.
   3. Lowering of the water table
      1. Ranchers in Australia who have switched to regenerative practices have seen their water tables rise upwards of 20′, even through “droughts” their properties have water continue to run, and retain the ability to support their livestock with little or no supplemental feed. This further begs the questions, with higher water capture, what happens to our aquifer levels, do they begin to rise? I would guess so.
5. The loss of nutrients in the food we eat
6. The loss of alkaloids (which provide the healing properties and makes food our medicine) in our foods

The detrimental effects of chemical agriculture do not end there. Where do these fertilizers (most of which are not taken up by the plants), pesticides, and herbicides go? They leach into the ground water, wash away into our streams, along with the dirt. As this chemical and sediment cocktail makes its way into our streams and rivers, ripping deep gorges as it goes, it makes its way to our oceans, where we see massive dead zones, spreading out killing the algae and sea life which leads to even less consumption of carbon in our atmosphere. Coupled with the rise in ocean temperatures, leading to an even greater detriment to ocean life.

This all starts with chemical agriculture destroying our soils.

When practices demonstrably disrupt the world in which we live (not just the farmer or their land, not just their neighbors, or a state, but literally the entire world), these actions must be immediately addressed. If the farmers and ranchers will not voluntarily change their practices, given the mounting evidence, then laws and regulations must be used to end the practice of chemical agriculture.

There is good news. We can turn this situation around in the matter of a few years. The land can be healed and brought back to life in less than a decade, if we take the necessary actions now. Regenerative agriculture reverses the damage done, improves the financial stability of agriculture, and will take care of the host of issues covered in this article. It starts with the people. We must demand chemical free food, we must demand regeneratively farmed food, and we must demand that our food is always allowed to be our medicine.

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Sources:

1. Lowenfels, Jeff, and Wayne Lewis. Teaming With Microbes. Timber Press, 2010

2. Massey, Charles. Call of the Reed Warbler. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018

3. “Global Climate Change – Vital Signs of the Planet.” NASA, 14 March 2021, www.climate.nasa.gov, accessed 25 April 2021

4. “What is Soil?” USDA, https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/soils/edu/?cid=nrcs142p2_054280, accessed 25 April 2021

5. “Greenhouse Gas Emissions” EPA, https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data, accessed 25 April 2021

6. Howard, Albert. The Soil and Health. Oxford City Press, 2011

7. Kiss the Ground. Directed by Joshua Tickell & Rebecca Harrell Tickell, performance by Woody Harrelson, 2020, www.kisstheground.com, Available on Netflix and Vimeo

8. “Geospacial Gateway” USDA, www.gdg.sc.egov.usda.gov, accessed 25 April 2021

NATURE AND HEALTH

AN INTRODUCTION

Article – 1

https://anchor.fm/playnaturally/embed

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While becoming a Landscape Architect I learned how to solve problems through the design of our outdoor spaces. While at the University of Nebraska, my captsone focused on the damage due to the erosion of our agricultural lands. Little did I know at the time, my understanding of the problem was so basic that the solutions I developed were little more than band aides on a gushing wound. I had missed the true cause and instead simply tried to cover the symptoms.

Part of what I missed were the incredible parallels between Health and ‘healthcare,’ our food industry, and our environment. So many medicines merely cover the symptoms rather than address the root cause, leading to further damage of your body, and even more drugs. The same holds true with modern agriculture, as was the case with my original ‘solution’ to erosion. I hadn’t looked deep enough to truly understand why the erosion was happening. Instead of suggesting a change in how agriculture is operated in relation to the ecology of the land, I merely suggested capturing the erosion that was occurring, which of course still allows erosion to happen due to the chemicals destroying the soils, leading to lower organic matter, greatly reducing moisture holding capacity, and nutrient concentrations in the soils.

Not long ago, the creeks and streams of Nebraska were spoken of as clear with sandy bottoms, streams so clear they would float with glass bottom boats to watch the stream bed as they went. Now the creeks have turned to deep brown, silt-filled gullies, carving the banks 20’ or more deep in places. I grew up with these streams, thinking it normal…it was the exact opposite of what nature intended as normal.

This sat in the back of my mind as I continued my career, designing neighborhoods, streetscapes, and parks. All the while, I continued to gain more knowledge on the chronic health epidemic of Americans. It became quite clear that something after World War Two drastically altered the trajectory of our nations health. Time often brings understanding and I now have the knowledge and skills to help bring about the fundamental change required for both improved human health, and the health of our natural world. As you will see, human health and ecological health are irreversibly linked.

What is it that changed after World War Two? The rapid expansion of industrialized farming with the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. This has led to the death of our soils, pollution of our waters, the removal of nutrients, and the all important alkaloids in our food supply. In conjunction with, the progressive removal of people interacting with nature.

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

How true this proved to be. Hippocrates probably didn’t know it at the time, but foods produce alkaloids which defended against cancer, asthma, hyperglycemia, and more. Isn’t it interesting that since the use of Glyphosate and other chemicals that taint our food, the rates of these and other chronic illnesses, have skyrocketed. These chemicals are removing the alkaloids from our foods. Children never use to get cancer anywhere near the rate of today, this is evidence by the need to build hospitals devoted to children’s cancer now. Autism wasn’t even seen until the 1930’s when there were less cases than could be counted on your hands, by 1975 the rate was around 1 in 5000, today the growth is exponential and sat at 1 in 36, in 2018. I will go into greater detail in future articles, but ADD, asthma, diabetes, dementia, obesity, all are at dangerous levels since that time. We pride ourselves on our ‘healthcare’ in the United States, yet our country has seen the greatest decline in human health, perhaps in the history of the world with chronic health plummeting from 4% with an illness in the 1950’s, to now over 54% our our nation has at least one chronic illness. This is starting to lead to a decline in life expectancy seen over the last several years. It all started when we stopped making food our medicine.

Beyond our food is the need for daily contact with nature. We are trained to fear microbes from childhood. In actuality, the microbiome is our greatest friend and ally!

I call this link between humans and the microscopic world of bacteria, viruses, and fungi the unbreakable bond. Unbreakable because they are the key to our health, and indeed, our very existence – without them we could not even digest the food we eat.

It is fascinating to consider the parallels between humans and microbiome and plants and the microbiome. Why? because the exact same relationships exists between both pairs. The soil is the gut of the earth and just as our gut is proving to be our second brain and paramount to our bodies health, so the soil provides plants their health (which is transferred to us as we eat the plants).

In a very short period of time, humans have done everything imaginable to destroy this bond. We flock to cities and surround ourselves with structures of concrete and steel. We dart from our homes, to our cars, and back into another climate controlled spaces. Outside of weekend excursions to parks or trails, we barely have exposure to one of the most important resources for our health and development, nature and soils. Further, we have made it less desirable to enter nature by having it so far from our homes, you have to really want to go to nature if you need to drive and hour or more to get there.

We suppress our connection to the microbial world simply by not being exposed to the soil, a necessity to properly replenish our gut biome. For ages we lived, worked, and slept in the elements, constantly immersed in nature through hunting and foraging. In the incredibly fast span of a few centuries, we have almost completely removed this from our daily lives, disrupting our bodies relationships to the natural world. We need both our children, and adults to be outside, getting covered in restored or untouched soils, breathing in that incredible mix of bacteria and fungi, and cherishing it.

Beyond the disconnect with nature, the pharmaceutically farmed foods of industrialized agriculture, heavily sprayed with chemicals for every single plant need. Not only do the chemicals pollute the food we eat and our water, but it utterly destroys and kills our soils to the point where the plants can not survive without their next fix of N-P-K. Industrial farming destroys the microbiome and removes diversity on our farms and across the countryside. Pests and disease then ravage our crops, so we spray even more chemicals used to combat the pests. We have known for decades that pharmaceutical farming has been destroying one of (if not, our greatest resources) the soil, destroying our water (another greatest resource), our oceans, and is the greatest cause leading to the rising levels of carbon in our atmosphere!

Yes, simply by changing our food production from industrial agriculture to regenerative practices, we can clean our rivers, stop soil erosion, clean our food, greatly increase nutrients and alkaloids in our food, and by 2.5 times the next leading method, sequester carbon from the atmosphere!

I believe it is important to realize and accept, when we talk about the natural world, that we do not hold humans separate from the nature. We are a crucial part of the world, but when we see ourselves as masters over the earth and separate from ‘nature’, it is easy to force our will upon it, to great detriment. Contrary to this, since we have the unique ability to impose this will, causing rapid change, if we have the proper insight and mindset, we can also be incredible stewards to the land, very quickly turning what is destroying our natural world around, and healing it at an even faster pace.

Play Naturally seeks to get people back in touch with nature on a daily basis, rebuilding the lost connection with nature and improving our health. We will advocate for the production and consumption of regenerative grown foods (foods grown without the use of chemicals and with practices that restores the ecology of the land), for the growing of your own food in regenerative gardens, and for every person to have daily interaction with nature.

Our blog articles are one of the ways we will get information to the people on the importance of the aforementioned goals. Further, Play Naturally will work to provide every person places in which they can get into restored nature parks and gardens, removing the hurtle of time and distance.

Play Naturally will regenerate an ailing country that has seen its chronic health plummet. We see gardens and farms where their managers have the knowledge to be successful without the use chemicals, replacing them with compost, mulch, diversity, and firm grasp of their lands ecology. Finally, we see a world where people understand the importance of eating regenerative foods, and demand that their food be their medicine.

Please join us in our mission as we shift the paradigm from one of destruction to one of regeneration. Sign up for our weekly blog articles to dig deeper into the human connection to nature and our food. If you prefer to listen, join our podcast, where you can listen to all the incredible information we will be providing.

We Are All Miracles

Have you ever looked at another person and thought, “what a miraculous creature?”

Have you looked out over a landscape and thought, “it is a miracle that this exists.”

This world, the plants, the animals, and the people are astoundingly beautiful. Every person on this planet should take a moment each day to pause all of the chaos and fear beating down on us, and simply look around at the miracles which surround us, take a moment to immerse in the nature which has nurtured us for thousands of years.

As more people move to cities we become increasingly disconnected with nature. Some children never get to go out at night and simply look up into the sky and see the beauty of the stars. The stars are a miracle in themselves, countless specs of light, a mix of planets, stars, and galaxies. That the night sky exists and is so vast, is a miracle, and it is tragic that some children are missing it.

With our hectic life styles many adults, and by proxy, their children, never get away from the paving and structures they call home. The closest to nature they get is the city park.As sure as we need microbes to live, we need nature to thrive.

Perhaps you weren’t aware of the miracle of microbes? Maybe you think you are alive because of your own cells? One of the greatest miracles of all is this, If you didn’t have legions of foreign bacteria, parasites, fungi, and viruses, what is known as your microbiome, you would not exist. Your gut microbiome is your second brain and the commander of your immune system. When you think of immunity from illness, you probably immediately think, white blood cells, right? Wrong, they are a part of immunity, but far more important are organisms which are not even your own. The more robust and diverse a gut microbiome, the harder it is to become ill, and in particular to have chronic illness.

Commanding your immune system is not the only miracle of your microbiome. Giving you health is one thing, but giving you life is another miracle entirely. It is impossible for humans to use the food we eat. Our gut can’t make the apple, beef, or potatoes we ate for dinner usable for our cells. It is the plethora of organisms, that are not your own, the bacteria, who break down the food you eat into proteins, sugars, and fat. Even these fats and sugars, your body still can not use. The sugars and fats are taken through your blood supply and into your cells, where a bacteria-like organism which resides inside of your cells, the mitochondria, turn the fats and sugars into ATP (Adenosine triphosphate), the only substance which your cells can use. What a miracle of perfect symbiosis.

We lived in perfect concert with the worlds microbiome for millenia, strengthening the relationship. Then came the modern age, when science began to wage a war against the microbiome, developing chemicals and pharmaceuticals to destroy bacteria, fungi, viruses, and parasites. They never once stopped to think about the consequences of disrupting an overall balanced system. They never stopped to see the miracle of the unseen. Now with the balance disrupted our health is in a free-fall. The importance of a balanced microbiome has become overwhelmingly clear.

How do we strengthen our microbiome if it is so important? How do we aid the miracle that gives us life? Probiotics have been a huge rage recently, adding ‘good’ bacteria back to your gut seems to make sense. Let me stop you there for a moment. Even the best probiotics contain maybe a dozen strains of bacteria. If your gut is healthy and diverse, you will have somewhere around 30,000 – 40,000 species of bacteria living in your gut! That number should blow your mind, but it drives home that those probiotics may make some infinitesimal change, but in the grand scheme of things, it is nothing.

There are only two things you can do and need to do to strengthen your microbiome. I began this article by talking about the growing disconnect with nature. As a species we advanced through direct, immersive, contact with our environment. We grew our food, we hunted the animals, we spent all day in the soil, and in the sun sweating, or in the cold foraging. It should be no surprise that we have the life giving, symbiotic relationship with microbes. Modern humans are are losing this connection, and slowly our microbiomes are withering away, and our chronic health is suffering in ways we have never seen before.

The first way to strengthen your microbiome, is to get into nature every single day. Get your children into as natural of an area as often as you can. If you are an adult, by all means please play with your children, it is not odd to chase or be chased through a forest or even on a playground. Adults and children should both have a garden, if you don’t have the space, get with your neighbors and start a community garden. The American Garden Project and Play Naturally can help you with any part of this, garden design, park design, establishing a community garden, or a host of other nature related activities.

The second thing is just as crucial. You are what you eat, but, you are also what you eat, eats. There are huge differences between conventionally grown foods and organic, but there are even larger differences when compared to regenerative farming produce, or that of your own garden. At the very least eat organic food that is diverse, at the best grow your own or get regenerative farmed produce. Every plate you eat, whether breakfast, lunch, or dinner should have many colors – green, yellow, red, white, orange, etc. The more colors the more diverse your food, the more diverse your gut biome will be, and the healthier you will be. Love on beets, sweet potatoes, and turnips. Rotate what you eat. Since we have access to everything constantly, we forget that humans developed without grocery stores. We hunted for meat or fish, we scavenged or grew vegetables and had those only in the summer and fall. We gathered and stored root vegetables for the fall and winter months, eating this primarily for months on end. Flour should be avoided in America. It is non-GMO, but beginning in the early 1990’s they began to spray wheat with RoundUp (glyphosate) to kill it. Unsurprisingly, it is at this exact time we began to see Celiacs disease explode, and gluten intolerance erupt. Go to almost any different country, where they don’t spray their wheat with RoundUp, and you will find the wheat products entirely fine to eat if you are gluten sensitive, you may even think your gluten intolerance is gone…that is, until you get back to the states and chow down on your America bread again.

The point is this, if you want to be healthy, you need to heal your gut and reduce inflammation. To do this, you need to get outside and make food your medicine again. Hippocrates had many great quotes, but these are my favorites.

“Our Food should be our medicine and our medicine should be our food.”

“Just as food causes chronic disease, it can be the most powerful cure. Nature itself is the best physician.”

The pharmaceutical industry clearly understands this, which may be why they have always had control in some form over Monsanto and particularly the product glyphosate. One of the many consequences of using glyphosate is that it strips plants of their ability to make alkaloids. If they can strip away alkaloids from plants in all of our food, so the plants no longer are our medicine which give us health, then they can offer people drugs made from those same alkaloids…they have created customers for life by altering our food. This is one reason why our chronic illness has risen from 4% before Glyphosate and other farm chemicals, to 54% today. For more on this read ‘Addicts’ – Coming Soon!

Where is the miracle in this? The miracle is if you change what you eat, how incredible the body and your gut is at healing itself. Glyphosate has stripped conventional foods of their healing properties, the alkaloids that are anti-cancer, anti-malrial, anti-diabetes, etc. So, get away from conventionally grown foods as fast as you can by finding organic or even better regenerative farm produce. Get away by growing your own food using regenerative gardening principles. In the 1940’s 45% of American’s gardened, now a mere 0.1% garden, let’s get that rate back up to more than 45%. We have given ourselves over to pharmaceutical farming, you may not even realize you have been on crutches, working towards health complications, until you switch your diet for a while. When you switch, you will start to feel the energy, you’ll notice you don’t have bowel issues, no heartburn, or indigestion. You will start to actually feel good as the inflammation is removed from your body. I grew up thinking indigestion and bloating was normal, just take a Tums. No! That is not normal! I have been free of this for nearly a decade now and still find joy when I think back on how I would constantly feel before I made food my medicine.

I have one last miracle of the human body for you. For every 1 cubic centimeter of mitochondria, they are able to make 10,000 times more energy than the same 1 cubic centimeter or our sun! This means, you are more powerful than the sun. So, look again at yourself or any other person, because we are all beautiful miracles. If we take care of our bodies, and take care of the planet, then there is no need to fear tomorrow.

Bringing Soils to Life

By: Jacob Kophamer

As you garden, stop focusing on the plant, the light, the water, fertilizer, or pesticides. Some of these things are needed, even essential, and some of them are harmful and completely unnecessary. If you want your garden to do more than survive, whether it consists of trees, shrubs, perennials, herbs, or is a vegetable garden, you need to stop, grab a shovel, and dig into the soil before even considering putting a plant in the ground.

It is so easy for gardeners to overlook the soil, perhaps because it lies beneath our feet and is not the product, but it is the most fundamental and necessary resource of all. Perhaps you see it as just an area to secure the plants roots, after all, in our modern minds, fertilizer will take care of the plants needs – or does it?

Soil has confounded scientists for generations. In the 1600’s it was believed that plants consumed the soil to grow. It wasn’t until Jan Baptist van Helmont came along and conducted an experiment where he planted a 5 pound willow in a pot with 200 pounds of dried out soil. After five years of giving the willow only water, the tree weighed 164 pounds, and the soil had lost a mere 2 ounces of weight. Van Helmont decided the tree grew solely from drinking water. It wasn’t until the 1800’s that it was finally put together that plants grow by drinking water and taking in the carbon that they require from the air.

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Plants acquire elements from three places.

1. Atmosphere

2. Water

3. Rocks

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Carbon and Nitrogen come from the atmosphere, hydrogen and oxygen from the water, and rocks supply everything else through the soil microbiome. The primary needs for plants are Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), and Potassium (K), but never forget the micronutrients (like zinc & iron), if they are lacking the plant will not be able to grow properly. This is the law of the minimum,

The nutrient in shortest supply relative to the plants needs limits plant growth.

Before I go further about the plants needs and how it relates to the soil, it is vital that one thought be embedded into your mind.

Stop thinking of soils as a growth medium, stop thinking of them as dirt. Start thinking of soil as a living organism, because it is.

Gardeners need to view soil as the gut of our plants – the gut of the world.

In humans, the gut is every bit as precious and crucial to your life as the brain. What do I mean? Throughout your body and starting in your gut is a second entity, a separate life force which is totally outside of your own control, this is your microbiome. Take away the brain and you cease to live, take away the gut, and more specifically, the microbiome, and you will die. Similarly, Injure the gut and microbiome and you will suffer substantial health consequences. The gut is the key to your immune system, and we wreak havoc on it every day. This is why researchers now call your gut, the second brain, because it is not your brain which primarily controls your immune system, but your microbiome. Yes, the majority of your health comes from living organisms that are not even a part of your body.

The microbiome of a healthy individual will have well over 30,000 different species of bacteria and any number of the 300,000 species of parasite, 5,000,000 species of fungi, and 10³¹ viruses. These bacteria, fungi, parasites, and viruses work together to control your immune system, and make the food you eat into energy. That’s right, without your microbiome, without the millions of invisible creatures that are not even your own cells, you could not turn the food you eat into the energy you need to live. How does it work then? You eat your dinner, perhaps it is a balance of green beans, sweet potato, beets, and a steak. It is impossible for your cells to use any of these foods as they are, so you eat to feed your microbiome, they break down the food into sugars, fat, and proteins. The proteins are converted to glucose by your liver. Still, the sugars and fats are completely unusable by your cells. The blood carries the sugars and fats to the mitochondria in your cells, mitochondria are bacteria-like organisms living inside your cells, they break down the sugars into ATP, the only material your cells can use. Talk about the perfect symbiotic relationship. Without a foreign legion of life called the microbiome, which outnumber your own cells, you would not exists, isn’t that miraculous?

This means, those cravings you have all the time are not your brain speaking, it is the bacteria in your gut controlling your thoughts because they want a greasy hamburger. As a side note, if you only crave foods considered ‘bad’ it is because the microbiome in your gut has been diminished to only those who want those foods. To get away from those cravings, you have to diversify your gut, you do that by diversifying what you eat and immersing yourself in the greatest source of microbial life there is, the soil.

Diversity brings health, both to your body and to the soil.

Just as with your gut, the same is true for your plants. Plants are not meant to survive without the soil microbiome. Without the microbes, perhaps the most essential nutrient of all to plants, Nitrogen, is completely unavailable to plants, despite the atmosphere consisting of 78% nitrogen. Bacteria and fungi take nitrogen from the air and convert Nitrogen (N₂) into ammonium (NH₄⁺) a form which plants are able to use. This is accomplished with living nodules on the roots of legumes, there are also nitrogen fixing bacteria that do not form nodules, and some trees actually get nitrogen from fungi that scavenge for it on bedrock! Nitrogen is also delivered to plant when the microbes in the soil die. You could look at bacteria and fungi as little nutrient bags, either being eaten and excreted by larger microbes or dying and then releasing the Nitrogen.

Without healthy soil, more specifically, without soil that has a healthy microbiome, and a properly diverse and healthy food web, your garden will never function in a proper manner, let alone thrive, it will always be weak, immune deficient, and nutritionally deficient – a drug addict just waiting for its next hit of N-P-K (most of which misses the minuscule rhizosphere and continues down to the water table). But if you nurture the soil, that incredible gut of the earth, then your garden will be a success without the need for fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides. If you heal the soil and provide diversity below and above the soil, your garden will not have the issues that require harmful chemicals, your garden will grown faster, larger, better tasting, and healthier plants, because nature is absolutely amazing at protecting itself, it was created and continues to adapt to live on.

The best thing about this is even if your soil is dead, pure clay and glacial till, no signs of earthworms or other life at all, you can rehabilitate that soil in a few years, creating a garden that no longer contains drug addicted plants, just struggling to survive while producing tasteless, nutrient deficient fruits which have no benefit to your own gut health at all.

Where to start?

Grab that shovel or a trowel and head to the spot you want your garden to be, or head out to your existing garden. Make sure your garden is located in a spot which will meet your lighting needs. Some vegetables want full sun, others want partial shade. If you only have a full sun spot, that is okay! The great thing about gardening is that you need diversity and I strongly encourage that diversity to be blended together. If you have some plants that need a bit of shade, plant them beneath and around taller, sun loving plants.

It’s important to get a feel for the state of your soil. Do this simply by digging a hole in your garden plot.

1. Dig a hole that is about 1’ x 1’ and 1’ deep.

2. Is your soil clay, loam, sandy, rocky?

3. Is the color light, medium, or dark brown?

4. Do you see any life in the square foot of soil you just excavated? How many worms or beetles are there?

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More than likely if you are on a typical lot, the soils are less than desirable. This is because what a house needs to sit on to give it support is vastly different and the complete opposite of what you want for the soil in your garden. You’ll probably find compacted clay, there may even be trash and rocks mixed in. The color will be light tan or maybe even gray. There is probably very little life to be found. If you found earthworms, rejoice! Earthworms are the best friend of gardeners. Did you find 60 earthworms? Once your soil is rehabilitated you could find close to that number in a single square foot of soil!

Once you know your soil situation, it is time to formulate a battle plan to rehabilitate your soil. The plan will be largely the same no matter what condition your soil is in, but if your soil is dead and extremely poor, it will take more treatments to catch up and create a rich, living, soil.

As with any living organism, soil needs food, not drugs (fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides) these cause harm first to your plants and microbiome, and then to you as you eat the plants or are exposed to the chemicals and as they pass into the water system. Then what do you feed your soil? Maybe you have already started too and just haven’t realized it yet. If you use a wood mulch, preferably cedar, you may have noticed that it always seems to disappear each year. Maybe you are getting tired of this and considering rubber or rock mulch? Don’t do it. That mulch is doing one of its most crucial jobs, feeding the microbiome of your soil, and particularly giving the soil carbon.

Carbon is one of the crucial needs for your garden as all life is carbon based. Common sources of carbon include, mulch, dried leaves, cardboard, newspaper, or egg cartons. So stop sending boxes to the recycling and instead shred them and add them to your compost. If you don’t have room for a compost pile, you can always use a small container. If you don’t have a container for compost, now would be the time to get one. It doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive, a bucket or canister with a lid will do just fine, especially as you start out.

The need for carbon by plants and the microbiome can not be overstated. In fact, if gardeners and farmers immediately switched from conventional commercial practices, which kill the soil causing billions of tons of soil erosion and chemical runoff into our waterways, and changed to regenerative agriculture and organic principles, the problem of global warming would disappear. The soil microbiome captures, uses, and stores so much carbon that if we changed to regenerative farming and gardening, soils would capture 2.5 times the amount of carbon as the next best method! Global warming has accelerated due to dead soils not being able to do their jobs, a direct consequence of pharmaceutical farming.

Carbon is only part of the soils diet. The other part of the equation is organic matter. This is the material that carries nutrients for the plants but also the food for the microbes which break down the rock in the soil into nutrients for the plants. Organic matter may also be described as the nitrogen containing portion. Organic materials can be, vegetables, grass cuttings, coffee grinds, egg shell, banana skins, basically anything you would eat and that grows (not meat), go ahead and throw it all into your compost container, pile, or worm bin.

Composting

As you compost, you’re looking for roughly a 30 parts carbon to 1 part organic material. There are several methods for creating and applying your compost, and some methods do not require the material to be composted prior to application. One of my favorite methods is an old Native American composting method, trench composting. This method is great if you are just starting a garden and want to begin by restoring the soils (as should always be done), if you have a plot of garden not being used, or if it is fall and you are ready to get a very early start on next year (again highly recommended).

Trench Composting

Trench composting allows you to see your soils come to life in a matter of weeks. Once you have your compost buried, the microbes will begin to eat and multiply, drawing in even more, diverse varieties of bacteria and fungi. As the invisible digesters go to work, it won’t be long before larger life appears to reap the benefits of your organic material. Soon, earthworms and nematodes will be there to feast, turning the organic matter into rich, dark soil material and earthworm castings.

Once you have a good amount of compostable material (or you can do small patches at a time if all you have is a small container) dig a trench through the garden or areas of the garden you want to compost. The trenches should be around 6-8” deep and 1’ wide. Pile the soil just outside of the trench. Dig a trench every 2’ on center. The idea is once you have put your organic material into the trench there should be at least 4” of soil covering the compost. This layer of soil provides a buffer in the fall months against the freezing temperatures, allowing for the microbes to continue their work longer. It also allows for moisture retention, a must for the microbiome to function and compost the organic materials. Digging these trenches could prove difficult in many cases due to compaction. Just remember, the steps you are taking to bring the soil back to life will correct this issue and make planting and digging easier in the future.

Once you have your trenches dug, pour in a layer of your organic materials into the bottom of the trench. You don’t want to fill the trench with material, just a layer several inches thick will do. Cover this with the soil you removed, don’t pound it down, we want to minimize compaction in our gardens. Give the area a good watering and keep the soil moist for the weeks that follow (if doing in the fall to over winter, keep moist until the freezes start). Yes, you will be watering an empty garden to the unknowing mind, but you now realize that you’re actually giving life to the unseen world beneath our feet.

If you have done this during the growing season the process should take about 4-6 weeks to completely break down and compost the material into soil. Resist the temptation to plant anything during the composting period, the process occurring will do more harm than good for your newly sprouted plants.

At four weeks dig in and see how the process is going, hopefully you find a rich, darker brown material teaming with earthworms and life you can’t even see. There may still be some material, if there is, cover it back up and give it a few more weeks to finish, you’re almost there!

What if little has happened? You may need to introduce some life into your soil. This can be done in a couple of ways. Go buy some earthworms from a local fishing supply store and add them to your garden. It is probably just as vital to get your microbial life counts up. Consider brewing a good batch of compost tea (microbial soup) and watering with that once a week. Compost tea provides some nutrients but, more importantly, it is the perfect environment for microbial growth, you will literally be pouring trillions of microbes into your soil giving it a much needed boost. Read on for information on compost tea.

If you do this in the fall, and I recommend you do every fall, simply cover your trenches and let them sit until spring. The soil biome will feast over winter and revitalize your soil for the next growing season.

Tied into the fall trench composting is what to do with the dead plant material from the past years garden? If you have a compost pile you can use it there. For those who don’t, I would recommend pulling the material and adding it directly back into the trenches. Most of the nutrients taken from your soil are not in the fruits you eat, but are still in that decaying material. By simply putting those plants back into the soil you are gaining back a large portion of the nutrients that were lost.

This method alone will provide your soil with nutrients for growing, but more importantly, boost your soil microbiome into life. Now you can really begin to garden, but as you do, your journey of feeding the magnificent world is only just beginning.

Pile Composting

Mulching should always include more than just wood chips if at all possible by incorporating a quality compost, either mixed in with the wood mulch or as a layer before adding wood chips. Composting is a simple process and can be made in a couple of ways, pile or worm bin.

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Composting is straight forward, all you need are four elements.

1. Organic material

2. Moisture

3. Oxygen

4. Time

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Organic materials are things like cardboard, grass trimmings, dried leaves, food scraps, etc. Please note that vegetable scraps are not always recommended due to scavenging animals being draw in by the scraps. As with our trenching compost, we are looking for a 30 parts brown (carbon) to 1 part green (nitrogen).

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Step 1: Form a pile that is 3’-4’ on each side, and around 3’-4’ in height. As you make the pile, add just enough water to ensure the moisture content is like that of a wrung-out sponge.

Step 2: Now you wait. The temperature inside the pile should rise to anywhere between 130 °F and 160 °F. This range decomposes the organic matter and sterilizes and weed seeds that were present in the pile.

Step 3: To oxygenate the compost pile, occasionally turn the pile (use a pitch fork to dig in a flip the pile) and add water to keep it moist.

Step 4: After 30 days, primary composting will be finished. At this point decomposing slows down, the temperature will drop as the compost matures for another 30 days. At the end of this period your compost is ready to be added to the garden mulch!

Worm Bin Composting

Worm bin composting is a great method to get rich compost that is complete with worm castings, which are rich in organic material. Again, this is a simple process that uses common materials like, newspaper, vegetable scraps, and dried leaves. A worm bin is faster than pile composting and takes up less space, which is great if you are in tight quarters.

Start by building or buying a worm bin. If you aren’t particularly handy, you can always find a bin pre-made. They don’t have to be large, around 3’x2’x1’ will do. Worms live in the top 8” of soil, so around a foot is a good height for the bin. Plans for a worm bin will be added soon to our website.

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Step 1: Add shredded newspaper or dried leaves, a little water, food scraps, and worms. Cover that with a layer of newspaper or leaves. Close the lid.

Step 2: Let the worms do the work.

Step 3: After 3-4 weeks you will have incredible worm casting compost.

Consider using this for your compost tea/microbial soup!

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Another worm bin composting method which creates two separate harvests.

Step 1: Add food scraps to half of the bin and worms. Cover and let the worms work for three weeks.

Step 2: At three weeks start the other half of the bin with layers of newspaper or dried leaves, and food scraps.

Step 3: Worms from the food end will move into the other half where the new material is.

Step 4: Harvest the compost from the first half and use now as the second half composts for another 3-4 weeks.

Mulching

Mulching is no longer just about soil moisture retention and the inhibiting of weed growth, it is a source of food for the soil microbiome. Gardeners have had complete success at rehabilitating their soils simply by proper mulching. To be successful you’ll need more than just wood chips. Keep in mind the 30:1 ratio of composting.Reference the compost ingredient table. You’ll want the same ratio in your mulch, just with a higher amount of wood chips.

In addition to wood chips, you should add leaves, coffee grinds, plant trimmings, chicken manure, Zoo Doo, Buffaloam, compost, etc. Basically anything that is in a solid form. Do not use food scraps in the mulch, beside the obvious reason of having decomposing food sitting out in your garden, it will draw scavenging creatures onto your property. Once you have your mulch prepared, spread it out wherever you don’t have plants growing. Be sure to leave a little space around the your plants as having mulch directly against the stem of a plant can cause harm to the plant. If mulch is lain directly against the stem, any insects that are dangerous to plants and living in the mulch have direct access and cover to your plant. Giving several inches of separation will help in protecting your plants.

Mulching twice a year is ideal. Once in the spring as you plant and again in the early fall. As your soils come to life, you will find it necessary to mulch multiple times as the mulch is broken down by the microbes and turned into soil. You can also mulch in a two layer approach. First, lay down a couple inches of compost material, then lay down a 3” layer of cedar mulch (non-dyed) on top of that.

This simple task which uses materials you probably have already or can easily get (if you don’t have a tree, ask to rake up your neighbors leaves) will create incredible new soil and give the existing soil what it needs to support its microbiome, all within several seasons.

Cover Crops

If your soil is in desperate need of Revitalization, it probably means it is also hard, nearly rock hard. In this case, get your trench composting completed and consider cover cropping before you plant. If it is a vegetable garden, cover crop over the fall and winter.

Cover crops not only protect from erosion, but they send roots deep into the soil, in some cases feet down, some of the cover crop should have thick tap roots to break through the hard soil and get air and organic matter into the soil. Many of the plants in a good cover crop will add nutrients back into the soil, such as clover, which was discussed earlier.

What is in a good cover crop mix? Varieties of clover, wheat rye, winter wheat, hairy vetch, daikon radish, forage collards, fenugreek, and yellow mustard to name a few. Plant in the early fall to get them established before winter and in the spring turn them into compost. There are some examples of planting a cover crop along with your actual crop. One example of this were rows of strawberries, with a nice, short, cover crop surrounding the berries. Beyond providing nitrogen for the strawberries use, the diversity of plants surrounding the strawberries will offer protection through diversity.

Compost Tea – Microbial Soup

The final element to bring your soil back to life is, life itself. Everything discussed so far is about giving the soil the food and conditions that the microbiome needs to thrive. Microbial soup brings trillions of bacteria and fungi directly into your newly created habitat which is designed just for them! Of course, you could let nature bring in the microbes alone, as it will inevitably do, but compost tea gives a burst of life, and if you have plants showing stress, it may be exactly what they need to rebound.

The idea of compost tea has been around for some time, but until I really understood the soil microbiome, I just saw it as a way to liquefy nutrients and get it to the plants faster. As I have already explained, compost tea should have little to do with nutrients. In, The Hidden Half of Nature, and compost tea was briefly discussed there, this formulation is based off the recipe from that magnificent book about soil microbes in the garden.

Microbial Soup

Ingredients & Materials

– 5 gallon bucket

– swirling water aerator (or just a bubbling aerator will work)

– 1 gallon nutrient solution (see my recipe or buy some)

– 1 bag (quart) of worm compost

Recipe

1. Fill the 5 gallon buck with nutrient solution, worm compost, and water (leave some space for aeration).

2. Insert and turn on aerator

3. Let aerate for 8-12 hours

4. Spray on entire garden and plants

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Nutrient Solution

One of my hobbies is brewing, recently I took up growing and using my own native yeast instead of buying packets from the brewery store. To feed the native yeast, which comes from the air, you make a nutrient solution. The same is true for your microbial soup, the microbes need a solution to feed on as they multiply. This recipe is very similar to what I use for brewing.

Ingredients

– 15 cups Water

– 18 Tbs Blackstrap Molasses

Recipe

1. heat water to 185 degrees F

2. Add molasses and mix thoroughly

3. Keep at 185 degrees F for 20 minutes (do not boil)

4. Pour liquid into a glass container and sit in a bed of warm water. Let sit for 15 minutes.

5. Move glass container into an ice bath until temperature reaches 70-85 degrees F

Your nutrient solution is ready to be added to your compost tea.

At a minimum, I would give the garden a good spray in the spring as you start planting and again in the fall a little before the first frost. Consider keeping some on hand for if a plant starts to take a turn for the worse. For the best results, make a batch, and spray your garden once a week.

Diversity

What is the big deal on plant diversity? One of the major components is to protect from insects. Plants give off a scent and certain types of insects are attracted to certain kinds of plant scents. When you have a monoculture those plants are together and giving off large amounts of a single scent, and if the plants become stressed, the insects sense that and become even more interested. When you have diversity and a garden not setup as monoculture patches, the scents of the various plants mix together and the insects cannot pinpoint the scent they are looking for and so they are highly unlikely to find your plants and if they do it will be very minimal. To further enhance this effect, grow herbs throughout your garden. Plants like marigolds are great for discouraging insects from entering your garden, with the added benefit that they are edible! If you are growing flowering perennials, keep in mind that you should ‘deadhead’ your plants to encourage additional flowering. Deadheading is simply cutting off spent flowers as they start to drop their petals. This process is a little tedious, but keeps the plant from using resources to create seeds, encouraging additional flowering.

Another way diversity works is in the soil microbiome itself. When you have a healthy and diverse microbiome, harmful pathogens are unable to take hold and cause problems. The example I use is, a murder isn’t going to kill in a plaza full of people, but if that plaza is empty and it’s night, that is when he could act. The simple fact is, with a diverse microbiome there is too much competition for the food resources for pathogens to cause problems.

Those good bacteria and fungi also do something incredible, they coat the roots and leaves of the plants, making a barrier against pathogens. In essence a diverse microbiome is a shield against pathogens and pests. Look for our “Soil Food Web” articles to learn more about how healthy soils means healthy plants.

Time is now

The time is now to restore your soil and break your addict plants from their drugs. With a little dedication you can accomplish this by restoring the soil, and doing your little part to heal a damaged world. It goes beyond just helping the soil, by taking these actions you are improving your own health in more ways that you probably realize. Happy gardening!

To find out just what health consequences modern gardening and agriculture practices have caused read, Addicts – Coming Soon!

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