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Why Recycle?

PLANET EARTH

Ours is the only planet known to support life. All life on earth is maintained by a thin layer of soil covering a small portion of the earth's surface. The quality of all life on this planet is determined by the quality of that thin layer of topsoil. If we allow the quality of that thin layer to degrade, all life on earth, man included, will degrade to the same degree. The parent to all soil is mineral rock. The wind, rain, freezing and thawing break the rock into smaller sizes to start the soil-making process. Small rock particles do not become fertile soil until some life form has interacted with them.

The first life forms to attack the rock are microbes. They use elements from the air to grow and reproduce and slowly etch away at the rock surface. They exude, die and decompose, forming humus and mild acids on the rock, which dissolves minerals to further enrich the accumulating soil. This process goes on and on until higher plants and then animal life can be sustained. The death and decay of each life has a generating effect. Each time a living thing dies and decays on the soil, it creates a more fertile condition than was there before.

The energy to keep this cycle revved up comes from the sun. Plants alone have the ability to collect solar energy. This energy then passes through the food chain to all other life forms. Through the excrement and finally death of the many life forms, the sun's energy is passed to the soil to fuel the life systems in the soil and keep the cycle going so that man, the highest form of life, can be sustained. The plants bridge the void between soil and man.

Study the woods and prairie, you will see much life, plant and animal, large and small. Then look down, you will see many expired life forms covering the soil. A mulch of dead things: twigs, leaves, grass, insects, manure and even dead animals. Dig into this mulch and you will find it beginning to decay. The deeper you dig, the more advanced the decay until it fades into rich moist topsoil.

Nature has been building fertile topsoil by mulching and composting the surface of the earth since the beginning of time. With our modem way of living we consume, use, wear out and discard mountains of once-living materials. Most of this we waste by sealing it in landfills where it is locked away from its soil-building destiny for centuries to come. In the landfills, these natural resources are a waste. In the streams and lakes they are pollution. But on farmlands they become fertilizer. We must loop these natural resources back to food-producing soils so the life cycle can be maintained.

In the towns and cities, these organic materials should be collected at feasible sites. Then through the art of composting these once-alive materials can be partly decayed to a condition that is sanitary and easy to transport to the countryside where Nature can reuse it.

Reports from governments of all countries, the U.S. included, show widespread humus depletion and topsoil erosion from the food-producing soils. The degraded soils can only grow degraded plants, which forces the higher life forms to follow that same path. Only proper recycling of all organic materials, coupled with good farming practices, can stop and reverse this little-noticed decline that creeps through all life.

WATER CONSERVATION

Sticky substances are exuded by microbes as they break down the organic materials on and in the soil. This sticky substance glues the powdery soil particles together to form a fine crumb structure. This crumb structure allows carbon dioxide-oxygen exchange necessary for healthy root growth and the proliferation of the beneficial soil life that controls pathogens in the soil.

The crumb structure also allows water to soak into the soil from rain, especially heavy rains. Research has shown that good farmland soil with 4 to 5 percent of organic matter can soak up a 6 inch rain where and when it falls. Most of our soils can now only soak up about one half of their natural capacity. Water that soaks into the soil is held in the humus and clay of the soil for future plant use. Any amount of water the soil can't hold is filtered by the organic matter of the soil as it continues on down to feed the aquifers that supply drinking water and keep the springs flowing at a constant rate instead of periodically going dry.

Water that can't soak in has to run off. Minerals and powdery soil with no crumb structure are carried with the water. This potential soil increases the volume of flooding water, which rushes to the streams and then into the rivers causing damaging floods.

Instead of studying Nature and taking a close look for the cause of floods, human reasoning sees only rain as the problem. The true cause of bad flooding is ignored and large dams are being built to collect the flood water in lakes. Now more energy is being wasted to pump the water back to the farmland where it should have remained. The soil carried by the flooding waters collects at the bottom of the lakes. With each new flood gradually filling the lakes with more soil, they will eventually become big mud holes.

FOOD PRODUCTION

Why doesn't man pay more attention to the natural chemistry, physics and biology of the world and see himself as part of that natural world, of its perfect design? Is it greed? Is it vanity? Or could it be that soil fertility has eroded to a level that no longer nourishes the body and the mind? Is man losing his ability to see and think logically?

History books are full of stories about the decline and fall of many great nations. Soil decline was always the start of the fall. Poor soils result in failure of the economy and then the defense system. But if history were closely studied and the truth was known, you would find it was really decline of the mind that made the difference-and the mind begins to decline as soon as the soil begins to produce food that is empty of nutrients.

My friend's experiments with pigeons and my own with young chickens reported earlier in The Garden-Ville Method, showed us how important nutritious food is to all living things.

Look at our society and the people all around the world. You can find many examples that show evidence of eating too much white rice and white bread. Or, could it be symptoms of soil decline?

SOIL MICROBES

Sir Albert Howard, the author of the book The Soil and Health (copy right 1947 Devin-Adair), was an early scientist who recognized that the health of the soil determines the health of the plants and the health of the animals that eat from them. Albert Howard is known as the father of compost. However, he learned from the Chinese who have been maintaining soil fertility for forty centuries. We have worn out farm after farm in two centuries.

When Howard first used compost around failing plants, he noticed almost miraculous recovery. The plants also became resistant to pests. He then fed animals from the composted, healthy plants and noticed they didn't contract diseases, even when allowed to mix with sick animals that had very contagious diseases. Health did indeed pass from one life to the next through the food chain. Perfectly healthy plants and animals have resistance to diseases.

Albert Howard believed his compost to be rich in nutrients but was disappointed when test returns showed it to be low in N.P.K. (nitrogen, potassium, phosphorous). He had not used it thick enough to have good mulching effects, so he was anxious to learn how a little compost could get such good results. After studying the roots of the composted plants, he found the reasons: the beneficial root colonizing microbes, especially the Mycorrhizal Fungi, were present in very high populations, and no harmful root pathogens were present. The roots of the near by uncomposted plants were being attacked by pathogens and very few, if any, of the beneficial microbes were present.

I have a friend that grows cotton up in the high plains of Texas. He was slowly going broke, so he decided to look at other, and possibly better, ways than the conventional farming methods he was using. He cut his acreage from 2,500 to the 240 acres he owned. He then started using organic methods, among them biological sprays which included free nitrogen fixing microbes, which he applied along with feed-grade molasses for an energy source.

After a few years on the natural program he discovered he could quit irrigating even though he was in a low rainfall area. In drier years his production is below his irrigating neighbors, but his profit per acre is always greater since he has no irrigation or pesticide expenses. I have seen this man's cotton stand up showing no signs of stress while the neighbors cotton across a dirt road just 70 feet away under conventional farming methods was severely wilting even though it had been irrigated twice that year. To find out how this was possible I got the soil and the roots tested from both farms and there was a striking difference. The roots from the organic farm had 24 percent mycorrhizal colonization with many spores and vesicles. The cotton roots from the conventional farm had only 2 percent colonization with some roots showing none. I discussed these two farms and the difference of soil microbes with Dr. Don Marks of Mycorr Tech Inc. and Dr. Jerry Parsons, our extension agent, and both agreed that overusing chemical fertilizers and pesticides on soils low in organic matter is detrimental to the beneficial soil life.

Mycorrhizal fungi form a symbiotic association with the roots of most plants. The fungi grow into or between the cells of the roots and use 10 percent of the carbohydrates the plant passes from the leaves to the roots. The fungi don't have chlorophyll in the presence of sunlight, so they can't manufacture carbohydrates. In return for the energy taken from the plant, the fungi grow out and search far and wide for nutrients and moisture and feed the plant so it can continue to manufacture more and more carbohydrate energy. The bigger and faster the plant grows the further and faster the fungi grow to feed the plant still better. A plant colonized with mycorrhizal fungi will have the equivalent of ten times more root. Another benefit of this association is that as long as the fungi are flourishing, they can prevent all root pathogens and damaging nematodes from attacking the root. Decaying organic materials on and in the soil keep both the plant and the fungi flourishing to help each other.

There are many beneficial forms of life in the soil. Scientists tell us there is more tonnage of life and numbers of species in the soil than is growing above it. All of this life gets its energy from the sun. But only the green-leaf plants have the ability to collect the sun's energy. All other life forms depend on the plant to pass energy to them. The plants above and soil life below depend on each other for their healthy existence and continued survival.

Another beneficial microbe that colonized plant roots was introduced to me by Mr. Bill Kowalski of Natural Industries. This microbe knocks out several root rots, including cotton root rot, a common problem in Texas. (See the article, Taming Root Rot.)

Dr. Crawford originally discovered this microbe. He tells me it is a Saprophytic, rhizosphere-colonizing actinomycete, which means it is a microbe that lives on the roots and eats the skin sloughed off by a healthy, normal growing plant. As long as the plant is flourishing and the root is growing and lots of root skin is being shed to feed the actinomycete, it doesn't let a disease organism or root knot nematodes attack the roots.

The soil life and the plant life support each other. Hence the laws of Nature: Destroy the weak and allow survival of the fittest. Without the colonizers feeding and protecting the plant, it falls victim to the natural laws. Weakened plants are attacked by all kinds of pests below and above ground. Nature wants the weak and sick plants to be destroyed. But man interferes. He uses his arsenal of pesticides to keep the unfit plants alive. Then he eats from the poisoned sick plants-and wonders why he gets sick.

Common Sense Composting

The Art of Composting

You can study the science books until the biology, physics and chemistry of composting are well understood, but that doesn't make you a master. Composting is an art, and just like any other art, it can only be perfected by doing it and getting the feel of it. I knew nothing about the sciences that happen in compost but learned to make compost by watching things decay in Nature. Then gradually, over time, I began to understand the sciences involved.

When I was a curious child between the ages of two and five, we lived at a place that had a barn with a solid wooden fence running parallel to the east wall. Between the wall and the fence was an area four feet wide. In that little lane were some big hackberry trees. The leaves blown by the wind collected between the barn and that fence up to 14 inches deep. That was one of my favorite places to play. It always smelled so good! I hoped the leaves would eventually build up so high that I could see over the fence, but I noticed every year before the leaves would start falling again, the pile would be way down and the new falling leaves would only bring the pile up to the original height. I would always dig into this leaf pile and find all kinds of neat bugs and worms to play with. It was always nice and moist, even if it had not rained in a long time. I also noticed how the leaves gradually changed into soil and the tree roots were always growing up out of the ground into the decaying leaves. Childhood reasoning told me the roots were eating and drinking from those decaying leaves. By the very young age of five, I had learned from Nature the secret of her life cycles.

Once I got a little bigger, handling manure and other farm waste was always a part of my life. It was a necessary farm chore, and I didn't mind it any more than any other chore. I could easily see the rewards of hauling the waste back to the fields. The crops were always bigger in the area where it was applied, more earthworms were there and the soil was softer and easier to plow.

Many books on composting make it so complicated that you need advanced degrees in science to understand them. Most people who successfully make compost learned by observing Nature. It is much easier to understand the science after you have mastered the art of composting than the other way around. Studying the science first seems to dampen the desire to experiment. You try to make something work that doesn't, because you are unaware of some factor that wasn't covered in the books. Then you become frustrated. Much of the material written on composting is by people that studied the book sciences, but I am not sure they conferred with Nature as to when, where and how it should be done.

Economics and Nature

If you study Nature, you soon learn she is very thrifty. She doesn't make an unnecessary move or process. Nature never wastes energy while she recycles expired life. "The Law of Least Effort" was written by her. We need to study all her laws and learn from her. In Nature, every dead thing is deposited in the very place it dies and there it serves as a mulch protecting the soil until it finally decays and in due time is covered and replaced by still more dead things. As these dead things are disassembled by the microbes, the proteins are changed into ammonium gas. Some of the gasses are used by the microbes, some are turned into nitrates, a small amount is used by growing plants, and any ammonium absorbed into clay and humus in the soil and held for future plant use. Little if any escapes to the air.

Carbon dioxide (CO²) is also released as the microbes break down organic matter. Carbon dioxide release is most abundant in warm weather when plant growth is greatest. The carbon dioxide drifts up from the soil surface and is captured by the leaf surface of the many plants growing above, again little escapes to the air and what does goes over to feed plants that are growing in areas that don't have decay processes going on under them. The plants take the carbon out of the CO², use it for food and release the oxygen.

Some scientists are saying, an excess amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is causing global warming. But science has also proven an abundance of CO² in the air allows plants to more efficiently use water and grow better. I believe global warming is being caused by us humans uncovering and creating too much bare soil by some of our agricultural practices, herbicides and paving over. My own testing has shown bare soil in full sun to be 35 degrees warmer than nearby soil under mulch or plant cover.

Mulch also protects the soil from heavy raindrops that settle soil particles together to form an impervious crust. The broken up water droplets filter through the decaying mulch and collects the nutrients released by the microbes and slowly carries it to the roots of plants that put it back into the life cycle.

The layer of mulch also keeps the moisture from moving up and evaporating back into the air. As water moves upward in the soil, it carries dissolved minerals with it. When the water evaporates it leaves the minerals concentrated at the soil surface as salts in a crust that seeds can't sprout or plants grow in. With the evaporation stopped by mulching, the moisture and minerals stay dispersed in the soil for root collection.

Un-Economics and Man

Nature does not agree with some of our wasteful composting ways. We allow moisture, ammonia and carbon dioxide to dissipate into the air. And we waste energy while doing it. Nature decomposes dead things and manure right where they fall. The organic material decays and nourishes new life in that area. If a small amount of nutrients happens to escape that area, it is because the rains carried some to feed the life in the streams, lakes and the oceans.

Many times because people take the "Not In My Backyard" (NIMBY) approach to composting, raw materials have to be hauled great distances to a remote location before composting is allowed. Nature wasn't given any consideration. The pollution from noise, tire wear, clutch wear, brake wear, engine exhaust and crankcase exhaust nullified much of the good done by composting.

I have visited many compost operations and found some very inefficient. They were using up more energy to make compost than it contained when it was finished. By dry weight, compost contains about 5 percent mineral and 95 percent energy, you could burn it and measure the BTU's just like gas, oil or coal since they too were plant life in past times. You gain nothing and Nature loses if you burn up as much or more energy than the compost contains when you get through making it. The energy is the most valuable part of the compost, the soil's greatest need. The rest of the soil needs can temporarily be bought in bags. With continued use of compost the need for bagged fertilizers go down until eventually little, if any, is needed.

A good example of how inefficient some composters are: Once in the past a compost company moved near San Antonio and set up operation at a big feedlot. Then they discovered I was in the composting business. They were fine ethical people, so they came to me and asked if we could get along. They assured me that they would not cut my prices. We quickly became friends and visited each other's locations and exchanged ideas and experiences. On visiting their operation I saw they were composting in an insulated house. The operator bragged it took them only seven days to make compost. It took me six to seven months. This was hard for me to accept, but it so happened that my visit was on the seventh day. He opened the doors and sure enough he had a fine looking compost.

My immediate thoughts were, I need to check into this. Then another thought struck. That house only held seventy yards. He was limited to making ten yards per day. He also told me their construction time from start to finish on the building was almost six months. And before they could load the house, the material had to be ground to proper size; the c/n ratio had to be perfect and the moisture just right. Once the doors were closed, a switch was turned on and the computer, operating blowers, took over to keep temperature, oxygen and whatever just right by blowing air up through the floor. This was all great, but all that energy and high technology just to let something rot! If I dumped two hundred cubic yards. on the ground the day he started construction and turned it four times like I normally do, we would both have our first compost to sell on the same day. If I continued to make 200 yds. each day six days a week, I would have 200 yds. (minus the shrinkage per day) to sell, and he would still only have his 10 yds. per day. I was honest and told him his operation wouldn't fly. It didn't. Three separate operators tried before it was finally shut down for good. Now the building is being used to store hay. A very expensive barn.

The micro- and macro-life forms do the never-ending work of the decaying/composting for us. And like any other living entity they need water to drink, air/oxygen to breath, carbon/carbohydrates for energy and protein/nitrogen to build their bodies. They also need minerals, but the carbon and nitrogen materials being composted contain these minerals since they too were alive at one time. The moisture, air, carbon and nitrogen need to be blended and mixed in a way to create the perfect hotel/factory/cafeteria to keep the decomposers comfortable and happy so they can work, eat and multiply. The compost pile itself is their hotel. They don't need an additional high tech, very expensive building that man designed for them to work in. They will work in these high tech contraptions and work well, but if we don't watch it we may end up with a bunch of spoiled microbes that will become lazy and soon demand welfare.

The Garden-Ville Method - Lessons in Nature

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last updated:  March 10, 2004