A leaf 100 feet (30.5 meters) up in a tree needs Calcium. It sends that message down the tree to its roots where it is delivered to the biological life teeming in the soil which in turn fills the leaf’s need in exchange for sugars the leaves made during photosynthesis. The leaf receives its Calcium 90 seconds after its initial request. And the soil receives its Carbon from the earth and sun above.
Did anyone ever teach you that in high school?
We do not yet know every detail of how trees and plants make these trades billions of times daily but understanding this could save lives. Normally, I write about economics. My position is clear. If we do not arrest the Bankers, seize the $50 trillion plus dollars they stole from us and use that money to fund Debt Cancellation – a Jubilee as the Biblical writers would phrase it – we will soon be dying by the billions.
Today I want to talk about another looming disaster. We will soon face an agricultural deficit that could have dire consequences.
We are headed into another Grand Solar Minimum (GSM) in 2019. The Maunder Minimum (1645 – 1715) was named for Edward and Ann Marie Maunder who discovered that the sun was producing fewer solar spots. This was linked to declining crop yields. Temperatures declined only slightly but we now know there are other things that happen to the earth during a GSM.
The magnetosphere of the sun and the earth both decline which unfortunately allows more cosmic rays to strike the earth. Cosmic rays are nuclear particles. We have not yet entered the Eddy Minimum but over the past decade the number of cosmic rays striking the earth has increased 17%. Japanese scientists discovered that most of their major volcanic eruptions over the past few centuries occurred during the Maunder and Dalton Minimums. You might have noticed that quite a few volcanoes have erupted of late. And that is with only a 17% increase in cosmic rays.
There also seems to be an increase in the number and severity of earthquakes in a GSM. The New Madrid fault had major eruptions in both the Maunder Minimum on Christmas Day 1699 and three times in less than 8 weeks from 1811 to 1812 during the Dalton Minimum.
A good science teacher back in high school would have told you about exciting the mass. A ray of sunshine – a photon – travels to earth where it and its traveling companions strike a glass of water. The photons energize the electrons in the water and make them expand their orbit which we interpret as a transfer of heat and energy to the water from the sun. Think of cosmic rays as exciting the mass not of a glass of water but the very earth we stand on.
It might be time to move away from southern California, the Pacific Northwest of the US and the New Madrid fault. During the last earthquake on the New Madrid fault, the Mississippi river was picked up and thrown in the opposite direction. That is a force beyond our daily experience. Some advice from one who has experienced earthquakes. Do not buy a brick home. Wood frame houses a couple hundred miles from the epicenter should be OK. Of course you will have to deal both with marauding citizens fleeing the cities and government agents who believe they should be allowed to eat your food.
Let us begin with a few concepts: Soil Food Web, Soil Solution and Soil Compaction.
A gardener will tell you to never step on his garden bed because you will be compacting the soil. Other things that compact your soil are tractors, pickup trucks and farm equipment. How does soil compaction drastically reduce your crop yield?
There is something called Soil Solution. Dr Ingham tells us that labs often give us bad information from soil tests. Actually, they only test for nutrients found in the moisture in your soil. They do not test for the calcium, magnesium, boron, iron, nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium in the Soil Food Web. She says the bacteria ate almost all of the nutrients. Worry not she says because protozoa eat bacteria. They do not need all those nutrients so they excrete them and thus feed your plants’ roots on some sort of time released basis. There is only one real test for your soil. Take a microscope and look for the biology. Bacteria are on the bottom of the scale. Then comes protozoa, nematodes and lots of other creatures who need to be magnified 400 times. If you have a group or network that is preparing to survive, you might consider investing in a microscope and having one person in your circle learn how to analyze the biology of your soil. Dr Ingham teaches students on her website. This after 24 hours of instruction.
Overcoming Soil Compaction allows Soil Biology to do its work. It needs space around the soil particles for bacteria and protozoa, nematodes, arthropods and fungi to move and to do their work. Deep plant roots, earthworms and fungi make spaces for the Soil Food Web to get nutrients to your plant’s roots.
Overcoming Soil Compaction will also protect you against both flood and drought. I should also mention that the reduction in the earth’s magnetosphere allows the Jet Stream to wander about causing torrential floods in one area – currently Sweden and the US Southwest – and floods like those in China.
Dr Ingham raised crops in Australia after 27 years of drought. In one video she was addressing a small group there. She told them that there are people using her Soil Food Web principles in America who have blueberry bushes with 30 meter (98.4 feet) deep roots.
The earth has all the minerals you will ever need. The Soil Food Web and its allies produces enough enzymes and acids to break down rocks and pebbles to yield rock dust without buying it or nitrogen or chemical NPK fertilizers from a salesmen. Old Growth forests are teaming with life. No salesmen were needed to produce those amazing results.
The Soil Spectrum. If you used a microscope to look at the soil from a weed patch, you would see the bacteria who ate all your nutrients. But you will not see protozoa to eat the bacteria and release nutrients.That is why you had a weed patch.
Weeds are not bad. They prepare the way for the next step in Mother nature’s plan. If you looked at soil from various source gardens you would find a range or spectrum of the denizens of the Soil Food Web ranging from bacteria and weeds to fungi and forests.
To speed things along in the transition from weed patch to mature garden, Dr Ingham in one video told us to add 2 inches of organic compost to our weed patch. That works out to about 2 cubic yards per acre.
To emphasize an important point, you will need some soil biology in that compost pile. Plenty of videos explain composting. Table scraps will not do much for your weed patch. You need protozoa, nematodes, arthropods and fungi.
I would suggest starting with a cover crop that quickly grows deep roots. Some grasses grow 15 foot ( 4.5 meters) roots. Deep roots break up Soil Compaction. They also add Organic Matter (OM) to your soil. Every 1% increase in OM allows one acre to absorb up to 21,000 gallons of rainfall. Two-thirds of the OM in your soil comes from plant roots. Growing a cover crop with deep roots makes for a dramatic increase in OM and in your garden’s ability to survive both heavy rains and drought.
Dr Ingham’s methods also produce more bountiful crops with fewer expensive agricultural inputs (fertilizers and pesticides) which helps profitability but will more importantly give us a buffer against depleting food stores and food insecurity.
As I said, understanding Dr Ingham could save lives.
In the first year of turning a weed patch into a garden, she recommends growing brassicas, such as, broccoli, cabbage and kale. Remember the soil spectrum that goes
from the weed patch to the old growth forest. Broccoli is the next step up from the weed patch. It is raised in cold weather. Mycorrhizal fungi take water and nutrients some distance to your plant’s roots. That is one way the Soil Food Web counteracts droughts.
The problem is that fungi and earthworms do not like cold weather, 12 and 18 degrees Centigrade (53.6 and 64.4 F) respectively are their lower limits. Cold weather plants do not need fungi. That is why broccoli is a good crop for your first season on the former weed patch.
I take academic shortcuts. I attended full time classes as an undergraduate for 9 years. Nobody dares give a PhD to an honest person who tells the truth about the Bankers who periodically kill people by the tens of millions when they deliberately collapse currencies .
Dr Ingham might not like this but here goes. There is a movement called Korean Natural Farming that teaches us how to collect Indigenous Microorganisms or IMO. (Video below.) Undercook by 5 minutes or so a pound and a half of white rice. I like Basmati rice. The Soil Food Web creatures love the carbohydrates. The rice should be cooked but with no clumping together. The video below will explain. They have procedures to plant this in a good garden spot to gather IMO for your compost and garden. Do not try this in the weed patch because all you will get is bacteria to gobble up your nutrients. If you do these between two older trees, you will get a lot of fungi. But you should try collecting soil IMO from a mature natural garden that does not use commercial pesticides. This garden will give you a better balance. There is a limit to how much broccoli most of us are willing to eat in one calendar year. So we will need a quick way to get a more balanced IMO which would allow us to grow anything.
A keyword is balanced. If you had access to an old growth forest and did 100% of your collections there, your plants would have a hard time. Why? They need a balance of Soil Food Web biology – not just fungi. Fungal dominated compost is a good thing but not 99.9% fungi.
I would not oppose in the first year using some rock dust to get everything going for your initial cover crop. I would recommend Red Wiggler worms for your worm compost bin. They love coffee grounds. But I would also recommend earthworms for garden soil. Earthworms dig deep. If you start planting cover crops with 6 to 12 feet (1.8 to 3.6 meter) roots, the earthworms can dig down deep. This will aerate and fertilize your soil. The USDA said a mature garden with lots of earthworms will receive 21,000 pounds (9,525 Kgs) of vermicompost per acre per year. And those worms do that for free. You can buy worms or you can dig up worms and take them to your garden.
Please remember you need to feed both your worms and the Soil Food Web.
A Few hints: Hint 1) Pasture land normally has grass with 5 to 6% protein. If you practice Soil Food Web techniques, you can raise that protein content to 25 or even 26%. This will improve the health of your animals and the quality of their milk. Please consider the fact that cow’s milk is not good for human health but goat milk is.
Hint 2) There are lots of climate battery videos on the web. One retiree in Nebraska raises oranges in very cold winters. He dug out trenches deep enough to bring heat through ducts to his greenhouse in sufficient amounts to raise oranges while a blizzard raged outside. A word of caution. Forget about the depth at which contractors in your area tell you that your pipes will never freeze. Dig deeper. We are going into a Grand Solar Minimum.
Hint 3) Look up No Till videos on the web. No need for plows to tear up the fields. Why? Because a plow kills the Soil Food Web, especially the Mycorrhizal fungi which is what takes you past the weed patch and the brassicas on the Soil Spectrum to mature gardens.
I said that I normally write about Debt Cancellation and other ways to save the world from mass starvation brought by the men of Wall Street and the politicians they own. Here is an article more in that style:
How And Why An American Military Coup Could Save The World
https://vidrebel.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/how-and-why-an-american-military-coup-could-save-the-world/
This is Dr Ingham’s website:
http://www.soilfoodweb.com/
This is the video about collecting Indigenous Microorganisms (IMO).
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