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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (5532)	2/26/2007 10:57:21 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24211

Healthy Life from Healthy Soil Scott A. Meister, Permaculture Visions When we enter debates on human health, it’s easy to get caught up in discussions of diet, excercise, sleeping habits, modern medicine and lifestyle, but few people stop to consider or realise how our good health is dependent upon the very ground that lies underneath our feet. Furthermore, few people have stopped to ponder the life cycles that interact with each other both above and below the ground. ...There are many things that contribute to the productivity of a soil. Age, place, climate, topography, physical and chemical structure, existing biota and plant-life, pH, etc. To understand how all the pieces fit together would take a book the size of my Grandmother’s ancient German Bible, and quite frankly, there have been many complicated books written on the subject already, as well as whole university courses taught on the subject. Therefore, I will not go into all the gruesome details here, however, I will go into the basics, so that we, the people involved with permaculture, can design a landscape around us to get the most out of our environment and our soil. (25 Feb 2007) permaculturetokyo.blogspot.com

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (5532)	2/26/2007 9:51:24 PM
From: Crocodile	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24211

Those are both good pieces on gardening and soils. I wish it weren't so difficult to grow a variety of vegetables year round up here in the frozen north. I've grown kale and brussel sprouts and left them in the garden until after the snow. Both improve in taste even after freezing. Unfortunately, it's too cold to leave root crops in the ground. I've tried leaving carrots and parsnips in the ground, covering them with straw, but eventually, they get so frozen into the ground that you can't pull them out. Cold storage is also a problem here as our house has to be heated, so it's difficult to make a place where the vegetables won't get too warm, or conversely, accidentally freeze some time when the temperature really dips. I'm trying to work on a solution for that for this coming year as I'd really like to put up potatoes over the winter as the ones we are getting from the store are in such crappy shape lately... and, on top of all else, most store bought potatoes have received a lot of spray. The other reason for growing things yourself is because, I think it's getting more difficult to be sure that crops were grown on soil that hasn't been contaminated with chemicals. So many cities are trying to get farmers to take sewage sludge, and it has heavy metals, chemical residues and a bunch of other things in it. That stuff isn't supposed to be used on land that will grow vegetables for human consumption for something like 20 years, but knowing how poorly people keep track of things...and given that governments are barely watching where this stuff is being taken... I don't have much faith in the system. Also, the run-off from sludged fields can get into ditches that other farmers are using for irrigation. Great way to spread around the mercury, cadmium and other wonderful things.