Farmer's Almanac: Utilizing Compost in Agriculture and Horticulture

Introduction

All around the world, a revolution in agriculture and gardening is taking place. Healthy crops, healthy cattle, and, last but not least, healthy people all depend on fertile soil.

If I had to briefly summaries the premise of this movement and the overall benefits being obtained. A soil is considered fertile when Nature's law of return has been rigorously followed, and there is enough freshly made humus in the form of compost made from both vegetable and animal waste.

Making the majority of the earth's green space into that extraordinary apparatus that will produce all of our food and a significant portion of the raw materials required by our factories is part of this revolution in crop production. The green leaf cell and the energy that powers it (the point of the sun) are two components of Nature's factory that owe nothing to mankind. They are the gifts of provision that no scientific knowledge can duplicate, much less outdo. There are just two ways that mankind may help the food factory. He can take care of the soil that supports the lush carpet of greenery and the soil's unpaid working force, including molds, microorganisms, earthworms, and other organisms. He can also maximize the benefits of improved soil conditions and sunlight energy by choosing crops through plant breeding techniques. However, one glaring error must be avoided by the plant breeder. He must not be satisfied with enhancing the variety alone; otherwise, the soil will soon run out from his labours. The improved type will extract more from the ground and become a boomerang. Therefore, the plant breeder must always exercise caution not to focus solely on diversity but also to improve soil fertility. Such crops will care for themselves, and insect and fungal pests won't cause much harm.

What services have the Americans provided for the nation's green carpet? The Federal Department of Agriculture's Yearbook of 1938, issued under Soils and Men, offers the solution. Results of a careful assessment of the country's cultivated soil were documented in this work. It revealed the startling 253,000,000 acres, or 61% of the total area under crops, having either been entirely or partially destroyed or lost most of its fertility. This stemmed from land exploitation that caused widespread soil erosion.

The natural result of the compound soil particles collapsing is soil erosion, whose management is essential to the health of the soil population and the crop. These composite particles comprise mineral pieces held together by tiny bits of organic material produced by the soil's invisible life. These soil organisms must be continuously supplied with new humus, or the ground will quickly deteriorate. We hasten the wearing-out process when we attempt to replace these supplies with artificial manures. In all these situations, nature responds by leaving the soil a barren mass of mineral shards, devoid of oxygen, water, food, warmth, and shelter for the beneficial soil population. The inevitable result is the extinction of the soil and its people. The ruins are ultimately removed by nature through wind or water to create a desert or fresh ground somewhere else beneath the sea.

What impact has this soil neglect had on the human population? Man The Unknown, a masterwork by Alexis Carrel, summarises the outcomes. In the United States, at least £700,000,000 is spent on healthcare each year to treat diseases of various kinds, many of which would not have arisen had the soil's manurial rights been adequately protected.

It doesn't pay to neglect the dirt beneath the green carpet. As a result, large tracts of land are destroyed, and an inefficient population is produced.

All of this may be fixed if the law of reciprocity is upheld and all of the nation's available vegetable and animal wastes are turned into compost for the soil. A reading of this book, whose chapters I have just read with the utmost interest, will make obvious how exactly this should be done and what effects on crops, live animals, and people will then be witnessed. As this work evolved, a lot of things amazed me. What made me happiest was learning that Mr. Rodale possessed the priceless attribute of daring, which is only possible with advancement. Despite having no prior knowledge of the earth or its ways, he bravely purchased a farm, learned how to make it fertile, and then saw the effects of compost on his crops, livestock, and, later on, himself and his family members. Thus, he followed his own advice before dispensing it to his fellow countrymen in the pages of this book and his new newspaper, Organic Gardening, which has grown steadily over the years and months. All of this is very enlightening in a world that tends to become more and more superficial, primarily as a result of fragmentation, a disease of civilization in which closely related topics like agriculture, food, nutrition, and health have been divided into countless rigid and self-contained tiny units under the guidance of some group of specialists. The

Experts quickly discover that they are squandering their lives, learning more about less and less as their studies become focused on fewer and smaller parts. As a result, experiment stations and instructional facilities devoted to agriculture and gardening must be more transparent and cohesive in their operations. Knowledge is expanding everywhere at the expense of comprehension.

The goal is to consider the entirety of the field covered by crop production, animal husbandry, food, nutrition, and health as one related issue before realizing the magnificent idea that health is every crop, animal, and human being's inheritance.

PART ONE: The Active Horizon

Chapter: One

WHAT LIVES IN THE GROUND, Biologically

The soil is not a dead, inert substance, as many believe.

It is incredibly vibrant and alive. It is abundant with bacteria, actinomycetes, fungi, mound, yeast, protozoa, algae, and other tiny organisms. All but the protozoa, which are microscopic animals, are plants. These smaller plants and animals are known as the soil's biological life. Although bacteria have been researched and used in business and by the medical community for over 75 years, agriculture has mostly ignored them.

This soil's microbial population is generally concentrated in the top four to five inches, where most organic materials that serve as their diet may be found. Only thirty to forty thousand bacteria per grime of soil may be present at three feet, compared to billions at higher levels. InaveryfertilesoilAn acre of bacteria can weigh up to 600 pounds. Their deteriorating corpses become humus when they pass away and improve the soil. A handful of the most benign, beneficial creatures are not.

They typically coexist in a delicate, balanced connection tightly regulated by nature. The inter-relationships get strained if soil conditions become out of control due to the introduction of foreign components (such as some powerful chemicals), a lack of sufficient nourishment, or climatic change, making it more challenging to grow plants as nature intended. About 1,000 different bacterial species have been classified by the Society of American Bacteriologists. Only around 100 are pathogenic, meaning they can cause illness in plants, animals, or people.

These bacteria produce plant food in the soil; in some instances (the mycorrhiza fungi), they even feed the plant with it. By dissolving or decomposing organic waste, fungi and bacteria perform the critical task of regulating the soil and its structure. The United States Department of Agriculture has identified two methods for doing this.

: decaying bacteria and fungi that feed on plants release filamentous mycelia, which bind fine soil particles into larger masses that withstand the washing effect of rains that would otherwise cause soil erosion.

The ability of nitrogen-fixing microorganisms to take nitrogen from the atmosphere is more widely understood.

Undoubtedly, there are several other significant correlations between soils. Bacteria may benefit from algae. The latter might give protozoa nourishment. It seems to be a well-regulated little society. All it needs is a diet of the foods it likes and other necessary circumstances.

First there has to be sufficient aeration. Most soil microorganisms require a specific level of oxygen. The soil structure becomes relatively loose and porous due to the agriculture method suggested here, which strongly emphasizes composts, encouraging maximum microbial proliferation. Conversely, systems that rely too heavily on chemicals eventually find themselves in hard-packed soil inhospitable to organisms.

Although moisture is crucial, there shouldn't be too much of it. Years of organic farming have improved the soil's physical structure, making it ideal for the retention of the correct quantity of moisture. With hard-packed earth, you either have a desert-dry environment where bacteria cannot survive or one that is too wet and supports dangerous anaerobic bacteria, which results in putrefaction rather than fermentation in the breakdown of organic material.

The inhabitants of the microscopic world flourish in warm environments, namely those between 70° and 100° F in temperature. Again, soil continuously supplemented with organic matter warms up earlier in the spring than soil that has been tortured with high doses of chemicals. Government experimentation has consistently demonstrated that soil will absorb more heat the darker it is. It is a widely acknowledged truth that regular humus treatment to the ground will gradually darken it and eventually turn it nearly black. There may be an 8–10° variation in temperature between very dark and yellowish soil. This issue of heat and light absorption is crucial because it allows a farmer to enter his property sooner in the spring if the earth heats up earlier.

A neutral or slightly acidic soil is another environment favourable to bacteria; fungi can grow in an acidic environment. In inforests with acidic soil, bacterial populations are lower. There, fungi primarily composed the work.

The more microbial life in the soil, the better it will be for growing crops, as is evident. Most soil textbooks concur that a soil's bacterial and other soil microorganism population increases with soil fertility. In the same way, it can be confidently argued that more soil organisms develop when more organic matter is added to the soil.

In Soil Conditions and Plant Growth, Sir E. John Russell discusses a bacterial count at the English Rothamsted Agricultural Station. 28,860,000 bacteria were found per gramme of soil in a field treated with farmyard waste. Only 15,100,000 bacteria were found where total minerals and ammonium sulphate were applied.Lyonand Buckmanin The

All common species of algae are significantly stimulated by the application of agricultural manure, according to Nature and Properties of Soils. Almost all researchers agree that applying organic manures enables and extends the soil's biological life significantly more than chemical or mineral fertilisers.

Let's look at some standard agricultural methods and how they affect the little organisms in the soil.

Some bandits exist in the soil that war on plants. We attack them, but we are unable to engage in selective conflict. Ten helpful germs, each harmful organism we eliminate, are also lost. Instead of promoting this biological soil society's natural activities by providing it with enough natural organic fertilisers, we douse it in poisonous sprays and caustic chemicals. There is no denying the fact that some more vital chemicals significantly decrease the amount of the soil's biological population. When we utilize antiseptics in medicine, we take advantage of this fact. To some extent, the microbiological components of the ground are affected similarly by our potent chemical fertilizers. Chemicals, such as benzoate or soda, are used to remove microorganisms that would otherwise spoil particular foods to preserve them.1

It is debatable whether sterilizing the soil in boxes used to grow young seedlings for transplants, such as tomato and pepper plants, is a good idea. It may eliminate the organism damping off the young plant, but it also eliminates many other vital soil microbes, which may lead to weakened seedlings.

Many farmers that use chemical fertilizers almost exclusively cultivate green manure crops that they plough under to find organic materials. These crops could include ryegrass, clovers, buckwheat, etc. But this is not always as effective as it sounds. The fertility of soil affects its digestive abilities or capacity to decompose organic materials. Large volumes of raw plant matter can hinder the activity of bacteria, fungi, and earthworms, decreasing the soil's ability to break down nutrients. There may be little of a problem where a young ryegrass crop is ploughed under, but if it gets too high before this is done, the newly sown crop may need more readily available nitrogen and other plant nutrients.

1 For this book, chemical fertilizer or chemical should refer to any commercial or manufactured compounds widely utilized in crop production over the past fifty years. When combined with elements in the soil, these substances tend to generate insoluble salts that are harmful to fertility. For instance, superphosphate, ammonium sulphate, calcium cyanimide, nitrate of soda, and such combinations as those popularly labelled, etc., also poisons prays such as the arsenicals. In contrast, ground For limestone For, For dolomite and other forms of natural lime For, For and the ground phosphate rocks For, For which are chemicals For, For strictly For speaking For, For are not to be considered For For chemical For fertilizers For For when we use the term.

Soil bacteria and fungus must work on ploughed under green stuff; to do so, they must consume the available nitrogen. It only takes a little to use up all the nitrogen available in infertile soil, which is why the newly seeded crop suffers. Good harvests result in the next year when the soil microbes die, and their nitrogen-enriched bodies return to the store of fertility reserves. Of course, a layer of green matter will be broken down more or less by an average soil, but more significant crop residues will simply prevent the growth of the subsequent crop, even though they will ultimately enrich the soil. One excellent reason to use composted or predigested organic material is for this.

Only the crop's straw residue is often returned to the soil in the wheat-growing region of eastern Washington. There, it is well known that this practice lowers the production of the following crop. Year after year, the fertility improves to the point where the soil's powers of digestion significantly enhance where it has been appropriately improved with organic composts. This soil has such a vast nitrogen reserve that the bacteria only use a small amount when decomposing new organic matter. It is more than enough for the following crop.

According to Sir Albert Howard, a farmer in Kenya, Africa was so productive that the soil would eat almost anything thrown at it, from a gunny bag to corn Stover. This concept is well-explained by Eve Balfour in The Living Soil:

Cotton wool pads of known weight were buried for four months in untreated Wareham soil (a decrepit, worn-out soil), ordinary forest soil, and Wareham soil + C 5 compost in an experiment meant to quantify this factor. What was left of these pads after the period was dried and weighed again.

In untreated Wareham soil, only 10% of this cellulose had been digested; in woodland soil, the figure was 33.6; but in Wareham soil + compost, the percentage of decomposition was above 90%, according to representative data based on numerous repeats of the experiments.

A soil's digestibility correlates directly with the number of bacteria and other living things.

Chemicals that destroy the beneficial bacterial life lower this power of digestibility and make the soil less fertile.

Chapter: TWO

CONCERNING THE EARTH WORM

The common earthworm plays a crucial role in preserving soil fertility. It breaks up and aerates the soil. Topsoil is actually created by it. Without it, dirt would be comparatively tightly compacted. The plough of nature is the earthworm. It penetrates the soil and maintains it well-aerated, supporting soil bacteria growth. This type of earth's tunnels allows water to seep in rather than run off, keeping the moist conditions required for plant development.

The biologist Charles Darwin published a book titled Vegetable Mould and Earthworms around 1881. It was a summary of the findings of years of research on the role of earthworms in nature's overall system, and it concluded that without the earthworm, vegetation would deteriorate almost to the point of extinction. Unfortunately, when Charles Darwin's name was mentioned, and his book on earthworms stayed nearly untouched on library shelves for more than 50 years, people began to think solely of one subject: evolution.

Darwin claimed that when worms dig their burrows, they swallow a considerable amount of soil and absorb any digestible material that may be there. They also devour other organic debris, including fresh and partially decomposed leaves. To speed up digestion, the leaves are first pulled into the mouths of their burrows at a depth of one to three inches.

Darwin calculated that they consumed more than 10 tones of dry earth per acre per year, which meant that almost all topsoil was treated by them every few years. Wonderful soil cultivators consume microscopic rock particles and finished soil, which they crush and further decrease with their digestive secretions. By quickening the process by which rocks decompose into soil compounds, they aid in creating soil suitable for even the pickiest gardener.

Although they occasionally inhabit soil seven to eight feet below the surface, these tiny creatures primarily work in the top layer of the earth. They transport essential mineral components to the surface, which, when broken down, release necessary nutrients and increase the fertility of the topsoil. This is particularly important in areas where soils have been depleted by monoculture. They aerate the ground, allowing oxygen to reach plant roots. The growth activities of plants could not possibly occur without this oxygen in the soil. Many of our most vital plants are susceptible to illness and become easy prey to disease and insects when there is an oxygen reduction, as with hard-packed soils.

The farmer also finds earthworms valuable since they eliminate the larvae of several toxic insects. An intriguing experiment by the California Earthworm Farms demonstrated the significance of earthworms to plant health. They put earthworm-filled cans with half of the plants inside infected with nematodes. In roughly a year, all the cans where earthworms had been buried exhibited almost a 100% nematode clean-up. In some situations, the situation in the other cans was worse than at the beginning.

In a report presented to the Oregon State Horticultural Society on December 12, 1942, Dean William A. Schoenfeld, Director of Agriculture at Oregon State College, stated:

I have seen earthworms' revitalizing power on permanent pastures while travelling through England and the Continent. These meadows, in some cases, were centuries old. Only lime or marl and manure, both solid and liquid, were used as fertilizer, and they were heavily grazed. I was informed that the meadows' carrying capabilities were far higher than 50 or 100 years ago. Nearlyeveryfarmervisitedgavemuchofthecreditfortheheavieryieldstotheearthworm.

According to British specialists, Earthworm castings reportedly reached around 120 tones per acre during the intense six-month cotton growing season that followed the Nile's overflow. This indicates a population density of 1,500,000 earthworms per acre. The organic material (their food) that the overflowing Nile deposits on the ground enables such a massive number of earthworms to exist. A very robust race with a strong constitution and attractive physical appearance are the Arabs who reside along the Nile's banks. Undoubtedly, one of the critical aspects is their food, which is grown in enriched soil from these castings.

Darwin calculated that on fertile soil, these castings add an average of 1/5 of an inch of topsoil to the surface each year.

The late Sir E. J. Russell, director of the renowned Roth Amsted Agricultural Experiment Station in England, discovered a connection between the application of farmyard manure and the quantity of earthworms in the soil. According to his book, Soil Conditions and Plant Growth, there were only 12,500 earthworms identified per acre in dirt with no manure added, compared to nearly 980,000 where significant volumes of dung were ploughed under. Russell goes on to state in the same book:

"Organic matter is spread throughout the layer in which earthworms operate when working in the soil, but in cool regions where there is little to no mixing, the dead vegetable matter accumulates on the surface.

Becoming a partially decomposed, acidic, peaty mass where typical soil decompositions have not fully occurred."

Where strong chemical fertilizers are employed, earthworms experience unpleasant conditions, and their populations rapidly decline, sometimes to extinction. These soil workers are particularly vulnerable to the harm caused by the fertilizer ammonium sulphate, which farmers widely use. The U.S. Government makes this information known by advocating ammonium sulphate as a method for killing off earthworms in places like greens on golf courses. Following the announcement from Farmer's Bulletin No. I569 sheds some insight on this point:

The results of three years of applying ammonium sulphate to sod on the Department of Agriculture's experimental farm in Arlington, Virginia, for fertilizing purposes, have inadvertently demonstrated that earthworms were removed from the plots where this chemical was employed. This fertilizer creates a strongly acidic environment that is unappealing to the worms and causes them to vanish when applied to naturally neutral or slightly acidic soils.

Many different chemical fertilizers are slowly but surely eradicating the earthworm population. This was demonstrated at the Research Laboratoryat Dornach, Switzerland.

There, studies revealed that earthworms preferred compost-fertilized soil over artificial fertilizer-rich soil and did not prefer it over soil that had not been fertilized. Douse someone with some vinegar to observe the effects of even a moderate acid, such as vinegar, on an earth worm. It will cause in stand death.

Strong insecticides like lime-Sulphur-and-tar-oil, which also contain lead, arsenic, or copper, eliminate mealworms. Earthworms are challenging to discover inside potato-growing areas where these sprays are routinely sprayed into the soil. What's worse