Our Good Earth: The Future Rests on Soil Beneath our Feet

[Whitney]

I haven't read all of this yet but found the first couple pages interesting.  It's basically about how current farming practices are destorying the soil and if we don't fix the soil we'll run out of farmlands.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/ ... /mann-text

[Jolly Sapper]

This premise is supported by a lot of the small farmer magazines that the wifey reads.

[Graham]

Cutting your lawn is also bad for soil as is pretty much anything else humans do. (especially fertilize). But growing and maintaining a lawn is really harmful because you kill off all the natural species of plants and replace them with one. Then you trim that plant to keep it from growing. That way the soil remains at the same stage. What's natural is lichens and mosses breaking down rocks, grass taking over the lichens and moss, then larger plants or "weeds", next shrubs and small trees, then large trees and finally a forest. After 100s of years the forest burns down and regrows again. (The whole breaking down rock to complex forest takes about 500 years) Until that point each plant that is taken over by another contributes to soil gain extracting nutrients from the air, rain, the dead plants and animals. I say fertilizing is bad because by using fertilizers you are taking nutrients from another place and adding it to a place where it may no occur naturally. Look up "The Tragedy of the Commons" by Garrett Hardin if your interested. I might have more to say if it comes back to me. But thanks for bring this up. This is what I'm really into.

[Jolly Sapper]

Cutting your lawn is also bad for soil as is pretty much anything else humans do. (especially fertilize). But growing and maintaining a lawn is really harmful because you kill off all the natural species of plants and replace them with one. Then you trim that plant to keep it from growing.

I've read a book ( it came with my scythe) that argued that grasses are an interesting species of plant because cutting the blades of the grasses tends to promote growth of the plant.  Though, my scythe doesn't mow the grass to the dirt like a lawnmower can, which does do a lot more harm than good.

That way the soil remains at the same stage. What's natural is lichens and mosses breaking down rocks, grass taking over the lichens and moss, then larger plants or "weeds", next shrubs and small trees, then large trees and finally a forest. After 100s of years the forest burns down and regrows again. (The whole breaking down rock to complex forest takes about 500 years) Until that point each plant that is taken over by another contributes to soil gain extracting nutrients from the air, rain, the dead plants and animals. I say fertilizing is bad because by using fertilizers you are taking nutrients from another place and adding it to a place where it may no occur naturally. Look up "The Tragedy of the Commons" by Garrett Hardin if your interested. I might have more to say if it comes back to me. But thanks for bring this up. This is what I'm really into.

I'd imagine that some of the problem caused by "fertilizers" are that its just an inert medium with an overly high concentration of like three or four chemicals.  I think Potassium, Phosphorous, Nitrogen are the big three that cause problems by burning out the soil, killing off the bacteria in the soil, and over promoting algae growth when fertilizer runoff leads to streams/rivers/lakes.

I've yet to see composted goat/horse manure burn out anything the wifey and I've tried to grow around the yard while I've seen pastures that have had uncomposted chicken manure (from the many industrial chicken farms around here) turn a field of lush green grasses into a field of dead brown grasses.

[Graham]

I don't see why you would need to promote the growth of grass when you're not allowing it to grow. The grass will produce seeds closer to the ground and will not spread far from the mother plant. I say if it doesn't mimic a natural process it should only be done when needed. Even a herd of buffalo wouldn't eat an entire field in one day of grazing. The closest natural process to mimic cultivation is glaciation. But it isn't so much the grass that I'm worried about it's the fact that there are endangered species of plants that are having their native land taken from them.

As for fertilization it is the land that the fertilizers have been taking from. It's just like us we eat food from who knows where. Our waste goes down the toilet with fresh water to sit in a reserve and break down far from where it should be. Where in nature an animal will eat grass, berries or whatever then dispose the waste of it somewhere nearby. In a field all the nutrients are cut off and then taken away. That's why they use fertilizers because all the nutrients have left with the grain trucks. So by fertilizing you are disrupting two areas natural processes.

Yeah, I've used goat manure before it works great. As for chickens it might be what they were eating in the industrial farms. They could have been on drugs. But you might have to look into how a chicken digests it's food.

I hope you see my point a bit clearer now I know I'm not that great at stating my point. lol. I understand if you don't agree with me because I know everyone depends on farming for food.

[PaintmePlum]

I can't say that I have a vast knowledge of this issue, so I'm not really going to add anything of major importance, but I do work at a plant nursery and have since I was 16. I just wanted to add that on a daily basis I get to see people come in every day to buy a chemical to remedy this and remedy that....it gets depressing after awhile. The more they try to fix the problem, they bigger the problem they create. It's very scary how many numerous chemical products on the shelves today that are suppose to be "cure-alls" from fungus, to grubs, to iron deficiencies...long gone are the days when I trusted any of them. Now I just stick with the organic stuff...and only when I desperately need it. So yeah, less a contribution, more of a vent lol...

[Tom62]

When I left my old house in Darmstadt, my garden was no longer a garden but a jungle. In fact I should have contacted Greenpeace to protect the unique natural ecosystem that I'd created. Yes, one of the things I hate most in life is gardening. I also tend forget to water plants. The only type of plant that would have any survival chances inside my apartment would therefore be a cactus.