lee wrote on Jun 1
st, 2019 at 3:44pm:
PZ547 wrote on Jun 1
st, 2019 at 3:21pm:
In Secrets of the Soil, Thompkins details how European farmers for eons have filled cows' horns with cow dung and buried them in a certain position at certain phases of the moon. They remain buried for x-months and afterwards, a small amount of the by then 'ambrosiac' contents of the cows' horns added to water and spread over the land results in greatly increased crop yields and soil fertility
When I was young we put cow dung in a disused bath and "drowned" it. The liquid was eventually used for fertiliser and then when the cow dung completely broken down was spread on the roses.
It all depends on how much the processes can be upscaled.
Peter Tompkins wrote The Secret Life of Plants back in the day. He put sensitive thingos on plants then approached them with a lit match and dumped shrimp into boiling water in close proximity to plants. In these and other instances, the thingos registered plant faintings, shock, etc. He was denounced by the 'scientific community' as a charlatan of course
today and probably long before Tompkins' time, it was known that plants and trees communicate. They warn each other of impending disasters, plagues of insects, etc.
A lot goes on beneath our noses, or maybe some of us are vaguely aware
The business with the cows' horns involves 'planting' them in a certain direction at a particular phase of the moon, certain season, etc. Then they're left for a prescribed length of time. When removed from the ground, the stinky cow poo has been transformed to what has been described as 'ambrosia'
I have the book here but too lazy right now to find it. Read it years ago. When the transformed cow poo is added to water it's stirred. Some people sing a type of chant to it. The stirring is conducted in a manner passed down and it differs from family to family. But from what I remember, it's so many stirs to the right. Then with a flourish, the stirring direction is reversed. This is repeated x-times and walla --- magic brew
The Black Forest was dying. maybe still is. Someone knew or learned about rock-dust magic and when passing a quarry, spotted tons of rock-dust just going to waste. He bought some and spread it around dying trees in the Black Forest. Time passed and he kept his eye on it. After a few months it was discovered that the dying trees were rejuvenated and new growth was sprouting -- all in the area where he'd spread the rock dust. He approached the government with evidence and said for not a lot of money, rock dust could be spread throughout the dying sections of forest. This was agreed upon, but then for some reason i can't remember, the government pulled the plug
book went on to discuss someone living in one the US inhospitable regions. A couple living there had created a garden of eden from barren, depleted dirt, by using rock dust. Sounds contradictory but it must mean the rock dust contains minerals washed out of standing dirt
The biochar interests me a lot and brought to mind an article recently which said in Canberra, biofuel/energy is being extracted from buried landfill. I posted the article here a couple of weeks ago
it also reminded me of when they were breaking down and remaking the Gold Coast. When they planned to create a new development, they bulldozed everything standing, set it alight then dozed dirt and mud over the top. It caused a problem as it turned out because a lot of the big trees continued to smoulder beneath the dirt. On the surface everything looked fine. At Palm Waters Gardens they built several nice looking homes which were prizes in the Mater Prize Homes lotteries, from memory. Several years later, the local paper ran a series of exposes because the prize homes were subsiding, had big cracks through the walls, etc. It was because the big trees had left voids after they'd finished slowly burning away underground. Guess the soil beneath those developments would have become biochar
Here in Oz, we could create biochar to supplement our meagre arable soil. All we'd need in addition to biological waste would be the Amazonian worms they mention in the links. Freedom from chemicals
for those lacking land to experiment, biochar can be purchased, I discovered (am planning to buy some). But imagine what someone with a few acres could do. Bit by bit, we could turn this country into the world's food basket. We could create forests of precious woods -- anything we put our minds to