teaming with Microbes - a book review

Currently I'm sitting indoors rather than outside helping our helpers finish the pond as I somehow managed to injure my foot.  Not sure what happened, but it's swollen to the size of a pumpkin and I can't walk any more.  Look away now if you are of a delicate disposition:

As you can see the left foot is much larger than the right one.  The almost funny thing is I know what I can do about it, which is apply a comfrey poultice, only thing the nearest comfrey plant I know of is too far away to hobble to and too difficult to explain to Susan where to find it, as she is a) not the best at plant identification and b) is likely to get lost in the woods trying to find it.  And yes I know, I also have a fungal problem, but I'm already working on a solution for that:  I'm making a salve made from field marigold, curry plant and St. John's Wort, which should help.  More of that in another post soon.

But talking about fungi, this leads us neatly into our next subject: a book review on the above book, 'Teaming with Microbes - The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web' by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis, since I don't have anything else much to do at the moment.  I did threaten a post on soil science the last time around and that is what this book is about.

Note the pun in the title, the authors are trying to explain how healthy garden soil is not only full of life, but that we should work in cooperation with that life to create a healthier environment for our garden plants.  The book is divided into 2 parts: 1. The Basic Science and 2. Applying Soil Food Web Science to Yard and Garden Care.

Part one was maybe surprisingly the far more interesting part, because by understanding the underlying science you can come to your own conclusions, which, as in my case, may lead you to different conclusions than to those propagated by the author.  The book begins with an explanation why understanding the soil food web is important. 

In general we tend to think of food chains as a kind of pyramid, where the top predator sits at the top of the food chain, but of course, it is much more complex than that, both above ground or within the soil.  Much smaller parasites eat big predators from within, parasitic fungi eat live nematodes or plants, etc, so it makes much more sense to think of the interrelationships between different life forms as a web, where everything tries to get it's sustenance from wherever it is available.  It's a fungus eat nematode world out there, a constant feeding frenzy.  Apparently one single teaspoon of healthy soil has more than a billion lifeforms present in it.  It's a world we have yet to explore properly, which is as alien to us as outer space or the deep sea.

Yet we depend on this soil life in highly complex ways.  The first part goes on to describe the various forms of soil life, each in their own chapter.  Plants deliberately excrete sugars to attract the smalles forms of life, bacteria and fungi, to their roots.  Plants need these life forms to make what they need to feed on available to them.  The most famous example of course is the way legumes attract nitrogen fixing bacteria, which form nodules around the roots.  Nitrogen is ingested by bacteria directly from the atmosphere, which is also why it is important that a quarter of the soil's composition consists of nothing but air.  As these bacteria get ingested by other life forms, the nitrogen is released into the soil through excretion and becomes thus available to plants.  It is important that all parts of the soil food web stay in tact and in balance, for these processes to happen.

Fungi also play an important role as they can break down more complex organic matter and break it down.  Their rhizomes can also travel for literally miles to get to food sources quite some distance away, unlike bacteria, who rarely travel far.  Dying rhizomes create small channels in the soil full of decomposed organic matter, which also let water and air penetrate the soil.  Other notable members of the soil food web each with their own chapter in the book, include algae and slime molds (I particularly liked the example of the slime mold that gangs up as a colony looking like a puddle of dog vomit and moving across your driveway at the speed of 1cm an hour),

 

 

protozoa (incl. amoeba aka jelly babies),

Nematodes (not all nematodes are bad!)

Arthropods, i.e. your more visible bugs and insects and other creepy crawlies, earthworms, your most visible sign of soil health, i.e. the more the better, gastropods, i.e. snails and slugs (yes they do have an iportant role to play, as long as they are part of a balanced system),  and finally the bigger animals, such as birds mammals and reptiles.  as you can see the book boasts some impressive microscopic photos, which may or may not give you bad dreams tonight.

The overall conclusion is that each part of the soil food web plays an important role in supporting plant life and you mess with it at your peril.  Whilst many of us regard fungi as a nuisance as they attack our crops in the form of leaf curl disease on peaches, botrytis on our grapes or other fungal diseases, applying fungicide, even one considered safe by organic farmers such as Bordeaux mixture (copper sulphate and lime, the blue stuff everybody seems to spray on their vines and tomatoes) destroys all fungal life, poisons the soil and breaks an important link in the soil food web.  Also adding liqud nitrogen feed has a long term negative effect.  Whilst initially plants will grow better, it also destroys or at least severely damages the soil food web.  In both cases you create a dependency having to constantly re-apply those substances and in the process making the soil poorer.

The authors also argue that tilling and double digging has a severely negative effect on the soil life, especially on the fungal rhizomes, which act like the communication web of a healthy soil.  Theses mile long rhizomes get disconnected and distroyed, leading eventually to compaction and therefore again, leading to extra work again as the soil needs to be dug over again year after year.  The life that lives in the soil is perfectly capable of doing the job for us if we only let it.

The second part of the book then deals with practical solutions by setting up 19 rules to using the soil food web, using just 3 tools.  I don't agree fully with their conclusions.  The 3 tools to create and work with the soil food web according to the authors are: composting, mulching and applying compost teas.  As for composting, they give you the usual compost recipes.  Whilst I agree that, if you make a compost pile you need to mix 'green', nitrogen rich materials (such as freshly cut grass and kitchen wastes) with 'brown' waste (such as old leaves and woody wastes), I am off building compost heaps as a major tool.  The reasons for me are thus:

1.  Producing a compost heap at one corner of your yard, then involves transporting the final compost to where you need it, which partyicularly in my case with our steep land, involves considerable effort.  Not to mention the effort of regularly turning your compost.  
2. While turning the compost and transporting it around, you disturb the soil food web you have created, thus going against the principles the authors advocate.
3. If I produce a compost I use whatever happens to be at hand rather than following some sort of recipe, which depends on specific materials being available and possibly necessitating importing materials to get the 'correct' balance.

What I do instead most of the time, as I have many gaps in raised beds as it is, I simply fill these raised beds with any organic matter which happens to be available.  The authors also advice against the use of any animal or human manure.  I on the other hand succesfully use donkey manure, which effectively is the same as horse manure, which has a good nitrogen balance and occasionally throw it on top of a pile of other organic materials and plant straight into it.  I have done this on the raised terraced beds for my tomatoes during last winter and now have the most wonderfully rich, mosture attentive soil where those exceptionally healthy tomatoes grow.  If I find myself with spare compost in the future (at the moment I'm busy filling in beds left, right and centre), I shall make myself a wormery, which is one of the most effective and fast ways of producing rich compost.

Mulching on the other hand is nature's way of adding organic matter to the soil.  As you add mulch, it encourages beneficial fungi and bacteria.  Worms will drag down some of the material into the soil and mix it in.  Apart from that it of course suppresses weeds and minimises evaporation, meaning you need to water less.

For the compost teas, this is something I should try in the future.  The authors advocate a method of Actively aerated compost teas (AACT).  This involves some equipment to blow bubbles through some water with some compost added to it, which means extraction of the good bacteria and fungi is very quick and non-smelly.  These teas are not only applied to the soil, but also sprayed onto foliage, strengthening the whole system and making it more resilient against harmful diseases and pests.  Once I get around making one of those I shall write about it in a bit more detail.

Interesting also were the points made about the different preferences of different plants as to the symbiosises.. symbiosae symb... which parts of the soil food web they like to associate with.  There are two basic types: bacterially dominated and fungally dominated.  The bacteria are always the first to join any feeding frenzy, followed by fungi, who take a little longer to establish themselves.  Most annual plants prefer a bacterially dominated soil, whilst perennials prefer a fungally dominated soil.  That makes perfect sense again if you just observe nature.  Pioneer species, such as the legumes, form relationships with nitrogen fixing bacteria, whilst of you look at a mature forest with long-lived trees... where is it that you find mushrooms? 

So this is useful information for my bed building again.  If you remember in my last post I was building a raised bed, where I am planning to plant perennials.  We build it up using mainly brown materials, including whole branches and old leaves.  These encourage a fungally dominated soil.  I even threw in an old tree mushroom, to speed up the process.  For your annuals on the other hand you should add plenty of green manure for them to flourish.  My tomato beds also include some chicken manure which is rich in nitrogen.

On a final note on the book, they dedicate a whole chapeter on lawn maintenance.  That seemed to me a bit of a waste of time.  I don't think a lawn has any place in an ecologically balanced garden, as you constantly try and stop it doing what it wants to do, i.e. evolve into a forest.  But all in all this is a really useful, well written and easily understandable book, which I can heartily recommend.  Anybody out there short on money like myself, I do have the e-version on my hard drive and be happy to share it with anybody who wants it.

Finally, the pond really is taking shape now.  Yesterday, already with an injured foot, we constructed the raised bed below the pond, which will be home to some soft fruit bushes:

It's about 5m long and will be filled up with predominantly brown materials.  The pond itself is almost ready.  It just needs another fott depth and some terracing within to give different levels of depth:

 and from above we diverted the way the water comes down into a little feeder channel, so rain water drains into the pond:

Now I just need my foot to get better...

Book Review: The Moneyless Man by Mark Boyle

I very occasionally do a book review on this, so today I have felt moved to do one again.  I have been following the exploits of Mark Boyle for a wee while.  He has been in all the papers as the mad man who had decided to go without any money for one year.  It immediately caught my attention, partially because we live virtually moneyless ourselves and was wondering how he managed to completely avoid it and on the other hand because the subject of money has been one that has always puzzled me (as can be read on a previous post of mine) and Mark having a degree in economics clearly must be more knowledgable on the subject than me.

First of all I should tell you how I managed to get hold of a copy of this book.  I did ask the man himself for a free copy, from one moneyless man to an almost moneyless man type thing.  He said in principal yes except he didn't have any money to send it to Italy.  Makes sense of course, just testing... ;)  So my bloggy friend Laura of the French Country Challenge very kindly ordered me a copy for my birthday.  Thank you Laura.  In the meantime it has come to my attention that another friend has actually ordered me a copy too.  If and when that arrives, I have at least one copy free to whoever would like it.  Unlike Mark I think I could spare a little for postage.

Right enough of all that, what's the book all about then, I hear you ask.  Below read the very first paragraph of the book:

From the onset I knew I was going to like this book.  Mark describes his experiences of his first year of living moneyless and outlines his reasons why he did it.  I say his first year, which was the original intended period he had set himself as a sort of social experiment, but today in fact he has just completed his second year and has no intention of quitting.

The really refreshing thing about the book is that nowhere does he claim to be certain that his way is the right or correct way or even the only way of living.  He states his main reason for renouncing money as, that it separates the human being from what (s)he consumes.  Thus it makes us unaware of the real impact of what we consume.  In other words we consume something and when it's broke we throw it away and buy a new one.  If we had to make this item ourselves, we'd learn very quickly to keep things going as long as possible.  Or as Mark put it: if you had to clean your own water, you sure as hell wouldn't crap into it.

I can relate to this.  Take the example of the olive oil we pressed a few days ago.  Pure costs were something like €30 for petrol and the same for pressing.  Add to that 3 people putting in an estimated combined 80 (wo)man hours in at say a paltry €5 an hour that would result in a price per litre of  €23!  That's expensive oil!  Whilst I was a bit disappointed at the low yield this year, I have a real sense of achievement and I know the real value of this oil.  It wasn't a moneyless transaction in my case, but the principal applies here too.  I could have gone to the supermarket and buy a €2.99 bottle

In the early parts of the book Mark shows that he has an economics degree, when he describes some of the more ridiculous problems with the current economic systems.  One of the more interesting facts, which I eerily had read somewhere else on the same day is the practice of fractional reserve banking.  When I wrote my history of money I had no idea this unbelievable practice exists, but it essentially means - now hold on to your seats if you are an economic greenhorn like me - that the banks basically make up the money the lend you as they go along.  yes, as in make-belief.  It's true!  95% of money DOES NOT EXIST!

Mark gave a nice simple explanation how this works, so even dim lights like me can understand this:  Mr. Jones deposits 100 moneys with Mr. Bank.  Mr. Smith comes along and wants to borrow 90 moneys from Mr. Bank.  With this he goes to Mrs. Baker to buy bread.  Mrs. Baker then deposits the 90 moneys with Mr. Bank.  How much money does Mr. Bank now have?  100 or 190?  According to their books 190.  And what happens if Mr. Smith can't pay back his loan and Mr. Jones and Mrs. Baker want to withdraw their money?  That's the mess the world economiy finds itself in now!

What I want to know is, if the banks have just made up the money they've lent me, surely I don't have to repay them money that didn't exist in the first place?  Or I could make it up myself and pay them back with Monopoly money?

Anyway, I digress.  Whilst the book is not exactly a how-to guide, Mark has added some practical tips, some of which I shall try out in due course.  He tells us how to make a rocket stove:

Must look out for a couple of oil tins to build one of those on our land.  He also tells us how to make paper and ink from mushrooms:

He makes toothpaste from cuttlefish bones and fennel seeds.  Now I don't know where I'd find a cuttlefish bone, but I added fennel seeds to my latest batch of homemade tooth paste. 

Mark keeps saying he went into this experiment being essentially unskilled, however he is putting himself down there.  The skill that has made his experiment such a success and has brought him international fame (which I don't think he was seeking in particular...) is his boundless energy and enthusiasm.  He managed to organise a free festival for over a thousand people with 3 weeks notice, feeding them, entertaining them and all, whilst simutaneously holding dozens of interviews.  If what he writes is true (he may have made it all up of course...) he slept just 5 hours a night, sometimes less.  Hat off to him for that, I couldn't manage it.

The other area that took my interest was what Mark calls skipping.  Now before you all start hopping around, he means raiding supermarket skips for perfectly good food thrown out because it had simply run out of date, or the packaging is slightly damaged.  Considering the many tons of food that get thrown away each year, Mark says it's not only not a slightly seedy activity rummaging through bins, but a civic duty to liberate perfectly good food from landfills. 

I have had a short stint working for a small chain of convenience stores in London and I remember very well how it broke my heart to see sackfulls of food being written off on a daily basis.  All my lunches during that time consisted of out of date food.  I shall have a look at skips around us more from now on.  It would solve sourcing many foods that I can't grow myself and maybe a few freshish morsels of meat for Eddie, the Beagle if nothing else.

I heartily recommend anyone who is serious about "green living" to read this book.  It's a good read, not in any way schoolmasterly and it may give you some ideas on how you can make changes in your life that really matter.  There are compomises along the way, which Mark admits.  The royalties for his book are going into a trustfund to buy a plot of land to start a moneyless village, where people can come to (for free of course) to learn how to live moneyless.  Or simply to try it out for a while.

I have an eye on a plot of land myself, with a clean river, enough land to support a small community, a number of mature fruit trees, possibilities to expand and planning permission.  It's even on the market.  If ever we come into money (and we may) we could buy ourselves into complete freedom.  Mark has done it, just an ordinary guy from Donegal, so why not me... or you for that matter.