Humans can figure out a lot given enough time. While all the hype for us is finance, management, machines, electronics and software etc it is not unthinkable a previous civilization went all in on soil. Terra Preta seems to be quite sophisticated.
South America was pretty advanced. The oldest evidence we have of widespread metallurgy comes from the tip of South America around approximately 5000 BC. Which predates metallurgy in Eurasia by thousands of years. Copper smelting was particularly important
On the ecological side, some anthropologists argued that humans actually played a major role in transitioning Amazonia from mostly grasslands to the rainforest it is today around 10,000 years ago.
The distribution of many plant species is inexplicable without looking at human settlement patterns. So much so that other anthropologists have called the Amazon a "manufactured landscape".
you can also say the Saharan desert played a major role on turning what Amazon is...
now, wow, calling it a grassland before humans 10,000 years ago is to smoke too much pot before reading/making papers. 5,000,000 AD then yes, maybe... /s but Terra Preta and other indigenous interferences is not even 10% of Amazon territory. various other animals are responsible for spreading diversity be it by shitting seed or just moking stuff around to make nests or impress some partner. the rainforest are also there because mountains changing courses of rivers.
This is common knowledge. Even the Wikipedia page states:
> There is evidence that there have been significant changes in the Amazon rainforest vegetation over the last 21,000 years through the last glacial maximum (LGM) and subsequent deglaciation.
> The oldest evidence we have of widespread metallurgy comes from the tip of South America around approximately 5000 BC. Which predates metallurgy in Eurasia by thousands of years.
There are archaeological finds in Europe dating smelting in the region back as early as 5500 BC.
Terra Preta is noble savage fiction [1] created because charcoal stains the soil quite deep. (Similar to how the OP 'spotlight' is mostly fiction)
Biochar enthusiasts show the staining in soil cutouts after a few years.
I do a lot of biochar (100+ liters a week) but it has mixed results in the scientific journals, meta studies don't show a lot of improvement.
[1] The Amazonian cutting down of forests and burning it for quick release of nutrients works, but unless a third of your babies die you will run out of forest.
I started my gardening adventure with vegetables in pots. It was perfect, plants gave amazing yield, but required too detailed care and attention every day (or sometimes 2-3 times a day in a hot dry summer day). When I have moved to planting in soil I was shocked how worse the plants are doing. Same tomatoes giving 10-15 kg per plant yield in pots were under 3kg in soil. They got more disease issues, more pests (slugs and snails!).
After talking to fellow natural hobby farmers I realized the soil quality was garbage (lack of earth worms and insects), and there were severe drainage and water holding issues: weirdly the soil didn't hold water but it drained way too slow too. So, ehen it rained it was swamped for days but when it got dry none of that water stayed at the top 1 meters of the soil. I'm lucky to find amazing help from local natural farmers, so I got natural green compost (no animal products/byproducts). I have been introduced to no-dig farming too. So first year I started by applying 20cm thick compost on top soil, after putting a layer of old paper boxes against weeds. Then planted my seedlings on these, with worm poop and for some phosphate loving plants bat guano as fertilizers around the plants, topping of with hemp mulch and cacao shell mulch as topping. When this soil has sunken enough, topped off with 2-3 cm compost and mulched again. I have sprinkled insect friendly flowers to attract insects too. This was an amazing succes with not only plants flourishing, fighting diseases much better and resulting in an amazing yield. I didn't need to water as often as before (4x less frequent than before in the soil, 8x less frequent than in the pot). After year 3 I stopped all fertilization and introduced cover crops that could be used as mulch and fertilizer at the same time.
This process though is not linear. I still have plants which are not successful at all. I can grow juicy tasty watermelons in a northern European country but no parsnips or carrots or cauliflowers yet. This is what I love though, I'm interacting with a living microbiome rather than executing lab experiments. Failures are keeping it interesting and improving learning.
I had the opposite experience. I had rented a house that had an empty patch of dirt and asked the landlord if we could plant some vegetables there (which I didn't have a lot of experience in). My older neighbor saw me and said that we had great soil in our neighborhood but I didn't really think about it. The vegetables grew amazingly well, we had way too many tomatoes and tons of broccoli that kept growing back and more. I barely took any care with it after planting, other than very sporadic watering and harvesting.
The next year we moved from that house to a new place, where we couldn't plant directly in the ground but the landlord was happy for us to use pots and planters. I eagerly planted my broccoli again thinking we'd have the same endless supply... but this time it barely produced anything and looked nothing like the last year. I bought some kind of soil bags from the gardening store after asking an employee which would be good for vegetable pots and planters. Something about the pots or the soil or otherwise made a gigantic difference even though we had moved probably less than a mile distance wise.
I'm a very amateur gardener so I may have made some other mistakes, but I think I treated the plants very similarly both years.
This makes sense as pots require very high precision of soil composition and water management. You need good drainage but a water reservoir under the pots with some kind of wick to keep it watering from the bottom. Also the size of the pot you need is huge compared to your intuition. A single tomato plant requires more than 100L of soil, 30% of which should be perlite, you need some pebbles for better drainage mixed in, and more than 50% should be compost. This often isn't enough for a tomato, so you need to add slow release fertilizers at different levels of soil. In a warm day (> 30C) you need to give 5L of water in the morning and in the evening. The water should stay in the pot but not flood it. Ah, also, they cannot handle cold as good as in soil either. So the pots should be moved indoors when it's too cold, and require shielding from a lot of wind.
If you prepare the pot, soil etc properly, you can get good results. It's very repeatable as it's a very precise recipe. If you put potting soil in a pot randomly it won't work at all.
A properly selected variety adapted to your climate needs both less soil, less water and and a lot less maintenance (still daily care but nothing crazy).
Interesting that you mentioned compost without animal products, then bat guano. Isn't guano harvesting fairly unsustainable and damaging to bat colonies?
When you say that you put a layer of old paper boxes against weeds, does that mean you put the broken down boxes first, and the put the compost on the top? If so, were the seedlings able to sink their roots through the paper boxes and go deeper into the ground?
I just put them dry, not broken, and overlapping between the boxes such that they cover the surface fully. And yes, the roots can go down, but weeds cannot go past that easily. The theory is yhe upwards growth is weak but downwards growth of the roots are much stronger and they can puncture a wet paper box.
Cover crops: clover, buckwheat and winter rye. Cut before seeding and lay them flat over the surface.
Just to clear up what sounds like a simple misunderstanding, because you mentioned being in Europe: in the US (can’t speak for other English speaking countries) to “break down” box is to flatten it, not break it like to destroy or tear apart. As in “help me break down these boxes for recycling”.
Forgive me if you got that, it just sounded like you were talking past each other.
I could see this being the reason your carrots didn't grow well though. If the carrots tap root struggles a bit through the cardboard it could mess up devlopment. I think this is why they say not to transplant carrots. The tap root bottoms out quickly and struggles to recover.
Cardboard doesn’t last long when it’s wet, but long enough to smoother the plants beneath it. There’s something about it that attracts the fungi that break down wood fiber. And the continuous surface allows it to spread quickly.
We use a Lomi to convert our organic waste into compost I can add to my worm farm
and then from the worm farm, mix with outdoor soil and grow in that. A automated a flood and drain system with our fish and cultivate nitrogen fixing bacteria with that, and water the plants with this water every couple of days.
Using these two approaches I have not had to buy any nutrients in years and our soil is doing well.
Why get an electric powered gadget made of plastic and proprietary soft/hardware that will 100% for sure end in a dump in less than 20 years when all you need is a good ol compost bin?
Lomi doesn't really "compost" your scraps, it dehydrates and grinds them. The actual compost activity happens (on an accelerated timeline, due to the pre-processing) in the soil you amend with your Lomi "compost." It's good marketing though
Space is the main reason. We live in the city and the amount of organic waste we (family of 4 + numerous pets) produce is staggering. additionally meat attracts animals. This I run an overnight cycle and I can add it to my compost heap and let it degrade more and no issues with rodents and other animals who dig through food waste. after using this device, in the future I would always grind/break up my organic waste as fine as possible just to save space.
I was originally pretty skeptical of the Lomi as well after seeing this very same video. But my friend got us one and we have been using it for a while now. Sure, it has the same parts as a breadmaker, and it's mostly just drying out and cutting down the organic material into more useful sizes, exactly like he says, but when you put in the enzymes and have it run its dirt cycle it does actually produce meaningfully good compost all with much lower footprint a garden composting setup. I'm not sure I'd pay to buy one new, but but it's not a scam.
Just remember that any positive effect you might achieve by a lifetime of composting is grossly negated by the production, usage, and inevitable way to the landfill of this thing. Startups like these are part of the problem, not the solution.
Just throw your scrapes and buy compost then, it'll be cheaper and easier. The city already transforms bio waste in gas and compost anyways, and much more efficiently than what you can do at home given the scale.
This is another "I'm doing my part" gimmick that solves literally nothing when you look under the hood
it allows us to get all our organic and bio plastic waste for a big family with pets, including most bones once we have cooked stock from it, in a compost heap in the city.
we tried composting before and the volume of organic waste we produced was too much and we had to dispose a lot of our waste in general trash (our location has no organic waste disposal that runs in our neighborhood) meant animals ripped our curb side bags open.
I am not a degrowther to save the planet either, so a company putting compostable products in place of plastic ones seems like good economic activity.
That was a great read. This is what I hope to achieve too. I know what you mean about some crops that won’t grow at all, for me, it’s carrots. They are never more than a couple of centimetres long. Deeply frustrating. I’ve tried lots, including making the soil loose, making it compact, adding sand, etc.
Also Aloe Vera, absolutely the most frustrating house plants I’ve ever had.
Why do you find Aloe Vera frustrating? I mean, it grows quickly and requires very little maintenance. I suppose that could be seen as "frustrating" in the sense that it needs to be divided or thinned out regularly.
Typical problem with aloe is overwatering. And modern potting soil often is loaded with sphagnum, which stays wet too long, and then when it dries it becomes hydrophobic so watering the plant doesn’t wet the entire soil.
> project to assess soil erosion and degradation in vineyards using geographical mapping systems and artificial intelligence (AI). ... AI helps me to design and polish the software codes that I use
Is this describing use of something like GitHub copilot?
It’s not a feeling. Getting grants requires following whatever hype trend is popular at the moment.
Savvy academics know this and respond accordingly. Whether it’s AI (now) or DEI stuff (until recently), they add the required little sections and play the game.
I don't know about the "hidden ingredient", but...
When I lived in upstate NY our house was on property that had been a glacial lakebed. The soil was a bit sandy, if anything too well drained, but adding lots of leaf mold -- we had more than enough maple trees -- made it retain water adequately, and things grew well.
When it came time to move, we sold the house to a pair of doctors who were moving up from Texas. One of them was just so enthusiastic about how good the soil was, and about the big piles of partially decomposed leaves we had, compared to the terrible clay soil they had down there. So if nothing else, good soil can help property values.
Odd that an article on healthy soil completely ignores the major health risk from growing food in regions with a long history of industry and mining, eg most of Europe, northeastern USA, etc. - Heavy metal contamination with species like lead, mercury, cadmium etc. There's a huge literature on the subject, but real-world monitoring is pretty light, certainly doesn't look standard:
>"Freslyn Mae, Camata, and Ryna Mae, Capurcos, and Eula Marie, Delino, and Gecelene, Estorico, (2025) Assessing the Sources and Risks of Heavy Metals in Agricultural Soils: A Comprehensive Review. International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology"
We’ve gone through rounds of working out if the leafy vegetables absorb the heavy metals or if it’s mostly in the dust and last I read we’re back to the latter.
White vinegar is better at cleaning vegetables than so called vegetable soaps, and more importantly the acid dissolves soot and heavy metals.
Gallon bottles of white vinegar are cheap. It’s also good for laundry especially if you have hard water, or a humid climate. Some people put it in the rinse cycle for their dishwasher as well, instead of rinse aid which is hell on your intestines.
> We’ve gone through rounds of working out if the leafy vegetables absorb the heavy metals or if it’s mostly in the dust and last I read we’re back to the latter.
It depends. For leafy vegetables it makes sense that dust > soil. However we find more lead and antimony in corn grown in proximity to highways.. this is clearly from road runoff taken up by the plant through the soil . We also find arsenic in brown rice and other crops again taken up through the soil because these soils are heavily contaminated from past arsenic-bearing pesticide use
But, dust/ topicals also matter. There is a reason fruits with thick skins like avocados, pineapple, melon, kiwi, always find themselves on the "Clean 15" list every year- because they are testing the flesh of the fruit, which is protected from topical pesticides by the skins. But I eat the kiwi skins sometimes...or make tea with the pineapple rinds... which people usually don't... and am guessing that they are a lot worse than the flesh.
I'm a gardening and landscaping enjoyer, but I am constantly confused about the bordering magical thinking surrounding dirt, among other aspects of growing things.
If you look at hydroponics/aeroponics, plants basically need water, light, and fertilizer (N (nitrogen) P (phosphorous) K (potassium), and a few trace minerals). It can be the most synthetic process you've ever seen, and the plants will grow amazingly well.
The other elements regarding soil health, etc, would be much better framed in another way, rather than as directly necessary for plant health. The benefits of maintaining a nice living soil is that it makes the environment self-sustaining. You could just dump synthetic fertilizer on the plant, with some soil additives to help retain the right amount of drainage/retention, and it would do completely fine. But without constant optimal inputs, the plants would die.
If you cultivate a nice soil, such that the plants own/surrounding detritus can be broken down effectively, such that the nutrients in the natural processes can be broken down and made available to the plant, and the otherwise nonoptimal soil texture characteristics could be brought to some positive characteristics by those same processes, then you can theoretically arrive at a point that requires very few additional inputs.
The reason chemical fertilizers work is because they provide minerals that a plant might normally trade sugars to fungi to get. So those sugars stay in the plant making larger fruits, nuts, or legumes.
But the problem is you also get water and early/late season sugars exchanged between plants (Simard et al).
So within a generation the soil structure has collapsed, you’re at the whim of every microdrought, and you’re dealing with the Red Queen problem. But like drugs, at first it feels amazing.
> dirt
Dirt isn’t much better than hydroponics. Soil is. Conventional farming has been described by some as “hydroponics in dirt”. That’s why it’s so fertilizer dependent, just like hydro.
There are a few places in the world where there is insufficient phosphorous in the native rock to grow plants without fertilizer. But everywhere else, healthy soil fungi could mine it out of the sand in the soils. If they were left to grow instead of burned to death with herbicides and fertilizers.
great post. I posted in this thread above about using a Lomi to convert our organic waste into organic fertilizer (along with a worm farm), a and cultivating nitrogin fixing bacteria with our outdoor fish pond and a flood and drain system.
Soil is great to grow in, if you treat it well.
I will say that my only problem with Simard is that she anthropomorphizes the fungi and the behaviors she documented could just as easily be explained by osmotic pressure. Chemicals in a solution of water have “fairness” built into them. The broker doesn’t need to have a strategy for exchange, just siphon off a finder’s fee for making the introductions. The magic is low friction channels that can move solutions over a long (for a single celled organism) distance. That’s magic enough for any kingdom of life.
Sugary sap? Water will enter and sugars flow out. High nitrogen content? Same same.
Maybe it’s because I started with hydroponics. I don’t get the fascination with soil or animosity about hydroponics being unnatural. People do vastly underestimate what it takes to create a good soil mixture, though. In the end, you’re suspending nutrients in a substrate for the plants to uptake regardless of how you go about providing them.
There are also enzymes and secondary metabolites relevant to plant health associated with microbiome and ecological chains in healthy soil that go beyond the regenerative macronutrient cycles. If you try to grow edible fruits you'll notice flavor loss as a result of hydroponic / synthetic methods.
Next door neighbor to this: I read someone who had a theory that dwarfed plants were also part of the nutrient and flavor reductions in modern grocery fare.
The model they presented was that the plant stores nutrients all year, and then when it fruits it dumps those nutrients into the fruit. With dwarfism we’ve reduced the plant size and kept the fruit size with the theory that more photosynthesis goes into the fruit. But there’s also a smaller reservoir for everything else that goes into the fruit.
I think what is forgotten is the organisms other than plants. Hydroponics is amazing for plants but not sure if you can sustain a wineyard in that fashion for long without having some kind of organism starting to cause issues. A well balanced soil doesn't only support the plants but also provides a healthy microbiome. Now, with the use of pesticides, artificial fertilizers, and tilling it's not less synthetic process than hydrophonics. Soil degradation in presence of these are so well documented and well understood that it's crazy we keep doing it.
I only succeeded with growing African violets when I also had fish. When the violets started looking droopy or hadn’t flowered in a while I put a cup of fish tank water in the pot and foomp! Full head of flowers within about three weeks.
The tilapia/aquaponics people have a better system.
There are also organisms such as slugs, grubs, beetles, moths etc. which can mess with growth. I can basically not grow any sunflower at all without it getting destroyed by beetles, zucchinis by vine borer larvae, other things by slugs, etc. Makes it hard to garden without getting resentful and harboring feelings of revenge. Next thing you know you're dropping all sorts of evil chemicals on the plants. :-D
You ought to visit Iceland. Knowing that the entire island went from 30-40% woodland to being basically 100% deforested in a span of 100 years (the first 100 years following the Vikings arrival), and with the bare ground being fields of barren volcanic rock, to see all the sheep grazing pasture that exists today, gives you great appreciation for the amount of terraforming that was required to get even 1% of the land into that state.
If you’re not on the bandwagon yet, you should try incorporating some mushroom blocks to speed up the decomposition! It’ll also help to take the moisture retention you’re getting up an additional notch.
We’ve got a local grow block recycling program through the Central Texas Mycological Society. For your use case, all you’d need to do is bury the blocks in leaf litter with one long edge barely poking up above the surface. A combo of blue and pink oyster would probably serve you well, depending on the season.
I checked out your video collection. You have some very interesting stuff and I think I may be able learn a few things.
I also live in Texas, north Texas, on a dry limestone outcrop with soil depths averaging about 6" but highly variable due to the sloping nature of the property. My best, most fertile soils are underneath the hackberry/cedar elm/live oak stands on the property where leaves are allowed to accumulate and decompose. In the cleared area, it was farmed for hay, beans, corn, etc before we bought the place, the soil is pretty light, tends to dry out quickly and can be difficult to dig if it hasn't rained in a while. Under the trees it is dark and richly connected and you can dig with your fingers to the rock ledge underneath. It's some good shit.
We grow all our garden stuff in troughs and rings since growing in the soil requires too much water due to the oven effect in the summer where the near surface rock heats up and radiates all night drying the soil making it necessary to water daily. I'm on a private water well and not terribly enthusiastic about watering anything every day since it seems like a waste to plant things that won't grow without a lot of babysitting.
I also collect rainwater from my greenhouse roof and use a solar/battery setup to drive a water pump inside one of the tanks which is just a standard plastic rotomolded tank. The other tank I have is a stainless steel tank that I got for a song since it leaked like a sieve due to design issues. I can testify that flex-seal tape doesn't work. I sealed all the joints since all were leaking and every one of them developed leaks past the tape. The only notable difference that the flex-seal tape made was in slowing the leak enough that fine particulates began to accumulate in the leaky spots and that has allowed some of the largest leaks to become trickles so that the tank will now hold water. I believe that it will eventually seal itself as all the crud tries to escape the tank and ends up forming a nice organic seal. Big win for me. I just need to put a pump on it now and extend the line to my orchard at my hugelkulture berm.
You have a bit of cedar there. We use cedar mulch to control weed growth. It is an effective weed inhibitor where we have laid it down. I have tested cypress, cedar, and hardwood mixes and cedar definitely controls everything better. We have our annual weeding process set so that we take a few hours in the fall and spring to pull about 95% of things we don't want and then over the growing season we just spend a little time yanking new growth if it happens.
You can and also should incorporate composted grass clippings (weed-free or cut from an area with native grasses and flowers). This will help build rich soil too. Avoid anything from a place that has an invasive plant problem. I am eradicating several non-natives from my place as I slowly drag it back to a native plant property. I have an area of the garden that is set aside as a pollinator attractor and it is full of natives that keep it alive with bees and insects from spring until the first good freeze. It's really rewarding to step out and hear the activity as you stand under the blackberry arches that are loaded with berries and blossoms waiting for the bugs.
I'm gonna check out some of your work, especially the Arduino controlled pump setup inside your greenhouse, since I would love to monitor my own usage from the tank.
Uh, pretty much every farmer I ever met is going to disagree.
Farming is hard, unpredictable (prone to disasters/famine/plagues), and prone to all sorts of problems with soil, weather, etc.
The reason modern fertilizer and pesticides are used so widely is they make that fundamentally extremely difficult process easier and more predictable.
Where do soil amendments come from, and what would deplete those stocks (with consideration for soil depletion)?
(Also, there are extremely efficient ammonia/nitrogen fertilizer generators, but still then the algae due to runoff problem. FWIU we should we asks ng farmers to Please produce granulated fertilizer instead of liquid.)
The new biofuel subsidies require no-till farming practices; which other countries are further along at implementing (in or to prevent or reverse soil depletion).
Tilling turns topsoil to dirt due to loss of moisture, oxidation, and solar radiation.
That, and most of the other nutrients which was needed to grow the vegies ( like phosphates and potassium) are flushed into the toilet. There will be no long term permaculture without cycling those back at some point. Otherwise, organic or not, this will remains an wasteful open loop.
I think there’s a perception that hydroponic systems are less resilient as well as an erroneous belief that they are more complex than soil (their supply chains might be, but the systems themselves are not).
Hydroponics eastable plant parts taste like crap, a very pale shadow of earth-grown ones.
Maybe there is some semi-magical way how to grow veggies in hydroponics well, but nobody doing mass produce figured that out so results are subpar on many aspects.
You need to spend more money on adding “optional” nutrients that would otherwise be produced by organic processes in a living soil. These nutrients are what add to flavor but don’t necessarily help with the growing process.
The distinction isn’t hydroponics vs soil - it’s organic vs inorganic farming. Non organic soil faces the same issues. Aquaponics (I.e organic hydroponics using fish and other aquatic organisms) also yield flavorful crops.
they paywall right before they say anything of note
I imagine this is climbing to the top because people like the idea of healthy soil.
My very small organic no till garden is lots of manual labour. when one person grows food for 1 million I laugh to see a picture of someone standing in a field with a shovel ‘fixing soil’
People don’t stand in a field fixing soil one shovel at a time. They’re fixing soil with larger machinery and taking samples to research the soils fixes.
Sure, but in this article, they talk about traditional methods of soil management. There’s nothing about stopping erosion or implementing no till on an industrial scale.
Well, I don't know about a million, but there are small scale profitable commercial farms doing this. One local farm I get my seasonal veggies from had 200 tonne carrot and parsnip over-production this year due to favorable conditions and they are tiny: https://www.noshitfood.nl/ [unfortunately only in Dutch]
Here are the primary components that you would require -
1. Organic Matter: Compost and mulch enrich soil and improve structure.
2. Microorganisms: Bacteria, fungi, and mycorrhizae break down organic matter and enhance nutrient uptake.
3. Soil Fauna: Earthworms, insects, and arachnids aerate soil and mix organic matter.
4. Nutrients: Macronutrients (N, P, K) and micronutrients (Fe, Mn, Zn, etc.) are essential for plant growth.
5. Soil Structure: Aggregates and porosity improve aeration and water retention.
6. Water Management: Proper irrigation and drainage ensure optimal soil moisture.
Item 3 is important in more ways than most people realize. Last year many farmers in my area that planted soybeans early had a problem with slugs eating the sprouting beans and were forced to replant multiple times. This spring I went to a growers conference and heard a presentation by a Prof. Tooker from Penn State Ag about the slug problem, which he has been researching for several years. Turns out that the slug infestation can be directly traced to the use of insecticides used in seed treatments. The insecticides kill beetles (and other beneficial insects) that eat the slugs but don't kill slugs because they aren't insects (they are mollusks). No beetles more slugs. Take away is don't use treated seed. However, standard practice at seed companies is to treat seed with fungicides and insecticides, thus creating a problem rather than solving it.
When I think about insects and slugs, then slugs are typically considerably larger and have more body mass. Is it only the smaller slugs or slug eggs that the insects eat? I have a hard time imagining a beetle eating a slug.
2 provides 4 from the insitu minerals. It may be necessary to add minerals if you are growing plants that require something the native minerals dont have. But, the majority of minerals plants need are available everywhere. The soil biology is required to unlock it for plants to use.
If you see the macrobiota in soil it is an indicator microbiota is present. The more the merrier.
A connected great article: Junk Food Is Bad For Plants, Too
https://nautil.us/junk-food-is-bad-for-plants-too-235857/
Humans can figure out a lot given enough time. While all the hype for us is finance, management, machines, electronics and software etc it is not unthinkable a previous civilization went all in on soil. Terra Preta seems to be quite sophisticated.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta
South America was pretty advanced. The oldest evidence we have of widespread metallurgy comes from the tip of South America around approximately 5000 BC. Which predates metallurgy in Eurasia by thousands of years. Copper smelting was particularly important
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy_in_pre-Columbian_Am...
On the ecological side, some anthropologists argued that humans actually played a major role in transitioning Amazonia from mostly grasslands to the rainforest it is today around 10,000 years ago.
The distribution of many plant species is inexplicable without looking at human settlement patterns. So much so that other anthropologists have called the Amazon a "manufactured landscape".
https://sci-hub.ru/https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007...
you can also say the Saharan desert played a major role on turning what Amazon is...
now, wow, calling it a grassland before humans 10,000 years ago is to smoke too much pot before reading/making papers. 5,000,000 AD then yes, maybe... /s but Terra Preta and other indigenous interferences is not even 10% of Amazon territory. various other animals are responsible for spreading diversity be it by shitting seed or just moking stuff around to make nests or impress some partner. the rainforest are also there because mountains changing courses of rivers.
[0] "Geology and geodiversity of the Amazon: Three billion years of history" https://www.theamazonwewant.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/C...
[1] the grassland hypothesis (somewhere in the text) and other curiosities about its biodiversity https://www.science.org/content/article/feature-how-amazon-b...
This is common knowledge. Even the Wikipedia page states:
> There is evidence that there have been significant changes in the Amazon rainforest vegetation over the last 21,000 years through the last glacial maximum (LGM) and subsequent deglaciation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_rainforest
Also, there's this:
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/10-800-years-a...
> The oldest evidence we have of widespread metallurgy comes from the tip of South America around approximately 5000 BC. Which predates metallurgy in Eurasia by thousands of years.
There are archaeological finds in Europe dating smelting in the region back as early as 5500 BC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pločnik_(archaeological_site)
>> Terra Preta - literally "black soil"
Terra Preta is noble savage fiction [1] created because charcoal stains the soil quite deep. (Similar to how the OP 'spotlight' is mostly fiction)
Biochar enthusiasts show the staining in soil cutouts after a few years.
I do a lot of biochar (100+ liters a week) but it has mixed results in the scientific journals, meta studies don't show a lot of improvement.
[1] The Amazonian cutting down of forests and burning it for quick release of nutrients works, but unless a third of your babies die you will run out of forest.
There is a lot of research showing that terra preta works and that Amazonion tribes create it.
Biochar is just the first step in making Terra preta so it's not a surprise that it doesn't work as well as the final product.
I started my gardening adventure with vegetables in pots. It was perfect, plants gave amazing yield, but required too detailed care and attention every day (or sometimes 2-3 times a day in a hot dry summer day). When I have moved to planting in soil I was shocked how worse the plants are doing. Same tomatoes giving 10-15 kg per plant yield in pots were under 3kg in soil. They got more disease issues, more pests (slugs and snails!).
After talking to fellow natural hobby farmers I realized the soil quality was garbage (lack of earth worms and insects), and there were severe drainage and water holding issues: weirdly the soil didn't hold water but it drained way too slow too. So, ehen it rained it was swamped for days but when it got dry none of that water stayed at the top 1 meters of the soil. I'm lucky to find amazing help from local natural farmers, so I got natural green compost (no animal products/byproducts). I have been introduced to no-dig farming too. So first year I started by applying 20cm thick compost on top soil, after putting a layer of old paper boxes against weeds. Then planted my seedlings on these, with worm poop and for some phosphate loving plants bat guano as fertilizers around the plants, topping of with hemp mulch and cacao shell mulch as topping. When this soil has sunken enough, topped off with 2-3 cm compost and mulched again. I have sprinkled insect friendly flowers to attract insects too. This was an amazing succes with not only plants flourishing, fighting diseases much better and resulting in an amazing yield. I didn't need to water as often as before (4x less frequent than before in the soil, 8x less frequent than in the pot). After year 3 I stopped all fertilization and introduced cover crops that could be used as mulch and fertilizer at the same time.
This process though is not linear. I still have plants which are not successful at all. I can grow juicy tasty watermelons in a northern European country but no parsnips or carrots or cauliflowers yet. This is what I love though, I'm interacting with a living microbiome rather than executing lab experiments. Failures are keeping it interesting and improving learning.
I had the opposite experience. I had rented a house that had an empty patch of dirt and asked the landlord if we could plant some vegetables there (which I didn't have a lot of experience in). My older neighbor saw me and said that we had great soil in our neighborhood but I didn't really think about it. The vegetables grew amazingly well, we had way too many tomatoes and tons of broccoli that kept growing back and more. I barely took any care with it after planting, other than very sporadic watering and harvesting.
The next year we moved from that house to a new place, where we couldn't plant directly in the ground but the landlord was happy for us to use pots and planters. I eagerly planted my broccoli again thinking we'd have the same endless supply... but this time it barely produced anything and looked nothing like the last year. I bought some kind of soil bags from the gardening store after asking an employee which would be good for vegetable pots and planters. Something about the pots or the soil or otherwise made a gigantic difference even though we had moved probably less than a mile distance wise.
I'm a very amateur gardener so I may have made some other mistakes, but I think I treated the plants very similarly both years.
This makes sense as pots require very high precision of soil composition and water management. You need good drainage but a water reservoir under the pots with some kind of wick to keep it watering from the bottom. Also the size of the pot you need is huge compared to your intuition. A single tomato plant requires more than 100L of soil, 30% of which should be perlite, you need some pebbles for better drainage mixed in, and more than 50% should be compost. This often isn't enough for a tomato, so you need to add slow release fertilizers at different levels of soil. In a warm day (> 30C) you need to give 5L of water in the morning and in the evening. The water should stay in the pot but not flood it. Ah, also, they cannot handle cold as good as in soil either. So the pots should be moved indoors when it's too cold, and require shielding from a lot of wind.
If you prepare the pot, soil etc properly, you can get good results. It's very repeatable as it's a very precise recipe. If you put potting soil in a pot randomly it won't work at all.
A properly selected variety adapted to your climate needs both less soil, less water and and a lot less maintenance (still daily care but nothing crazy).
From what I know, first year after a lomg pause is always amazing. Farmers are paid to let the soil rest 1 year.
Interesting that you mentioned compost without animal products, then bat guano. Isn't guano harvesting fairly unsustainable and damaging to bat colonies?
When you say that you put a layer of old paper boxes against weeds, does that mean you put the broken down boxes first, and the put the compost on the top? If so, were the seedlings able to sink their roots through the paper boxes and go deeper into the ground?
Also, what cover crops did you introduce?
I just put them dry, not broken, and overlapping between the boxes such that they cover the surface fully. And yes, the roots can go down, but weeds cannot go past that easily. The theory is yhe upwards growth is weak but downwards growth of the roots are much stronger and they can puncture a wet paper box.
Cover crops: clover, buckwheat and winter rye. Cut before seeding and lay them flat over the surface.
Just to clear up what sounds like a simple misunderstanding, because you mentioned being in Europe: in the US (can’t speak for other English speaking countries) to “break down” box is to flatten it, not break it like to destroy or tear apart. As in “help me break down these boxes for recycling”.
Forgive me if you got that, it just sounded like you were talking past each other.
I could see this being the reason your carrots didn't grow well though. If the carrots tap root struggles a bit through the cardboard it could mess up devlopment. I think this is why they say not to transplant carrots. The tap root bottoms out quickly and struggles to recover.
Oh carrots were in a deep compost bed (40cm) first. They only grew like 2cm long roots, nowhere near the box.
Cardboard doesn’t last long when it’s wet, but long enough to smoother the plants beneath it. There’s something about it that attracts the fungi that break down wood fiber. And the continuous surface allows it to spread quickly.
Exactly this
We use a Lomi to convert our organic waste into compost I can add to my worm farm
and then from the worm farm, mix with outdoor soil and grow in that. A automated a flood and drain system with our fish and cultivate nitrogen fixing bacteria with that, and water the plants with this water every couple of days.
Using these two approaches I have not had to buy any nutrients in years and our soil is doing well.
https://lomi.com/?srsltid=AfmBOor2uvg1DJ2J1E6rXh-8L3iAqzeSD0...
Why get an electric powered gadget made of plastic and proprietary soft/hardware that will 100% for sure end in a dump in less than 20 years when all you need is a good ol compost bin?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bXZG-kzlhPY
Lomi doesn't really "compost" your scraps, it dehydrates and grinds them. The actual compost activity happens (on an accelerated timeline, due to the pre-processing) in the soil you amend with your Lomi "compost." It's good marketing though
Space is the main reason. We live in the city and the amount of organic waste we (family of 4 + numerous pets) produce is staggering. additionally meat attracts animals. This I run an overnight cycle and I can add it to my compost heap and let it degrade more and no issues with rodents and other animals who dig through food waste. after using this device, in the future I would always grind/break up my organic waste as fine as possible just to save space.
I was originally pretty skeptical of the Lomi as well after seeing this very same video. But my friend got us one and we have been using it for a while now. Sure, it has the same parts as a breadmaker, and it's mostly just drying out and cutting down the organic material into more useful sizes, exactly like he says, but when you put in the enzymes and have it run its dirt cycle it does actually produce meaningfully good compost all with much lower footprint a garden composting setup. I'm not sure I'd pay to buy one new, but but it's not a scam.
Just remember that any positive effect you might achieve by a lifetime of composting is grossly negated by the production, usage, and inevitable way to the landfill of this thing. Startups like these are part of the problem, not the solution.
That could be true, but maybe OP's goal isn't making a positive impact on the global scale.
Just throw your scrapes and buy compost then, it'll be cheaper and easier. The city already transforms bio waste in gas and compost anyways, and much more efficiently than what you can do at home given the scale.
This is another "I'm doing my part" gimmick that solves literally nothing when you look under the hood
it allows us to get all our organic and bio plastic waste for a big family with pets, including most bones once we have cooked stock from it, in a compost heap in the city.
we tried composting before and the volume of organic waste we produced was too much and we had to dispose a lot of our waste in general trash (our location has no organic waste disposal that runs in our neighborhood) meant animals ripped our curb side bags open.
I am not a degrowther to save the planet either, so a company putting compostable products in place of plastic ones seems like good economic activity.
Only if you're using bad math and discounting the impact of the retail compost and fertilizer offset by these devices.
These devices reach impact parity in a few years (2 to 10 depending on the electronics and how much they're used).
That was a great read. This is what I hope to achieve too. I know what you mean about some crops that won’t grow at all, for me, it’s carrots. They are never more than a couple of centimetres long. Deeply frustrating. I’ve tried lots, including making the soil loose, making it compact, adding sand, etc.
Also Aloe Vera, absolutely the most frustrating house plants I’ve ever had.
You're probably over watering the aloe. Try growing carrots using a straw bale with soil added to a v cut in the center as a planter.
Aloe does better in terra cotta pots and cactus mix. Even if you overwater it it won’t stay wet long.
Glad you found it interesting!
It goes so quick with enough care, it's so fascinating. It's impossible to find any place without a lot of worms now.
I have the same issue with carrots. Parsnips are so much more harder though, they just don't grow any root at all!
Why do you find Aloe Vera frustrating? I mean, it grows quickly and requires very little maintenance. I suppose that could be seen as "frustrating" in the sense that it needs to be divided or thinned out regularly.
Typical problem with aloe is overwatering. And modern potting soil often is loaded with sphagnum, which stays wet too long, and then when it dries it becomes hydrophobic so watering the plant doesn’t wet the entire soil.
I agree. I do not water them and they grow crazy!
Only water when the feeling of guilt at not watering them is overwhelming.
Pretty much. :)
I water weekly, and even in the winter leave for 4 months!
I overwater before going, and when I come back sone of it is mildly brown. A week later with water replenishment, it's almost all green again.
Makes sense for a desert plant.
> project to assess soil erosion and degradation in vineyards using geographical mapping systems and artificial intelligence (AI). ... AI helps me to design and polish the software codes that I use
Is this describing use of something like GitHub copilot?
Sometimes I get the feeling you gotta tie your research to AI in some tenuous fashion to get research funding.
It’s not a feeling. Getting grants requires following whatever hype trend is popular at the moment.
Savvy academics know this and respond accordingly. Whether it’s AI (now) or DEI stuff (until recently), they add the required little sections and play the game.
I bet AI is really good at writing grant proposals with all the right buzz words.
It's so good that some grant applications are switching to short video submissions.
Or any LLMs.
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I don't know about the "hidden ingredient", but...
When I lived in upstate NY our house was on property that had been a glacial lakebed. The soil was a bit sandy, if anything too well drained, but adding lots of leaf mold -- we had more than enough maple trees -- made it retain water adequately, and things grew well.
When it came time to move, we sold the house to a pair of doctors who were moving up from Texas. One of them was just so enthusiastic about how good the soil was, and about the big piles of partially decomposed leaves we had, compared to the terrible clay soil they had down there. So if nothing else, good soil can help property values.
Odd that an article on healthy soil completely ignores the major health risk from growing food in regions with a long history of industry and mining, eg most of Europe, northeastern USA, etc. - Heavy metal contamination with species like lead, mercury, cadmium etc. There's a huge literature on the subject, but real-world monitoring is pretty light, certainly doesn't look standard:
>"Freslyn Mae, Camata, and Ryna Mae, Capurcos, and Eula Marie, Delino, and Gecelene, Estorico, (2025) Assessing the Sources and Risks of Heavy Metals in Agricultural Soils: A Comprehensive Review. International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology"
https://eprint.ijisrt.org/id/eprint/324/
We’ve gone through rounds of working out if the leafy vegetables absorb the heavy metals or if it’s mostly in the dust and last I read we’re back to the latter.
White vinegar is better at cleaning vegetables than so called vegetable soaps, and more importantly the acid dissolves soot and heavy metals.
Gallon bottles of white vinegar are cheap. It’s also good for laundry especially if you have hard water, or a humid climate. Some people put it in the rinse cycle for their dishwasher as well, instead of rinse aid which is hell on your intestines.
> We’ve gone through rounds of working out if the leafy vegetables absorb the heavy metals or if it’s mostly in the dust and last I read we’re back to the latter.
It depends. For leafy vegetables it makes sense that dust > soil. However we find more lead and antimony in corn grown in proximity to highways.. this is clearly from road runoff taken up by the plant through the soil . We also find arsenic in brown rice and other crops again taken up through the soil because these soils are heavily contaminated from past arsenic-bearing pesticide use
But, dust/ topicals also matter. There is a reason fruits with thick skins like avocados, pineapple, melon, kiwi, always find themselves on the "Clean 15" list every year- because they are testing the flesh of the fruit, which is protected from topical pesticides by the skins. But I eat the kiwi skins sometimes...or make tea with the pineapple rinds... which people usually don't... and am guessing that they are a lot worse than the flesh.
I'm a gardening and landscaping enjoyer, but I am constantly confused about the bordering magical thinking surrounding dirt, among other aspects of growing things.
If you look at hydroponics/aeroponics, plants basically need water, light, and fertilizer (N (nitrogen) P (phosphorous) K (potassium), and a few trace minerals). It can be the most synthetic process you've ever seen, and the plants will grow amazingly well.
The other elements regarding soil health, etc, would be much better framed in another way, rather than as directly necessary for plant health. The benefits of maintaining a nice living soil is that it makes the environment self-sustaining. You could just dump synthetic fertilizer on the plant, with some soil additives to help retain the right amount of drainage/retention, and it would do completely fine. But without constant optimal inputs, the plants would die.
If you cultivate a nice soil, such that the plants own/surrounding detritus can be broken down effectively, such that the nutrients in the natural processes can be broken down and made available to the plant, and the otherwise nonoptimal soil texture characteristics could be brought to some positive characteristics by those same processes, then you can theoretically arrive at a point that requires very few additional inputs.
The reason chemical fertilizers work is because they provide minerals that a plant might normally trade sugars to fungi to get. So those sugars stay in the plant making larger fruits, nuts, or legumes.
But the problem is you also get water and early/late season sugars exchanged between plants (Simard et al).
So within a generation the soil structure has collapsed, you’re at the whim of every microdrought, and you’re dealing with the Red Queen problem. But like drugs, at first it feels amazing.
> dirt
Dirt isn’t much better than hydroponics. Soil is. Conventional farming has been described by some as “hydroponics in dirt”. That’s why it’s so fertilizer dependent, just like hydro.
There are a few places in the world where there is insufficient phosphorous in the native rock to grow plants without fertilizer. But everywhere else, healthy soil fungi could mine it out of the sand in the soils. If they were left to grow instead of burned to death with herbicides and fertilizers.
great post. I posted in this thread above about using a Lomi to convert our organic waste into organic fertilizer (along with a worm farm), a and cultivating nitrogin fixing bacteria with our outdoor fish pond and a flood and drain system. Soil is great to grow in, if you treat it well.
I will say that my only problem with Simard is that she anthropomorphizes the fungi and the behaviors she documented could just as easily be explained by osmotic pressure. Chemicals in a solution of water have “fairness” built into them. The broker doesn’t need to have a strategy for exchange, just siphon off a finder’s fee for making the introductions. The magic is low friction channels that can move solutions over a long (for a single celled organism) distance. That’s magic enough for any kingdom of life.
Sugary sap? Water will enter and sugars flow out. High nitrogen content? Same same.
Hydroponics is great at growing plants that are great at growing in hydroponics. Generally that is short-lived annuals.
Maybe it’s because I started with hydroponics. I don’t get the fascination with soil or animosity about hydroponics being unnatural. People do vastly underestimate what it takes to create a good soil mixture, though. In the end, you’re suspending nutrients in a substrate for the plants to uptake regardless of how you go about providing them.
There are also enzymes and secondary metabolites relevant to plant health associated with microbiome and ecological chains in healthy soil that go beyond the regenerative macronutrient cycles. If you try to grow edible fruits you'll notice flavor loss as a result of hydroponic / synthetic methods.
Next door neighbor to this: I read someone who had a theory that dwarfed plants were also part of the nutrient and flavor reductions in modern grocery fare.
The model they presented was that the plant stores nutrients all year, and then when it fruits it dumps those nutrients into the fruit. With dwarfism we’ve reduced the plant size and kept the fruit size with the theory that more photosynthesis goes into the fruit. But there’s also a smaller reservoir for everything else that goes into the fruit.
I think what is forgotten is the organisms other than plants. Hydroponics is amazing for plants but not sure if you can sustain a wineyard in that fashion for long without having some kind of organism starting to cause issues. A well balanced soil doesn't only support the plants but also provides a healthy microbiome. Now, with the use of pesticides, artificial fertilizers, and tilling it's not less synthetic process than hydrophonics. Soil degradation in presence of these are so well documented and well understood that it's crazy we keep doing it.
I only succeeded with growing African violets when I also had fish. When the violets started looking droopy or hadn’t flowered in a while I put a cup of fish tank water in the pot and foomp! Full head of flowers within about three weeks.
The tilapia/aquaponics people have a better system.
There are also organisms such as slugs, grubs, beetles, moths etc. which can mess with growth. I can basically not grow any sunflower at all without it getting destroyed by beetles, zucchinis by vine borer larvae, other things by slugs, etc. Makes it hard to garden without getting resentful and harboring feelings of revenge. Next thing you know you're dropping all sorts of evil chemicals on the plants. :-D
I am terraforming my limestone rocky terrain using leaves.
I believe they have trace minerals and the grub larve eat the oak leaves and poop amazing soil.
I now have 6" of black soil with earthworms!
This is in dry central Texas. Moisture helps microbial/fungal life. Leaves retain moisture.
Another key ingredient is pressure/compaction of leaves.
I have results on my YouTube channel: theRainHarvester
You ought to visit Iceland. Knowing that the entire island went from 30-40% woodland to being basically 100% deforested in a span of 100 years (the first 100 years following the Vikings arrival), and with the bare ground being fields of barren volcanic rock, to see all the sheep grazing pasture that exists today, gives you great appreciation for the amount of terraforming that was required to get even 1% of the land into that state.
If you’re not on the bandwagon yet, you should try incorporating some mushroom blocks to speed up the decomposition! It’ll also help to take the moisture retention you’re getting up an additional notch.
We’ve got a local grow block recycling program through the Central Texas Mycological Society. For your use case, all you’d need to do is bury the blocks in leaf litter with one long edge barely poking up above the surface. A combo of blue and pink oyster would probably serve you well, depending on the season.
I checked out your video collection. You have some very interesting stuff and I think I may be able learn a few things.
I also live in Texas, north Texas, on a dry limestone outcrop with soil depths averaging about 6" but highly variable due to the sloping nature of the property. My best, most fertile soils are underneath the hackberry/cedar elm/live oak stands on the property where leaves are allowed to accumulate and decompose. In the cleared area, it was farmed for hay, beans, corn, etc before we bought the place, the soil is pretty light, tends to dry out quickly and can be difficult to dig if it hasn't rained in a while. Under the trees it is dark and richly connected and you can dig with your fingers to the rock ledge underneath. It's some good shit.
We grow all our garden stuff in troughs and rings since growing in the soil requires too much water due to the oven effect in the summer where the near surface rock heats up and radiates all night drying the soil making it necessary to water daily. I'm on a private water well and not terribly enthusiastic about watering anything every day since it seems like a waste to plant things that won't grow without a lot of babysitting.
I also collect rainwater from my greenhouse roof and use a solar/battery setup to drive a water pump inside one of the tanks which is just a standard plastic rotomolded tank. The other tank I have is a stainless steel tank that I got for a song since it leaked like a sieve due to design issues. I can testify that flex-seal tape doesn't work. I sealed all the joints since all were leaking and every one of them developed leaks past the tape. The only notable difference that the flex-seal tape made was in slowing the leak enough that fine particulates began to accumulate in the leaky spots and that has allowed some of the largest leaks to become trickles so that the tank will now hold water. I believe that it will eventually seal itself as all the crud tries to escape the tank and ends up forming a nice organic seal. Big win for me. I just need to put a pump on it now and extend the line to my orchard at my hugelkulture berm.
You have a bit of cedar there. We use cedar mulch to control weed growth. It is an effective weed inhibitor where we have laid it down. I have tested cypress, cedar, and hardwood mixes and cedar definitely controls everything better. We have our annual weeding process set so that we take a few hours in the fall and spring to pull about 95% of things we don't want and then over the growing season we just spend a little time yanking new growth if it happens.
You can and also should incorporate composted grass clippings (weed-free or cut from an area with native grasses and flowers). This will help build rich soil too. Avoid anything from a place that has an invasive plant problem. I am eradicating several non-natives from my place as I slowly drag it back to a native plant property. I have an area of the garden that is set aside as a pollinator attractor and it is full of natives that keep it alive with bees and insects from spring until the first good freeze. It's really rewarding to step out and hear the activity as you stand under the blackberry arches that are loaded with berries and blossoms waiting for the bugs.
I'm gonna check out some of your work, especially the Arduino controlled pump setup inside your greenhouse, since I would love to monitor my own usage from the tank.
sure, we can make them grow well in a lab. but a natural system is so much simpler and elegant
and easier and time tested and resilient
Uh, pretty much every farmer I ever met is going to disagree.
Farming is hard, unpredictable (prone to disasters/famine/plagues), and prone to all sorts of problems with soil, weather, etc.
The reason modern fertilizer and pesticides are used so widely is they make that fundamentally extremely difficult process easier and more predictable.
I am pretty sure he was referring to lab-grown, but as to its accuracy; I cannot comment.
lol yes, farming is hard as fuck. i'm comparing to growing food in high tech ways outside of soil
Plants absorb nitrogen and CO2 from the air and store it in their roots; plants fertilize soil.
If you only grow plants with externally-sourced nutrients, that is neither sustainable nor permaculture.
Though it may be more efficient to grow without soil; soil depletion isn't prevented by production processes that do not generate topsoil.
JADAM is a system developed by a chemicals engineer given what is observed to work in JNF/KNF. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38527264
Where do soil amendments come from, and what would deplete those stocks (with consideration for soil depletion)?
(Also, there are extremely efficient ammonia/nitrogen fertilizer generators, but still then the algae due to runoff problem. FWIU we should we asks ng farmers to Please produce granulated fertilizer instead of liquid.)
The new biofuel subsidies require no-till farming practices; which other countries are further along at implementing (in or to prevent or reverse soil depletion).
Tilling turns topsoil to dirt due to loss of moisture, oxidation, and solar radiation.
The vast majority of plants do not absorb nitrogen from the air. Legumes are the well-known exception.
That, and most of the other nutrients which was needed to grow the vegies ( like phosphates and potassium) are flushed into the toilet. There will be no long term permaculture without cycling those back at some point. Otherwise, organic or not, this will remains an wasteful open loop.
It isn't legumes that absorb nitrogen from air. It is bacteria that lives on their roots.
I think that's why it's good to rotate beans or plant clover cover crop.
Three Sisters: Corn, Beans, Squash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Sisters_(agriculture)
Companion planting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Companion_planting
Nitrogen fixation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_fixation
Most plants do not absorb atmospheric nitrogen, but need external nitride fertilizer to grow! That causes serious ground water polution!
> The new biofuel subsidies require no-till farming practices
This actually depletes soil of nitrogen!
tilling with anything more than human power should be banned!
I think there’s a perception that hydroponic systems are less resilient as well as an erroneous belief that they are more complex than soil (their supply chains might be, but the systems themselves are not).
Hydroponics eastable plant parts taste like crap, a very pale shadow of earth-grown ones.
Maybe there is some semi-magical way how to grow veggies in hydroponics well, but nobody doing mass produce figured that out so results are subpar on many aspects.
You need to spend more money on adding “optional” nutrients that would otherwise be produced by organic processes in a living soil. These nutrients are what add to flavor but don’t necessarily help with the growing process.
The distinction isn’t hydroponics vs soil - it’s organic vs inorganic farming. Non organic soil faces the same issues. Aquaponics (I.e organic hydroponics using fish and other aquatic organisms) also yield flavorful crops.
hydroponics raised vegetables taste like bland slop. if you're an actual food enjoyer anyone can easily notice this
they paywall right before they say anything of note I imagine this is climbing to the top because people like the idea of healthy soil. My very small organic no till garden is lots of manual labour. when one person grows food for 1 million I laugh to see a picture of someone standing in a field with a shovel ‘fixing soil’
https://archive.ph/S9obh
haha awesome!
People don’t stand in a field fixing soil one shovel at a time. They’re fixing soil with larger machinery and taking samples to research the soils fixes.
Sure, but in this article, they talk about traditional methods of soil management. There’s nothing about stopping erosion or implementing no till on an industrial scale.
Well, I don't know about a million, but there are small scale profitable commercial farms doing this. One local farm I get my seasonal veggies from had 200 tonne carrot and parsnip over-production this year due to favorable conditions and they are tiny: https://www.noshitfood.nl/ [unfortunately only in Dutch]
There’s not that much in the article, it’s more of a setting the case.
Mention is made of “using AI” and other data sources, and that’s what I’d like to read far more about.
I wonder if the new future is writing MCPs so agents can access the data.
"using AI" is just a marketing buzzword, a few years ago it would've said "IoT and Big Data", before that it probably would've said "DHTML".
Here are the primary components that you would require - 1. Organic Matter: Compost and mulch enrich soil and improve structure. 2. Microorganisms: Bacteria, fungi, and mycorrhizae break down organic matter and enhance nutrient uptake. 3. Soil Fauna: Earthworms, insects, and arachnids aerate soil and mix organic matter. 4. Nutrients: Macronutrients (N, P, K) and micronutrients (Fe, Mn, Zn, etc.) are essential for plant growth. 5. Soil Structure: Aggregates and porosity improve aeration and water retention. 6. Water Management: Proper irrigation and drainage ensure optimal soil moisture.
Item 3 is important in more ways than most people realize. Last year many farmers in my area that planted soybeans early had a problem with slugs eating the sprouting beans and were forced to replant multiple times. This spring I went to a growers conference and heard a presentation by a Prof. Tooker from Penn State Ag about the slug problem, which he has been researching for several years. Turns out that the slug infestation can be directly traced to the use of insecticides used in seed treatments. The insecticides kill beetles (and other beneficial insects) that eat the slugs but don't kill slugs because they aren't insects (they are mollusks). No beetles more slugs. Take away is don't use treated seed. However, standard practice at seed companies is to treat seed with fungicides and insecticides, thus creating a problem rather than solving it.
The attempt is surely to solve for an abundance of beetles, but it is often helpful to think of many of these 'problems' as imbalances.
Nature does not work in two-variable equations, and the abundance or absence of an element typically has repercussions that are difficult to study.
An often-cited example of missing the bigger picture in controlling one variable would be the Chinese campaign against the Four Pests - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign
When I think about insects and slugs, then slugs are typically considerably larger and have more body mass. Is it only the smaller slugs or slug eggs that the insects eat? I have a hard time imagining a beetle eating a slug.
We just need to add a mollusk treatment!
The beetles are the mollusc treatment.
OP is making a joke: the solution to too many pesticides is even more pesticides.
copper kills invertebrates (it's in a range of fishtank infection treatments, doesn't kill fish but will kill snails and crabs)
Copper kills funghi too, and that's a problem as funghi are important element of healthy soil.
Please - if I wanted to know what an LLM thinks about this, I would have asked it myself.
I was just coming to comment the same thing. This seems like an ai bot answer. And it's a green username
It really is a "nobody asked" kind of comment.
Amusingly, it is catastrophically wrong, like AI slop typically is.
2 provides 4 from the insitu minerals. It may be necessary to add minerals if you are growing plants that require something the native minerals dont have. But, the majority of minerals plants need are available everywhere. The soil biology is required to unlock it for plants to use.
If you see the macrobiota in soil it is an indicator microbiota is present. The more the merrier.
https://consciousplanet.org/en/save-soil
Sadhguru rode 30k km on bike across Europe , Asia to spread the message about depleting soil.