It has been nine months since I started my experiment with micro-composts, and the results have been far better than I had imagined. The plants are thriving like never before, and there's a whole eco-system of insects that makes our balcony more like a garden than a sterile display of flowers.
We no longer use any artificial fertilizers. There's no need for it anymore because compost is better in every way. Not only does the compost feed the plants naturally, it adds substance to the soil so that it retains water, something fertilizers don't do. Fertilized soil erodes over time. What's left, is something course and compact with none of the insects, bacteria and fungus found in healthy soil.
All of this has been plain to see from the start. The plants reacted surprisingly quickly to the introduction of micro-composters. The variety of insects followed suit. Every now and again, there was a noticeable imbalance of insects, but predators came along and culled the excesses, and we now have a situation where there's very little need for any direct interference to keep pests down. However, healthy plants need care. There's always something that needs tending to, and the beauty of this is that it teaches us that we are ourselves a part of the total eco-system. We interfere on behalf of the plants to make them as healthy as we can.
This insight applies to any garden, be it a tiny one on a balcony or a large park. From reading through the manual on sustainable forestry sent to me by Mr Cork the other day, it's clear that it applies to forests as well. The manual was full of insights related to the importance of good soil and the need to prune and tend trees with care. If done correctly, the soil will have a natural ability to retain water, and the right flora of fungus and bacteria to to feed the trees. There will also be a return of wildlife with both herbivores and predators. Alternatively, domesticated animals can be introduced and managed.
The farmer interferes into the eco-system to shape it into what is most desired, both in terms of trees and herbs, and in terms of animals. A well tended forest will have the look and feel of a park. It will have a great variety of herbs, shrubs and wildlife, all managed so as to produce the desired balance. A wild and untended forest, on the other hand, will simply decay into a dense and grotty affair with little variety, and way too much of the sort of things we don't like. There will be dead branches, dense undergrowth, rot and fungus, and plenty of mosquitos and rodents. I know, because I used to own a small forest, and it was a nightmare of a place until I cleaned it out and allowed for more air and variety of plants.
An interesting aspect of sustainable forestry is the degree to which it's all very intuitive. We know what we like and we'll tend to shape trees according to our aesthetic sensibilities. This happens to be the correct way to shape trees and other plants for maximum growth and health. The same with our intuitive dislike of monoculture. We prefer something varied and balanced, which is exactly what's needed for maximum health and sustainability. Furthermore, we don't like to mess around too much in the landscape. We prefer vegetation to grow naturally into what's given to us, rather than to bulldozer everything and start from scratch.
There's also a natural preference to let leaves compost into soil, or letting animals eat the leaves to do the composting for us. We don't like things to be too sterile. Dumping fertilizers onto soil seems wrong, especially when there's natural vegetation that could be turned into compost instead. This is where humans come in useful, because we can manage the land in such a way that we reduce the dangers of forest fires while at the same time optimizing composting. This doesn't happen on its own. We must work and introduce the right kind of animals to help us. Otherwise, we'll end up with the sort of nightmare forest that is both unpleasant and liable to catch fire.
All of this is not only intuitively understood by most people, it's also the correct way to run a sustainable forest, and this logic applies to all levels of farming. The alarming drop in number of insects, and the terrible state of soil quality that we see in may places these days is due to monoculture and an over-reliance on chemicals. If not reversed, corporate farming at massive scales is going to destroy so much land that we'll end up with a disaster one day where the soil no longer yields what it should.
Not only does this logic apply to farming, it applies to the human body as well. We too are eco-systems, with micro-organisms cooperating with us to keep us healthy. If we start feeding ourselves highly processed foods instead of a varied diet, we'll end up in terrible health. No amount of chemicals can make up for the lack of diversity that comes from eating too much processed food. Furthermore, we must be extremely careful when it comes to the introduction of anything new or foreign. Especially if this is a life-form or something similar that has the ability to reproduce.
Australia has had several near disasters related to foreign species of plants and animals introduced to it, and we must avoid doing something similar to our bodies. We mustn't experiment with this kind of things unless there's a huge disaster already raging in us. Otherwise, we run the risk of being overrun by some foreign element in a manner similar to what happened in Australia when a foreign cactus plant was introduced.
At first, the foreign cactus had the desired effect of thriving in the dry outback of Australia, and everybody was happy with its spread. However, the plant had no natural enemies in Australia, and it soon became so widespread and dense that it became a threat to the local fauna. The problem grew and grew with no solution found until they introduced a worm that eats the cactus plant. There was great concern at the time that the worm itself might become a problem. But the disaster caused by the cactus was so great that they decided to try the worm solution anyway, and luckily it turned out that the worm didn't cause any unwanted side-effects. It was in truth the solution. But the gamble was only worth it because the problem posed by the foreign cactus had reached disastrous levels.
Conversely, we should be extremely suspicious of any drug that reproduces itself inside our bodies. Such drugs may seem to work fine to start with, but there's a real danger that they will eventually overwhelm our bodies and do harm in unexpected places. The vaccine currently being administered to those fearful of the plague is of this kind, and we're now starting to see unexpected side-effects that require the attention of experts. There's an eerie similarity in the way the vaccine is evolving in people's bodies and the way the cactus introduced to Australia went from solution to problem over the timespan of a few years.
Luckily for us, nature is resilient. There's always a solution. No matter how badly we mess things up, nature has a way of fixing itself, especially when managed by people with experience and an intuitive understanding of how nature works. But fixing things after the fact is never as effective as avoiding the harm in the first place. As with all things in nature, we shouldn't experiment too much. While serious damage can be fixed, the fix is rarely 100%, at least not inside a single generation.
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| Cork oak forest |
By Berrocal1950 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link
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