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  • From: "TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] more of Emilia Hazelip: THE SYNERGISTIC VEGETABLE GARDEN
  • Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2007 11:52:36 -0600



THE NEWSLETTER OF THE GREATER VICTORIA COMPOST EDUCATION CENTRE
http://www.compost.bc.ca/serv/nesletters/TheLatestDirtSummer2004.pdf.

THE SYNERGISTIC VEGETABLE GARDEN
Emilia Hazelip
Reprinted with permission from the Permaculture Activist, No. 43

We have inherited an agriculture which has always disturbed the soil in
order to prepare the next crop. The ancient agricultures of the Inca, the
Maya, and the Orient also prepared fields in such a way. Culturally, that
gesture has been honored and sung by poets. Ecologically, pedalogically, it
is a catastrophe.

A natural, non-traumatized soil presents a subtle balance of thousands of
diverse organisms. From friendly bacteria to fungi, the presence of these
invisible subtle lives allows interactions according to the “Synergetic
Effect”. Among the dynamic processes in the soil, I think that the
Ethylene-Oxygen cycle is a good example of this wondrous world. The entire
availability of nutrients from the soil depends upon the alternation of
aerobic and anaerobic conditions at microsites throughout the soil mass,
yet the act of plowing destroys the very anaerobic conditions that allow
ethylene gas to be produced and which make mineral uptake by plants
possible. Our conventional agriculture remains ignorant of this fundamental
science.

What could we give back to the soil that would bring back its wildness? We
cannot recreate that quality if we keep on destabilizing the rhizosphere.
The only way is to learn an agriculture that will reconcile the maintenance
of soil wilderness and the production of crops.

This I have endeavored to do for over 20 years, and as the system evolved,
using the self-fertility of the wild soil as fertilizers, I have given it
the name Synergistic Agriculture. This can be practiced at any scale. The
machinery used in the U.S. and Canada for no-till agriculture can be used
for Synergistic Agriculture.

Evolution of the Method

The foundation of my research is the system described by Masanobu Fukuoka,
whose book, The One Straw Revolution changed my life in 1977 when it was
published in English and I read it. He described a way of cultivating
cereals, vegetables, and fruits which was free of the plow and chemicals.
Nothing was added to the soil except the straw from crops which had grown
in it, seed for the next crop, and the manure of ducks allowed to glean and
graze following each harvest. Instead, he used a leguminous crop such as
clover to suppress weeds, and fix nitrogen. The animals hastened the
breakdown of organic material which feed a lively community of soil
organisms: this was the basis of fertility. Fukuoka harvested two crops per
year from his land in southern Japan and achieved yields equivalent to the
best returns of chemical agriculture in this district. At the time he wrote
he had already done
this for 30 years with no loss of fertility in the soil.

In Fukuoka’s Natural Agriculture, no machines are used, nor greenhouses,
nor all these things that we have to do when working in difficult climates.
To me, what seemed the most important was to be able to obtain crops
without “exploiting” or exhausting the soil, even if a compromise were
needed regarding machines. Before finding Fukuoka’s work, I had been
working around Alan Chadwick in Santa Cruz, California in the late 60s,
learning methods of biodynamic and French Intensive gardening (double-dug
beds). From reading Ruth Stout’s books (also in the 60s), I learned to
cover garden beds with diverse materials. She used deep mulch, renewed it
frequently and fed the soil under the mulch with everything from her
kitchen and all the weeds of her yard. Try to get her books of you are
interested in soil self-fertility-she is truly a pioneer in this field.
Since then, in all my gardens I have made raised beds, though the
difference in volume comes only from the soil taken off the paths and put
onto the beds-no double-digging stuff for me.

In 1985 during the first Permaculture Design Course in the Pyrenees with
Sego Jackson, Marc Bonfils gave a presentation on cereal production in a
self-fertile way. His method is based on the use of traditional varieties
suited to winter dormancy and a long cycle of growth, surface sowing of the
seed at wide intervals (to eliminate competition between plants for water
and nutrient) into a living mulch of perennial clover, timing of the sowing
to coincide with summer availability of nutrients in order to establish for
the plant a strong root system capable of carrying it through the winter,
encouragement of tillering and side shoots, and the return of all straw and
organic wastes to the field. The soil is never plowed after the
establishment of the system. And all fertility is generated by the activity
of microorganisms in the soil. Today, microbiologists like Alan Smith and
Elaine Ingham are presenting much needed evidence of the reasons to stop
altering the soil’s structure and stressing it to exhaustion by plowing.

A Succession of Cultures

I could not call any of this “do-nothing” agriculture since on the
contrary there is much to do to establish a succession of cultures where
what you are harvesting is as important as what you are leaving behind. A
detailed plan indicating the plants, mixtures, and successions is a must.
The cultivator must also pay attention to the kind of root residue the soil
is receiving, and be ever mindful of combining the crop with
nitrogen-fixing plants of the legume family.

Although to begin, a big upside-down job could be done, once we start the
garden, we pay dear attention not to disturb the soil deeper than the
sowing depth, and only where it is sown. Organic matter in the soil is
consumed by the chemical reaction that follows when atmospheric gasses are
mixed with the soil by plowing. Although by mineralizing humus, a quick,
instant fertilizer may be produced, the price to pay for this is much too
high. Plant growth and health depend on other substances like ethylene gas
which enhances the assimilation of iron and other essential nutrients; and
ethylene is only generated and conserved in soil which is not disturbed.
Plants will be healthy if all the digestive flora of the soil are present.

Transforming Carbon to Humus

Soil and plants are a single organism. Plants are the “antennae” of the
soil, capturing light and creating solid, organic vegetable matter in the
space above the ground. Fully 95% of needed nutrients come from a synthesis
of gas and light. In other words, the plant is only taking from the soil
2.5% of its needs in the form of minerals and trace elements. The remaining
2.5% of nutrients is the nitrogen which can be obtained in a symbiotic way
by interplanting with nitrogen-fixing plants, mainly from the legume
family, like beans, chickpeas, fava beans, lentils and peas.

Harvesting is as important as the rest. The soil is a living mass of
interacting beings and they all eat just like everything alive on this
planet. Their food chains are wonders of intricate relationships covering
the mineral, the vegetable, and the animal/insect/bacteria worlds.

Even in agricultural conditions, from the moment we stop creating stress in
the soil, with our “well-intentioned” plowing disturbances, we can
organize our garden in such a way that the soil functions as if “in the
wild”. The great bulk of what has grown in the soil must be left in it,
either by its roots (if it is an above-ground crop), or by following a root
crop with another crop which will leave a generous amount of root matter in
the soil, like Swiss chard.

Those residues, together with a biodegradable mulch, amount to surface
composting, leaving more organic matter in the soil than the crop has
removed. From the moment we stop mineralizing humus (by eliminating the
plow), litter accumulates on the soil; and a myriad of microsites within
it, happy bacteria, cycling back and forth between ethylene and oxygen,
release biological gas essential to the well being of all types of roots,
and continuously access the mineral fertility of the soil in the
rhizosphere precisely where the plant roots can best assimilate it.

The Model of Nature

The less we disturb the soil, the more diversity and intensity of
interactions will take place in its mass, the healthier the plants and the
fewer problems for us. It is time for us to acknowledge that the soil needs
to be itself while we produce our crops; to respect this organism enough to
let it function in its natural way although “domesticated” by our
technical care. The organisms in the soil are like the bloodstream of the
human body, carrying the nutrients and participating in the assimilation of
the minerals present.

Above the ground, leaves act like photovoltaic cells, capturing light and
producing energy. The only bridge between the inorganic chemistry of the
atmosphere and the organic world is this fantastic alchemy performed by
plants. And all life depends on it.

It always struck me as funny, that in the wild, plants are the first link
of food chains and are seen as responsible for the creation of “soil”
but in agriculture, they are accused of exhausting the soil. Very typical
of Homo occidentalis, a scapegoat has been made responsible for the
negative effect of plowing: the crops.

The soil should never be opened up and force-fed, not even with the best
made compost, ever. Leave it to the soil only what has grown in it, and the
rest put above the soil, as mulch. And let the whole of the soil occupants
bring this inside its mass. I truly believe that as long as we have not
made peace with the soil, we won’t find peace above it either. As long as
we justify the exploitation of this organism, other exploitations will
follow. And we remain
parasites, consuming more than participating in the miracle of life.







  • [Livingontheland] more of Emilia Hazelip: THE SYNERGISTIC VEGETABLE GARDEN, TradingPostPaul, 07/03/2007

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