Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[paul@oneseedling.com]

Again, nothing is the same everywhere. The Great Plains that used to stretch from Canada to South Texas burned each year  since time unknown. Some of these fires were started by Native Americans, some by nature. Yet this prairie is or was some of the richest most fertile in the world. 

Other places like Ireland did not fare as well exposed to similar methods. 

Concerning forest fires in an old growth forest that fire sweeps through every four to six years only the undergrowth burns leaving new forage to crop up for use by the native animals. There is no doubt that fires that totally burn a forest are bad to some extent. Erosion is a problem. But then how else do mountains form from uplift. 

There can be little argument that our destructive methods have depleted the land in most areas. There are examples of what went right such as China ( until recently). 

Paul the Skeptic

On Feb 19, 2011, at 7:41 PM, Pego Rice <firekeeper38@yahoo.com> wrote:

I think I will have to dispute you on this point, John, tho from your angle the point is pretty valid.  Unfired regions become choked with pests and disease, but burns on already assaulted land is merely a recipe for erosion.  I think that in the last 1200 years of Brit invasion and, in particular the economic take over of sheep agriculture in the 17th and 18th centuries and the loss of traditional Irish ag and the export for Brit ships of the Irish timber and the associated laws governing how much timber people could even use had an effect on whether they wanted to bother re-planting for the future (meaning, of course, planting for the owners and not themselves)  This article does not recount the Irish laws and taxes on that but I'm sure there were plenty;

http://d685488.u47.hosting.digiweb.ie/gpage5.html 

 

I expect Ireland could go a good one or two hundred years without another fire and be the better for it.  We had a few years of the same sorts of laws in the colonial days here, in the US.  Dead stupid laws like having extra taxes assessed against homeowners who had wood in their homes over a certain length. 

 

The fire cycle of chaparral desert;

http://www.coastal.ca.gov/fire/ucsbfire.html

 

Forest region fire cycle;

http://www.springerlink.com/content/r2xqh215671k847q/

 

In grassland

http://www.pnas.org/content/102/25/8865.long

 

Yours, Pego

<<And most fires in nature are a disaster and not a good thing. Irish farmers have been burning shrubs since the stone age and that is the main reason so much of the land is absolutely infertile. True, some plants have become adapted to fire as a aid in killing all competition and because there are some ashes containing some of the original minerals left. These plants are not the most beneficial in a rich ecosystem. In Ireland I can mention two, Molinia grass and gorse (Ulex), the "prickeline" bush. (very painful to the touch.) But you see more and more bare rock poking through the green after every burn.
>john>

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