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  • From: "John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>
  • To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Humus
  • Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2011 18:48:35 -0000


I could not agree more Dieter.
We also though have an unfortunately simplistic paradigm developing in the big wide world that since carbon is black (as is obvious in diamond and for instance gasoline) and humus is dark to black then humus must be carbon and it is replaceable with other carbon sources like coal.
I was sent an article only recently in which was claimed that the very fertile original American Prairie soil became black because the natives burned the bedjesus out of it regularly instead of that it developed over time by breakdown of organic matter into humus.
My idea is that burning is the devil that makes good soil disappear and turn into subsoil and bedrock. I have been watching some of my neighbours burn every year for over 20 years and that has been the result.
john


Peat, carbon or oil or must be particularly good examples of humus, if the definition that “humus is organic matter that has reached a point of stability to remain as it is for millennia” is correct. Yet all of these have no or only very little fertility.

Perhaps the trouble is that we want to perceive of humus as a substance, whereas it may be more like a process. Do we get closer to what humus actually is, if we narrow down its essence to a chemical substance such as humic acid or to its individual N atoms? I don’t know! I know that the fertility of my soil increases if I feed it with plenty of organic matter. The response is almost immediately - already after a year or two there is a remarkable increase in growth. Perhaps the increased soil activity also taps stable humus that has been stored in the clay-humus complex for millennia, but that is hard to tell. If it does the newly returned organic matter probably also goes partly to replenishing this long-term storehouse of fertility. Anyways, there is no doubt in my mind that the increased fertility is due to the increased soil activity that occurs as a result of the newly added organic matter.

Cheers,
Dieter


--- On Sun, 11/13/11, John D'hondt <dhondt@eircom.net> wrote:


From: John D'hondt <dhondt@eircom.net>
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Humus
To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Sunday, November 13, 2011, 12:14 AM



There are quite a few nitrogens in humic acid which might account partly for
the fertility it imbues but to me the structure of the molecule has always
made me think of a soil hormone, of something with a messenger function.
john

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