The Best Way to use Fertilizer…

by Carmen P. Pagan
Carmen P. Pagan

Added fertilizer, whether “natural” or synthetic, can have a good result when starting a reconstruction project on almost pure mineral…

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Added fertilizer, whether "natural" or synthetic, can have a good result when starting a reconstruction project on almost pure mineral soil, with hardly any organic matter or inorganic nutrients in it. In our opinion, the most advantageous thing is to use external fertilizer to develop perennial grasslands. These can be managed later on with livestock or wildlife, but if in the first seasons some foraging is prevented or greatly limited, mowing and laying down all the resulting straw allow us to shorten the path, already preparing the optimal fit for the trees that correspond in each place and time.

Straw not only contains everything that plants need: it also retains moisture and improves environmental conditions, is stable and without risk of loss and is fermented without haste to become humus, the main component of organic soil. Later on, the trees themselves with their permanent or annual discharge of dry leaves will develop a thicker layer of organic soil which is what is interesting and what gives "fertility" (read productivity) to the territory.

Organic soil works automatically: you don't have to do anything to it... moreover, don't even interfere in its own bussiness. Organic soil takes care of itself and no matter how much we strain our neurons we will never surpass it in operational intelligence. This is also true for a properly structured vegetable mass.

When we buy new land we always ensure that it has not been plowed for a few years so that the spontaneous vegetation (the "weeds") and the organic soil are  already in an advanced state of development and everything can be run by its own means at a minimum cost. So, about composting and things like that we know what we have read or been told here and there because we have never needed it. What's more: we actually believe that it is useless in the vast majority of cases...

The biggest problem in implementing these things is the overwhelming cultural weight of the typical bullshit of agrarian tradition which almost all major religions have inherited as a rebound: the worship and cultivation of the land.

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Mature forests need elephants

by Carmen P. Pagan
Carmen P. Pagan

Why the dilemma between conservation and exploitation in the management of developed ecosystems is usually false: mature forests need elephants!…

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Why the dilemma between conservation and exploitation in the management of developed ecosystems is usually false: mature forests need elephants! And here is why... click to read more (use instant translation from Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge)

The dilemma between conservation and exploitation in the management of mature forests and developed ecosystems in general is usually false. From a common sense perspective, both are perceived as divergent paths, but in ecology, when we talk about the complex mechanisms that sustain ecosystems, common sense rather serves as a hindrance...

Many people, including broad sectors of environmental activism, believe that to conserve mature forests it is enough to just leave them to their own natural developement with no further interventions needed. This is not the case: both in Europe, Siberia and the Americas, mature forests are not "at peace" because they are missing fundamental pieces, which leaves us with two options:
a) We either restore those pieces or other similar ones, or
b) We artificially implement their functions, thus obtaining the corresponding income.
If we take neither action, forests or other ecosystems destabilize and begin to present structural problems whose roots can easily go unnoticed.

The elephant case is very illustrative, since it is quite paradoxical in several aspects... An economy based on ecosystems needs to manage large amounts of information which serve as a base to develop sophisticated management strategies.

Just sitting around and letting "nature" take its course, or breaking into the ecosystem like an elephant stampede would do (B.T.W) is usually of no avail.

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Vegetation and heavy element pollution

by Carmen P. Pagan
Carmen P. Pagan

Plants can remove heavy element pollution from the soil Pollution by heavy elements is a serious environmental problem Its resolution…

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Plants can remove heavy element pollution from the soil

Pollution by heavy elements is a serious environmental problem

Its resolution usually requires heavy investments that are often delayed. However, non-assisted plant activity can be part of cheap interventions through which it is possible to effectively remove these pollutants in reasonable time frames.

Plants absorb soluble elements so that they become part of their tissues. 

It is the accumulation of plant debris what forms organic soil. Through it  these elements return back to the mineral substrate. Heavy elements participate in this cycle, but their relative abundance in living vegetables and organic soils does not always correspond to what we usually observe in the solid mineral substrate, waters and in possible contributions from atmospheric dust. This is because many plant species manage them selectively. Even within environmental settings that are rich in contaminants of this type, only very low proportions of heavy elements are found in most of edible fleshy fruits. (Remember:  plants encourage animals to disperse their seeds by making fruit an attractive food). On the contrary, in many other cases the proportions of heavy elements in plant tissues significantly exceed those in the inorganic frame of reference. This accumulation of materials are harmful to animal health but current theories state it functions as a vegetal chemical defense mechanism. And this is advantageous for the plant species that adopt it as it spares them from having to manufacture  expensive toxic compounds. Thus, some plants just take advantage of resources that are already available in the environment for their defense. In support of this idea is the fact that the accumulation of heavy elements happens mostly in nitrophyllic plant species, with a high protein content, and in halophiles, which are very rich in salts. Both products are usually scarce resources in ecosystems and highly demanded by animals. 

It seems that the selective accumulation of heavy elements brings important competitive advantages to this type of plants, since it has developed in different taxonomic groups through parallel and convergent evolutionary processes.

In the Iberian Southeast there are many suitable plant communities to carry out heavy element extraction functions in places where they are creating problems.

The phytosociological classes of interest are Kakiletea, Chenopodienea, Salicornietea, Juncetea, Saginetea, Artemisietea, Pegano-salsoltea, Tamaricetea and Secalienea, among others, with a wide range of adaptation to various environmental frameworks and conjunctural situations.

As usual it is a priority to withdraw harmful or excessively available products, meaning that these would have to be productive ecosystems that should not stabilize to the point that their cycles close. To achieve this goal a periodic harvest of biomass would have to be carried out, extracted and exported. The destinations for this biomass could be diverse, but in all cases it will have to have as a final product either the heavy elements themselves, as soon as they are there, or in byproducts where they are trapped in a stable way. In any case, the risk of returning to the ecosystem cycles should be minimal.

Weighing multiple environmental and economic factors in the corresponding decisions becomes necessary.

 

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How to build up organic soil without work

by Carmen P. Pagan
Carmen P. Pagan

Organic soil: a cybernetic system and here is why There is nothing as useful and necessary as organic soil and…

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Organic soil: a cybernetic system and here is why

There is nothing as useful and necessary as organic soil and nothing that, to ensure its functions, requires less study and attention than organic soil. This is because organic soil builds up and works in automatic mode.

Let's see how this happens and how you can build up as much organic soil as you want without having to work.

It is wrong to belief that you have to "nourish the earth" for plants to grow: plants form organic soil with their scraps and, to develop and perform its functions, you just need to make sure there are as much plants the better in each site.

If the ground is very degraded and there is only mineral soil, you can cover it with straw, leaf scraps, twine, saw, used coffee (in bars it is usually given away in bags), cardboard, shredded cardboard, old rags made up from non synthetic fiber, and so on. Once done, bacteria, fungi and earth bugs (who are usually there without asking for permission or somebody to herd them) take care of everything else.

What then...? How do you manage the system?

Once the (eco)system is in progress, you can devote yourself to cutting herbs that are of no direct use to you (pulling them out is a waste of money). Thus the weak ones, favor the most valuable ones and, on repeating the operation you are actually adding more and more organic matter to the soil so it grows more and more.

The more, the better!

When building up soil it is advisable to be very very greedy so that however much vegetation and organic soil you get, you always feel it's just not enough... You can also feed animals (rabbits, guinea pigs, quails... ) with all that material you obtain, return the manure to the ground, and if you do it with a certain plan and strategy, the better...

But careful with adding small fauna...

A lot of people like worms, ball bugs, scissors and all that stuff, and it's okay to have them, but they also have to be controlled by their natural enemies. Why? Because they eat up the humus from the organic soil and release nutrients for the plants to absorb them, but you will usually lose the nutrient excess which is not absorbed (almost) immediately. And you are not interested in losing anything, aren't you? You’d rather treasure, accumulate and enrich yourself...

The biological community of the soil is like a highly complex and sophisticated cybernetic system and it is already responsible for collecting all kinds of data and processing them in order to serve the nutrients to the plants in the quantities and proportions that may be necessary.

To make sure it optimally works this way, what you have to do is... NOTHING! Just put your hands into your pockets, (or anywhere else!), and DO NOT WORK, or dig, or remove or anything of the sort...

The fact is if you do all this stuff correctly and knowing what you are doing, it will leave you a lot of free time for many other hobbies and businesses, related or not..

Still, studying thoroughly organic soil issues does have its interest, but this is not going to make plants grow or stop growing. The complexity and sophistication of soil processes and mechanisms is such that through the acquisition of scientific level and diving into its intricacies, we will always find new resources to apply in biotechnology, pharmacology, and diverse processed biochemicals. But that's another story...

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