Whether you have a small garden or a farm, the soil is the basis. It should be designed in such a way that it is self-sustaining and has healthy microflora and fauna. There should be no residues of substances that do not belong in the soil. After all, you don’t want them in the crops. The reality in Europe today is that we have soils that hardly correspond to the ideal described above.
If you examine conventionally cultivated agricultural soils, heavy metals and residues from agrochemicals are present. The heavy metals do not get into the soil through sewage sludge fertilization alone. Even conventional commercial NPK fertilizers contain a broad spectrum of these metals. Even uranium is included. The fact is that in Germany alone, so much uranium enters the soil every year through phosphate fertilization that this amount could supply 2,000,000 households with electricity. We eat the uranium that is in the agricultural soil along with our nature. The quantities are small, but if you eat it every day, the heavy metal accumulates in the body and begins to have a devastating effect. The same applies to cadmium, cobalt and a number of other heavy metals. Moreover, it is not only heavy metals that pollute our system. In the USA, it is calculated that every year over USD 500,000,000 in health costs are incurred solely due to pesticide contamination found in crops. Cancer and autoimmune diseases are the main consequences in humans.
What are the practical steps to take? Before we cultivate the soil, we should perhaps obtain a soil analysis. But the layman will not be able to do much with it and unfortunately these soil analyses are also limited to a minimum of substances. It makes more sense to remove all problematic substances from the soil. Sapientia Naturae has discovered a method based on the Maya milpa system. It was developed by the Ratioars research group in South America and has proven its worth. Originally, the milpa system is a primitive form of shifting cultivation. Corn, beans and pumpkin are grown together. The whole thing looks like a jungle when it is in full swing, but the yields prove everyone wrong.
The research group has modified this system to improve the soil. Harvesting should not take place in the first year. The aim is to remove as much pollution from the soil as possible, while at the same time rebuilding the soil flora and fauna. A healthy soil is self-sustaining. The principle itself is very simple. Sunflowers, fire beans and marigolds are cultivated. The seeds are mixed in such a way that 25% sunflowers, 35% fire beans and 40% marigolds are sown. Sunflowers and marigolds love over-fertilized soil and draw out a lot of it. The beans bind nitrogen and climb up the sunflowers. The whole thing is planted in spring when everything is sown. All this field will do is free the soil from pollution. In the fall, everything is harvested, including the roots. The question now is where to put it all? Many people will be sorry not to be able to keep anything from the field for themselves, but they will be able to cope with it. You leave everything to dry, preferably in a place where nothing can seep away. Then the next year, when everything is dry, you burn it all. The ash is disposed of as hazardous waste. Investigations of this ash from projects in Europe revealed concentrations of heavy metals that were far above the permitted levels. Not everyone will have an overloaded soil, but this method reduces the pollution considerably in a short time. For farms, it should be clearly emphasized that one year is usually not enough. To be on the safe side, accurate soil analyses are carried out to detect the loss in the soil.
If you want to grow something, you have to learn to think in cycles. You often hear that compost should be used as fertilizer. In fact, compost is only created from waste from contaminated soil. Then, in the long term, you put back into the soil what you have laboriously extracted from it. This is why it makes sense to set up your own composting system, or one in a community of like-minded people. Terra Preta is an extremely valuable concept for rebuilding the soil. In the Amazon basin, the soil itself is poor. A yellow clay soil is the norm. The whole system thrives in the Amazon because the tributaries from the Andes constantly supply nutrients, dissolving minerals from the rock. However, 500 years ago, the Spanish conquistador Francisco de Orellana described something that was long dismissed as pure fantasy. The Amazon was heavily populated. He spoke of millions of people and flourishing cities made of wood. Twenty years after his voyage of discovery of the Amazon, to which he also gave the name, the Dutch and Portuguese tried to find these cities. What they found was nothing of the sort, just small tribes of primitive people who didn’t even have all the stone tools. In the last century, places were found along the river courses that had extremely fertile black soil. People even began to extract this soil and a trade was generated. This was called terra preta in Portuguese, which means black earth. About forty years ago, these deposits in the Amazon began to be examined more closely and traces of advanced civilizations were found. This earth was made by humans and the Amazon was very densely populated in places. The question was what happened to the people. Well, Orellana didn’t just discover the Amazon, he also brought smallpox with him. According to him, this wiped out almost 90 % of the population. Those who survived were thrown back into the Stone Age.
The secret of its production was believed to have been lost with the demise of the Indians. But a close examination of this terra preta revealed that its composition is not at all mysterious:
20% is pure charcoal. It has a very active bacterial population and a very high nutrient content. Various universities around the world have been involved in these studies and have conducted active field research over the last 25 years. The findings are striking. The charcoal serves as a reaction surface. Its pore structure allows an abundance of microorganisms to colonize. These in turn are able to break down mineral substances and make them available to plants. The pores also serve as a reservoir for many nutrients. Even if the soil has completely dried out, a simple addition of water is enough to restore its full fertility.
Many people were concerned when attempts were made to bring Terra Preta to colder latitudes in order to inoculate the soil there with the original microorganisms from the Amazon basin. This could not work, because what thrives at the equator does not tolerate temperatures around and below freezing point.
The Ratioars research group studied this for a long time and ultimately found a remarkably simple solution. First, the soil must be enriched with charcoal, which must be 100% charred (no wood residue). Then compost is applied and finally a specific microorganism culture is applied to the soil. The result can be seen within two to three years. Depending on the soil and winter break, it takes this time for all the symbioses to build up. After that, the soil is extremely fertile. The cultivated plants have an increased content of secondary active substances. They are therefore more than just simple food. An impressive experiment is always when you equip one bed in your own garden with Terra Preta and one without and then grow the same thing on it. The yields can show a difference of 300% and the question is, where do you get the charcoal? Well, if you want charcoal for your own garden, you can just use normal barbecue charcoal. Incidentally, the CO2 that escapes into the atmosphere during charring is absorbed by Terra Preta by a factor of 5 per year. Terra Preta is therefore an extremely sustainable way of binding CO2 in the soil. This makes an effective contribution to climate protection. In Australia, entire areas of land are being upgraded with so-called biochar. Biochar is charcoal. The heat and synthesis gases from charring are even used to generate energy in Australia. this soil has a lower water requirement as it can store water better. if you grow vegetables or crops in general, we recommend that you always grow mixed crops for your own needs and always intersperse them with medicinal herbs, lavender, sage, tansy, marigold and rue, to name but a few. These herbs are effective protective plants against unwelcome insects and pests. What’s more, the vegetable garden also looks very attractive when fine medicinal herbs bloom between the rows.