This
is a refreshing insight into optimizing the natural soil plant
community and argues indirectly for shifting strongly toward lower
crowding by far. In fact it is a strong endorsement of hill style
planting as a best practice system, certainly for gardens generally.
I am personally astonished now my own thinking has evolved.
Today
I would approach a patch of bare rough land completely differently
than I would have several years ago when I would have simply turned
the soil and worked it with potatoes fo9r the next year.
Today,
I would cut down the grass to start, but then lay down broken down
cardboard boxes in a spaced checkerboard design allowing narrow
transit between each pad. Then I would set at least one bale of
straw on each pad and begin watering the works to condition the
straw. Once that was done, about two weeks and this is springtime, I
would plant potatoes into the conditioned damp straw. If I have some
compost available I would also top dress these bales to supply ample
starter microbes and nutrients. Otherwise I would use soil.
This
will produce a superior crop of potatoes and well mulched beds going
into the winter ready for next season’s efforts.
Even
better, this is far less effort than turning the often terrible soil
and is a huge step to boosting the underlying soil matrix. You are
then fully set up to operate a nice uncrowded organic garden.
High-Performance
Agriculture Can Increase Your Garden Yield Eight-Fold
September
23, 2013
High-performance
agriculture is one of my new passions, and my goal is to provide you
with information on how to maximize the time, effort, and energy
you’re investing in growing your garden.
This
new passion is turning into something of a second career—to learn
and understand how to optimize plant growth and the environment.
Most
of you are aware that I’ve been a strong supporter of labeling
genetically engineered (GE) foods, with the intention of eliminating
GE crops altogether, if at all possible.
The
flip-side of this is the effort to replace GE crops with organic
farming practices where crop yields are maximized to their utmost
potential, to the point that genetic engineering becomes entirely
superfluous. There are certainly ways to accomplish this, although
the learning curve can feel a bit steep at times.
This
interview focuses primarily on how you can optimize your garden, but
the principles are virtually identical for larger-scale agriculture.
I’ve been applying what I’ve learned in my own garden for a few
months now, and I’ve been able to personally witness the
maximization of genetic potential that is possible.
High-Performance
Farming Can Increase Yield 6-8 Times
For
example, the leaves on some of my plants, like my lime trees and
oleanders, are literally 300 to 400 percent bigger than the typical
leaf of these plants.
It’s truly extraordinary! You wouldn’t even imagine that a leaf
could grow this big.
Part
of the problem is that we’ve gotten used to less than mediocrity,
when it comes to plant performance. As my guest in this interview
states, farmers
and food producers routinely harvest only about 10 to 15 percent of
the inherent genetic capacity of any given crop.
[
Understanding this is the beginning of the agricultural revolution -
arclein ]
By
optimizing
soil composition and nutrient application, you can—for essentially
the same amount of time, effort, and energy—increase your yield six
to eight times.
John
Kempf, an Amish farmer, is one of the leaders in the field of
high-performance agriculture. He has taken a leadership role—somewhat
similar to the way I have in natural medicine—in teaching people
how to achieve these results. He’s the founder and CEO of Advancing
Eco Agriculture,1 and
runs an organic, high-performance farm in Ohio.
The
results you can achieve when you apply the principles he teaches are
truly astounding. As Kempf says:
“You
have to have different expectations and you have to begin managing
your crops differently. For example, when
you are expecting to produce 60 to 70 pounds of tomatoes per plant,
you no longer plant the plants 12 inches apart.
That
doesn’t work logistically. You have to begin
spacing tomato plants two and a half to three feet apart. But all of
a sudden, you only need three tomato plants instead of 36!”
How
Food Becomes Medicine…
Kempf
grew up on a family farm in northeast Ohio. The farm was originally
conventionally agriculture-oriented, and used large amounts of
pesticides. The turnabout occurred during a particularly difficult
three-year period in the early 2000s, when a significant portion of
each year’s crop was lost to various pests and plant diseases.
In
2004, they began working some land on a neighboring farm where
pesticides were not used. The difference was dramatic. Cantaloupes
grown on their side were infested with Downy and powdery mildew,
while the cantaloupes grown on the neighbor’s land had no
infestation at all—despite the fact that the crops were immediately
next to each other and received the same care.
“At
that point, I became convinced that fungicides and pesticides were
not the solution to the problems that we were experiencing,”
Kempf says. “I wanted to know what the differences between healthy
plants and unhealthy plants are, and what allows some plants to have
a functional immune system that they can be resistant to disease and
insect pests while the next one right beside it is susceptible.”
In
a nutshell, what he subsequently learned, is that the foundation of
health – whether we’re talking about plants, soils, animals, or
people – really boils down to two things:
- Having adequate mineral nutrition, and
- Having that nutrition, in the case of plants, be supplied by an active soil microbial community, or having a strong soil biology
By
focusing on those two areas – plant nutrition and soil biology –
the farm experienced an amazing turnaround, and it’s been
completely chemical-free since 2006. Amazingly, as
nutrition is improved in the plants, not only do they become
naturally resistant to disease and insect pests, they also become
hardier and better able to survive a wider range of climactic
changes.
Even
more importantly, healthier plants also form much higher levels of
medicinal compounds and essential oils, such as phenolics, aromatics,
and bioflavonoids. This is really what turns food into medicine… As
explained by Kempf, these medicinal compounds are compounds that
plants produce as plant protectants, meaning they protect the plant
from things like ultraviolet radiation, insects, and pests. When you
eat such plants, that functional immunity can then be transferred to
you.
What
Is High-Performance Agriculture?
High-performance
agriculture, as defined by Kempf, is providing plants with the
environment and the nutrition they need to allow them to express
their inherent genetic potential. This is a key concept, because
you’re not really altering a plant’s yield by supplying it with
better nutrition, per se. All you’re doing is allowing the plant’s
inherent yield potential to be fully expressed. Most plants in fact
have FAR greater yield potential than what conventional agricultural
practices are capable of producing. As explained by Kempf:
“Take
tomatoes, for example. The
day a tomato seed is planted, it has the genetic capacity to produce
400 to 500 pounds of fruit per plant. Every
time that plant is exposed to any level of stress throughout the
growing season that potential harvest is reduced. At the point at
which you’re actually harvesting the crop, you are only harvesting
a very small fraction of what you originally started with the day you
planted that seed. When we give the plant nutritional supplements,
the reality is that we are not increasing yields; we are simply
preventing those yields from being lost.”
[
I always wondered why plant productivity showed such great variance
on even the same field and certainly in the wild along fence rows –
arclein ]
The
question then becomes: How can plants be healthier and grow so much
more vigorously than what has become accepted as normal? The answer
to that question lies in a plant’s capacity to fully synthesize.
The action of absorbing water from the soil and carbon dioxide from
the air, and through the catalytic action of sunlight energy, sugars
are formed inside the plant. Those sugars are the energy source
utilized to drive all of the plants’ growing processes and to build
fruits. Anything you do to increase that plant’s photosynthetic
capacity will therefore increase the plant’s energy.
The
photosynthetic capacity of any given plant is directly correlated to
the mineral content and the nutritional profile of the plant. If it
has adequate mineral and trace mineral nutrition, it will be able to
photosynthesize at very high levels of efficiency and produce as much
as three to four times or more sugars during a single 24-hour period,
compared to most of today’s conventional crops.
How
to Evaluate Plant Quality
In
the full version of the interview, Kempf discusses a number of
examples of dramatically increased crop yields produced on
high-performance farms. While many blueberry crops, for example, have
an 8-12 percent sugar content, the blueberries he’s been working
with have a sugar content of 14-18 percent.
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“We
have increased the sugar production capacity of that plant by 50 to
80 percent, which results in a sweeter fruit and indirectly a fruit
that is more nutritious,” he says.
To
measure sugar content in your plant, you can use a refractometer,
also called a Brix meter. Sugar content is often used as an indicator
of quality—not because the sugars are in and of themselves
necessarily an indicator of quality, but they’re typically
associated with the plant’s mineral content. Hence, it can be used
as a marker of quality. Brix meters are available on Amazon.com and
other places, and can be had for under $100.
It’s
a simple way to measure the quality of the fruits, berries or
vegetables you’re growing, and evaluate the effectiveness of your
remedial actions. The most common Brix meters measure on a scale of 0
to 32 degrees Brix, which is what you want. They also have units
available that go from 0 to 64. According to Kempf, those are less
accurate as they measure too broad a range.
Using
Tea Compost for Your Garden
I
recently visited the Rodale Institute, which claims to be one of the
oldest organic farms in the US. It was founded 75 years ago by J.I.
Rodale. One of the most potent strategies they employ to improve
plant health is compost tea. While there are a variety of ways to
make compost tea, you typically use a volume of water, certain sugars
for nutrients, minerals, along with certain bacteria or microbes. The
mix is then aerated using a pump, as the beneficial organisms require
oxygen to survive. The
tea is typically grown over 24 to 48 hours, and then you apply it
directly to the soil on a regular basis.
An
ideal compost tea is composed of tens of thousands of different
species of bacteria, along with fungi and protozoa that actually
digest the bacteria. This type of tea compost can address both of the
main components necessary for maximum plant performance, i.e. mineral
nutrition and optimized soil biology. Kempf explains:
“To
provide a more complete picture of why those two factors are the
engines that drive the overall system: Inside the plant, all types of
metabolic processes go on that depend on mineral nutrition in order
for the plant to be able to grow and be healthy. According to a
number of plant researchers, geneticists, biochemists that have done
a lot of work on plant nutrition, in order for a plant to have a
completely functioning enzyme system, which it needs to be really
healthy; it needs at least 64 different trace elements.
We’re
talking not only about having adequate quantities and the right
balance of minerals, but we’re also talking about a very broad
spectrum, a very broad suite, of mineral nutrition, specifically a
lot of the various trace minerals, to function as enzyme cofactors.
However, we need that mineral nutrition to be in a form in which it
can be readily absorbed and readily utilized by the plants. And the
key to getting mineral nutrition absorption into plants is
microbiology in the soil system.”
This
is very similar to your own biology. You have microflora
in your digestive tract that is responsible for helping you digest
your food. As the proteins and carbohydrates in the food are broken
down through enzymatic digestion into individual amino acids,
essential fatty acids, and simple sugars, your body can then
assimilate these simpler compounds and use them for energy.
As
explained by Kempf, the exact same process holds true in soil, where
the soil microflora digests root exudates, sugars, and amino acids
that the plant’s root system sends out into the soil. These sugars
and amino acids, for the most part, contain a very limited mineral
profile.
The
minerals are actually
created through the microflora in the soil, as follows. The soil
bacteria, fungi, Actinomycetes, and a variety of other soil microbes
feed on these soluble sugars and amino acids. They also extract
minerals from the soil mineral matrix and use them to build their own
bodies. As that microbial population cycles and regenerates, the
minerals that are contained in their bodies are then released and
become available for absorption by the plant.
Again, this is very similar to the way that fermented vegetables or
probiotics improve your own digestive and overall health.
How
Charcoal May Improve Soil Health
Compost
tea can produce great results in terms of plant growth, but you also
need to pay attention to other environmental factors, such as
watering and increasing the organic matter in your garden soil by
adding compost and other soil amendments. Another area I’m really
excited about is the use
of BioChar, which is charcoal used as a soil amendment. Producing
BioChar involves slowly burning biomass, such as wood and other plant
materials. The slow burning releases methane gas, producing charcoal
that has an incredibly high surface area when spread out thinly.
The
charcoal stores carbon (as trees and plant materials extract carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere) and starts to reverse some of the
challenges we’re seeing with increasing CO2 levels in the
environment. When put back into the soil, it can keep the carbon
stable, in the form of charcoal, for extended periods of time, which
is an environmental benefit.
From
a gardening perspective, it provides a suitable environment in which
beneficial soil bacteria can grow and flourish. According to Kempf,
BioChar may also help “filter” toxic chemicals in the soil:
[
again, biochar made from plant material – avoid wood - is a source
of elemental carbon which is a natural solid crystalline acid that
naturally grabs free ions until something shows up to collect it -
arclein]
“I
do not know this for sure, but I suspect, based on the charcoal
component, that there’s a very strong possibility it might also
have a great beneficial aspect in sequestering toxins and
environmental pollutants that are in our soils and ubiquitous in our
environment today.
For
example, with all of the herbicides and pesticides that are being
sprayed, all the aerosols that are in the air, every time we get a
rainfall, there are some minimum levels of pesticides that are within
that rain. I think having that BioChar component in your soil can
help bind a lot of those toxins and prevent them from being absorbed
by your plants.”
Why
Using Miracle-Gro Is Not a Good Idea
Many
are under the false assumption that increasing plant nutrition is
best done by picking up some Miracle-Gro from your local garden
store. However, it’s important to realize that while conventional
fertilizers can provide some level of improvement, they’re far from
ideal. Nor are they superior, when compared to natural
high-performance plant-enhancing methods. As explained by Kempf,
there are two main issues at stake:
Plants
require far greater diversity of minerals than that provided in any
commercial fertilizer formula. For example, NPK fertilizers contain
varied amounts of just three components: nitrogen, phosphorus, and
potash. As mentioned earlier, plants need at least 64 different
minerals and trace-minerals for optimal growth.
While
many soluble NPK-type fertilizers produce rapid, noticeable plant
response, they significantly suppress the soil microbial community
because they’re essentially electrolytes, and when applied to the
soil, they increase the electrical conductivity of that soil, which
results in a burnout and a suppression of the soil microbial
community. So, long-term, this simply promotes soil destruction and
decreases your ability to grow healthy plants.
Resources
for Further Learning
Soil
and plant health is a complex topic that cannot be thoroughly
dissected in any one article, so I advise you to take it upon
yourself to learn more about high-performance gardening and
agriculture on your own. One excellent resource is Secrets
of the Soil: New Solutions for Restoring Our Planet by
Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird.
Kempf
also has a web site called AdvancingEcoAg.com,2 where
you can learn more about his work. For example, you can find quite a
bit of information about their cultural management systems and the
nutritional systems they use on high-performance farms. His company
also produces plant nutritional supplements that help increase plant
health. These products will probably become available sometime next
year, as they’re currently in the testing phase.
Sources
and References
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