Biochar is what we call charcoal when it is used as a soil amendment. Like all charcoal, biochar is created by pyrolysis. Under investigation as an approach to carbon sequestration to produce negative carbon dioxide emissions, Biochar has the potential to help mitigate climate change, via carbon sequestration. Biochar can increase soil fertility, increase agricultural productivity and provide protection against some foliar and soil-borne disease. Biochar is a stable solid, rich in carbon and can endure in soil for thousands of years.
Watch “Biochar: The Oldest New Thing You’ve Never Heard Of”
Wae Nelson was employed as a mechanical engineer in the aerospace and defense industries for many years, working both as a designer and as a manager in manufacturing. Now he publishes the magazine beloved by local gardeners, Florida Gardening, and pursues his passion for biochar — a diy, scalable technique to both improve horticultural yields and sequester carbon simultaneously.
Watch “Making Biochar: with Peter Hirst of New England Biochar”
Geologist Ian Stewart explains, in three stages of natural history, the crucial interaction of our very planet’s physiology and its unique wildlife. Biological evolution is largely driven by adaptation to conditions such as climate, soil and irrigation, but biotopes were also shaped by wildlife changing earth’s surface and climate significantly, even disregarding human activity.
Joseph Russell Smith (1874-1966) was a geography professor who grew up in the chestnut forests of Virginia. His book Tree Crops was originally published in 1929. Smith wrote it because he was horrified by the soil destruction caused by regularly tilling cropland — and hillside tilling drove him completely out of his mind, because it permanently destroyed good land at a much faster rate. Everyone knew this, but they kept doing it anyway, because they were cursed with a short-term mindset.
Tilling was a common practice in those days (and it’s still popular today). Farmers tilled because their daddies tilled, and their grandpas tilled, and their great-grandpas tilled in the old country. It was a powerful dirty habit that was nearly impossible to quit, until the land died — and it provided no long-term benefits! With great exasperation, Smith exclaimed: “Corn, the killer of continents, is one of the worst enemies of the human future!”
Old World crops like wheat, barley, rye, and oats provided a dense ground cover that slowed the rate of soil erosion a bit. New World crops like corn, potatoes, cotton, and tobacco were row crops that left the tilled soil exposed, and more vulnerable to erosion. In America, thunderstorms were common, producing downpours that were rare in Europe. Heavy rains filled the streams with lost topsoil. In the Cotton Belt, Smith saw erosion gullies that were 150 feet deep. Oklahoma was ruined with stunning speed. We were destroying land that could have fed millions. An Old World saying sums it up: “After the man the desert.” In the legends of our ancient wild ancestors, the First Commandment is: “Thou shalt not till.”
Joseph was a brilliant visionary, and one day he received an illuminating revelation. If you wanted to stop the destruction of soils caused by tilling, quit tilling! Live in a different way! Create a cuisine that majors in nutritious soil-friendly foods. Smith envisioned two-story farms: tree crops on the sloped land, and pastures for livestock below, both perennial. Farmers could abandon tilling forever, and pass the land on to future generations in a healthier condition. Imagine that.
Farmers scratched their heads when they heard this idea, and were more than a little perplexed and befuddled. Agroforestry wasn’t a mainstream tradition in European American agriculture. The required knowledgebase didn’t exist, so Smith researched it and wrote it down. His book is mostly a scrapbook of correspondence. Smith sent letters to hundreds of experts on tree crops, and then assembled their responses into a book. He created an amazing collection of information, including recommendations for agroforestry in other climates and continents.
Hogs won’t touch corn if there are acorns to eat, and oaks can produce more calories per acre than grain, when done right. A top quality pecan tree can drop nearly a ton of nuts per year. Hickory nuts can be smashed and boiled to produce hickory oil. Pistachios fetch a high price and have a long shelf life. Many types of pines produce nuts. The honey locust is a drought hearty US native that will grow where corn or cotton grows, and animals love the beans. The sugar maple produces sugar. Persimmons are enjoyed by man and beast. Pigs and chickens love mulberries. And don’t forget walnuts, beechnuts, almonds, cherry pits, soapnuts, holly, ginko, pawpaw, horse chestnut, osage orange, privet, wattle, wild plums, and choke cherries. The list goes on and on.
Trees can produce high quality foods, and they can be grown on slopes too steep to plow. Once the trees are established, little labor is needed until harvest time. Tree crops can be much more productive than mere pastures or forests. They typically suffer less from dry spells than field crops. Over time, they can actually build new topsoil. Like any crop, trees are vulnerable to pests, diseases, fire, and extreme weather. Like any crop, tree crops are not 100 percent dependable, year after year, so monocultures are not a wise choice. The Second Commandment is: “Thou shalt encourage diversity.”
Smith witnessed the blight epidemic that wiped out virtually all of the American chestnuts, rapidly killing millions of trees. He personally lost 25 acres of chestnuts. The blight fungus came to America on chestnut trees imported from Asia. Knowing this, it’s shocking that Smith advocated travelling the world in search of better varieties of trees, to bring home and experiment with. Hey, Japanese walnuts! And the USDA helped him! The Third Commandment is: “Thou shalt leave Japanese organisms in Japan.”
Smith was a tree-loving zealot who was on a mission from God, and he promoted his great ideas with great enthusiasm. But the world did not leap to attention, change its ways, and promptly end soil erosion as we know it. Farmers are almost as conservative as popes, and they are not fans of radical change — especially ideas that tie up land for decades before producing the first penny. Joseph was heartbroken: “The longer I live, the more amazed I become at the lack of constructive imagination, the lack of sheer curiosity, the desire to know.” It’s not easy being a brilliant visionary.
Smith’s grand vision was reasonable, rational, and ecologically far superior to growing organic crops on tilled fields. Tree crops remain an important subject for the dreams of those who do not robotically march in lockstep with the status quo hordes. Planting America’s hills with tree crops would be an immense task, creating many jobs, and providing benefits for generations. Why don’t we do it? The Fourth Commandment is “Thou shalt live in a manner that is beneficial to the generations yet-to-be-born.”
We all know which vegetables and fruits are safe to eat, but what about wild plants? Here are a few common North American goodies that are safe to eat if you find yourself stuck in the wild:
Blackberries:
Many wild berries are not safe to eat, it’s best to stay away from them. But wild blackberries are 100% safe to eat and easy to recognize. They have red branches that have long thorns similar to a rose, the green leaves are wide and jagged. They are best to find in the spring when their white flowers bloom, they are clustered all around the bush and their flowers have 5 points. The berries ripen around August to September.
Dandelions:
The easiest to recognize if the dandelion, in the spring they show their bright yellow buds. You can eat the entire thing raw or cook them to take away the bitterness, usually in the spring they are less bitter. They are packed with Vitamin A and Vitamin C, and beta carotene.
Asparagus:
The vegetable that makes your pee smell funny grows in the wild in most of Europe and parts of North Africa, West Asia, and North America. Wild asparagus has a much thinner stalk than the grocery-store variety. It’s a great source of source of vitamin C, thiamine, potassium and vitamin B6. Eat it raw or boil it like you would your asparagus at home. Continue reading →
The ramp has broad, smooth, light green leaves, often with deep purple or burgundy tints on the lower stems, and a scallion-like stalk and bulb. Both the white lower leaf stalks and the broad green leaves are edible. The flower stalk only appears after the leaves have died back, unlike the similar Allium ursinum, in which leaves and flowers can be seen at the same time. Ramps grow in groups strongly rooted just beneath the surface of the soil
Allium tricoccum grows to 0.3 m (12in) by 0.2 m (8in).
It is hardy to zone 3 and is not frost tender. It leafs out in early spring and is in flower from June to July. The flowers are hermaphrodite (have both male and female organs) and are pollinated by Bees, insects.
Suitable for: light (sandy) and medium (loamy) soils and prefers well-drained soil. Suitable pH: acid, neutral and basic (alkaline) soils. It can grow in semi-shade (light woodland). It prefers moist soil.
Edible Uses:
The bulb may be eaten raw or cooked and is used mainly as a flavoring in salads and savory dishes This is one of the best North American wild species for sweetness and flavor They have a mild sweet flaver, resembling leeks. The small bulb is up to 12mm wide and 50mm tall and is produced in clusters on a rhizome
The leaves may also be eaten either raw or cooked. The unfolding leaves in spring have a mild sweet flaver, resembling leeks.
Flowers are eaten raw. They are used as a garnish on salads and possess a hot onion flavor.
Siberian Pea Shrub (Caragana arborescens). This shrub from Siberia and other semiarid parts of Northeastern Asia is remarkably cold hardy – tolerating temperatures below -40, the frigid temperature where Celsius and Fahrenheit overlap. It is widely used for windbreak, nitrogen fixation, livestock fodder, and erosion control in the world’s cold regions. It is particularly common in the Canadian prairies, where hundreds of miles of pea shrub windbreaks have been planted.
Siberian pea shrub produces fairly high yields of small beans. Canadian farmers use the beans as survival food, boiling them in several changes of water in lean years to remove the bitterness. That doesn’t quite meet my definition of edible. However, Facciola’s Cornucopia: A Source Book of Edible Plants reports the dry beans contain up to 36% protein – very similar to soybeans.
This article is an excerpt from Eric Toensmeier‘s forthcoming book Carbon Farming: A Global Toolkit for Stabilizing the Climate with Tree Crops and Regenerative Agriculture Practices, and is part of a series promoting his kickstarter campaign to raise funds with which to complete the book.
Geoff lawton has just released his free video, the Permaculture Guide to identifying the essential features in a landscape that you need to know before buying a property.
Watch the preview
The entire video is available for free viewing at GeoffLawton.com
They cover a lot of ground about the relationship between permaculture and agroforestry and get into many of the specific systems of forest farming, including mushroom production, and use of tree crops for riparian buffers and windbreaks.
Here is an outline of the conversation:
Role of Academia, Extension, and Research in furthering Permaculture
Definitions of Agroforestry and Forest Farming vs Forest Gardening
Discussion of approaches to healthy forest management
Examples of stacking yields in time and space with an example of Black Walnut/Paw Paw/Grazing polyculture
Incentives for farmers to adapt Agroforestry practices
Specifics of mushroom cultivation as a Forest Framing practice
The vision and potential of Forest Farming
Thanks to Scott for putting together a great recording.
There’s a way to grow garlic without replanting each year. A Washington gardener explains how.
Joe Capriotti doesn’t plant garlic, but every year he harvests hundreds of pounds from his backyard in Montesano, Wash. His technique goes against the common practice of planting and harvesting garlic each year as if it were an annual plant. Most people don’t realize that garlic can be grown as a perennial.
Capriotti, who once worked as a chef and as a logger in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, developed his technique over many years of experimenting on his 1-acre homestead. Now, at 80, he proudly displays the fruits of his research. When I visited his place in western Washington, I found Capriotti to be an active man with a sharp wit and a delightful sense of humor. His other experiments have ranged from testing apple, peach, plum and pear varieties to new techniques for growing strawberries and potatoes. But his real love is garlic.
“This patch of elephant garlic hasn’t been planted or plowed for more than 20 years,” Capriotti says, leading me to a 25-by-40-foot area where healthy garlic tops of various sizes grow without apparent order. “When the plants are about 2 feet tall, seed buds will form. Be sure to pinch off the buds or you won’t get any garlic. The large plants will form cloves. The other, smaller plants will die back, but will come up again the following year. Did you ever dig clams? Well, the small holes the young garlic tops leave after they die back look like little clam holes all over the soil.”
In August Capriotti pulls up the largest plants that have been pinched. “I just pull ‘em out of the ground by hand or use a garden trowel if they won’t come,” he says. “I have never weighed how many pounds have come out of this bed, but it’s 200 pounds or more.” Capriotti also inter-plants garlic with berries and young fruit trees. Volunteers may be found almost anywhere in the garden.
After harvesting, Capriotti uses a hand-push cultivator to lightly till the surface and uproot weeds that are already growing. He waters the bed to cause the weed seeds to germinate, then cultivates the surface to eliminate those young weeds. In September the area looks bare and abandoned. “My neighbors used to look at it and ask, ‘Hey Joe, aren’t you going to plant garlic this year?’ “ he says. “ ‘No,’ I’d answer, ‘I never plant garlic. It’s already in there.’ “
In October, Capriotti spreads a 3- to 4-inch mulch of cherry and apple leaves. The mulch keeps any more weeds from sprouting and would prevent the garlic from coming up, too, if it weren’t for the timely arrival of the wood thrush, or winter robin, from the local forest. These birds, which move to the open lowlands with the first cold weather, eat insects that live under the leaves. They turn the mulch, disturbing it enough for the garlic to sprout through. Last year, for some reason, not many thrushes came, but robins took over and did the job nearly as well. Capriotti has built bird boxes all around his house and watering ponds nearby to attract birds of all kinds. Besides turning the garlic mulch, the thrushes, robins and warblers effectively control insects throughout the garden.
By spring most of the mulch is gone. Night crawlers and microorganisms have turned it into rich compost. “Don’t dig manure into the soil when you start the bed, Capriotti suggests. “I tried that one year when I was trying to get huge cloves just for show. The plants grew big enough, but they were only the leaves—no cloves. If you want to fertilize, spread 1 inch of well-rotted manure on top of the ground. After a patch has had no fertilizer for many years, it is necessary to do this. By not plowing, and by spreading a little manure once in a while and a mulch of leaves every fall, I get elephant garlic bulbs of all sizes — some weigh over 1 pound. The shopkeepers I sell to don’t like it when they get that big. It’s too weird — the customers have never seen anything like it.”
Garlic likes full sun and grows well in most soil conditions, but the soil should not be too heavy and it must have good drainage. “Garlic hates to have its feet wet and will rot in boggy areas,” Capriotti says. “Don’t water in the summer, especially with an overhead sprinkler. I don’t even sprinkle my strawberries or raspberries nearby because I’m afraid some of the water might get on the garlic. If it rains heavily after the Fourth of July, it rots some of the plants and you get a lot of culls. I replant the culls later in areas that look kind of sparse.”
This way of growing garlic has emerged from a lifetime of living and working close to nature. It requires no machinery or chemicals — only a hand cultivator and a garden trowel. “You have to have the right soil conditions,” Capriotti says, “and you have to be aware of everything going on in the garden.” The technique is simple yet sophisticated, and closely follows the natural cycle of garlic, a perennial plant. Capriotti is proud of his way with garlic and loves to remind his many visitors, “I don’t plant garlic — I only harvest it.”
When we think about plants, we don’t often associate a term like “behavior” with them, but experimental plant ecologist JC Cahill wants to change that. The University of Alberta professor maintains that plants do behave and lead anything but solitary and sedentary lives. What Plants Talk About teaches us all that plants are smarter and much more interactive than we thought!
