Wholesome Eating

My enthusiasm for gardening built on my interest in biochar, but we have an even more compelling reason to seek abundant vegetables. When you garden, your sunk costs burden you to recover as much as you can by consuming the fruits (and vegetables) of your labors. Dietary guidelines point out that eating vegetables is key, especially for those plagued by diabetes. Since my wife has that condition and my father contracted it in his demise, gardening may be one of the best things we can do.

Last year's crop brought in enough food to overflow our shelves with canned pickle and tomato products. I expect that to happen again as our soil becomes healthier every year. Biochar is to thank for much of that improvement, but drip irrigation under black plastic sheet, decayed wood chip mulch (fostering more mycelium), cover crops, legume inoculants, double digging, pollinator host plants, forking vice plowing, compost, mycorrhizae additions, crop rotation, keeping soil covered, soil sampling and nutrient adjustment, and opening the canopy for more sunlight all have helped. This year, I am hoping to incorporate Garden Giant mushrooms in planting beds shaded by taller crops such as sorghum, tomatoes, eggplant, and lima beans. These mushrooms, in addition to being deliciously healthy to eat, are helpful to their garden companions' growth and yields. 

Another mushroom we are hoping to see more of this year is the oyster. We have been blessed with a patch of this found growing naturally near one of our gardens, and since, have tried to cultivate it on logs in brown, blue, and yellow variations. So far, we have had little luck. I grew some on coffee ground this year, but the yield was very low. With oyster mushrooms, we could receive many benefits to counter diabetes including decreased obesity and regulated blood sugar. 

We inoculated some logs with lion's mane mushroom spawn last year, and would love to see those come to fruition. Lion's mane could help regrow some of the deteriorated nerves in my wife's feet that cause her debilitating pain. If we ever see maitake mushrooms fruit from the buried logs we went to great lengths to cultivate last year, they may also help with blood glucose. 

Where we had the most immediate success so far, is shiitake logs. This year should be tremendous for shiitakes with ten times as many logs prepared. By fall, we should be harvesting armloads! Shiitake improves immunity, blood pressure, sugar, cholesterol, the cardiovascular system, and the digestive system.  It has antiviral, antibacterial (e.g. strep, staph, candida), and anti-inflammatory qualities. Something new I am trying with shiitakes is to make an alcohol extract from them. This will make certain beneficial compounds available to take in easy spoonfuls, rather than rely on cooking the mushrooms daily.

Local folk who want to hear a bit more about the benefits and methods of cultivating mushrooms are welcome to attend the March meeting of Calvert Eats Local where I will be giving a presentation and sharing a delicious shiitake dish.

Sheriffs of Nothingham

Taking liberties with the law (for instance growing your own weed or raising unpermitted chickens) could get you in a heap of trouble. Police forces throughout the country are increasingly resorting to an obscure fundraising mechanism known, mainly within the war on drugs, as civil asset forfeiture.

It is a sign of the trust that we place in our police and judicial system that we allow them to take lives and property in the performance of their mission. We trust that law enforcement will not kill or injure without being able to defend their actions. We trust that they will not steal from law-abiding citizens with wealth transfer as a secondary motive. In civil asset forfeiture laws (civil asset seizure would sound too much like a violation of the 4th Amendment), the standard of defense for the police is much lower than for killing a suspected criminal, as it should be.

Still being sorted out is the matter of how much evidence of criminal behavior is required to seize assets. Maryland's laws are among the most liberal on this score and becoming more so, with the recent override of Governor Hogan's 2015 veto that would have continued to allow petty (under $300) seizures and proposed legislation that would require criminal conviction prior to forfeiture.

I, personally, think Maryland's implementation of civil asset forfeiture has been relatively just and don't think that we need to convict people before seizing assets reasonably deemed to be connected with major crimes. However, other laws should be scrutinized in view of the possibility that a violation could lead to brutal deprivation of essential goods. For example, a greenhouse that one uses for sustenance could be seized if it contains a few marijuana plants. Chicken coops could be seized if their occupants aren't allowed by zoning regulations. No trial required, just a judicial hearing. This is the kind of thing that could happen when Judge Judy or one of her wannabes reigns on the bench. You're either right or wrong, and if you're wrong, God help you.

I anticipate that the breakdown of the rule of law following the collapse of national commerce will cause law enforcement to do whatever is necessary to sustain their power, including civil asset forfeiture as their main funding mechanism. When we begin to see acronyms widely tossed around like CAF (civil asset forfeiture) and EJK (extra-judicial killings) as euphemisms for theft and murder by the ones entrusted with our protection, it will be too late to ask if we've lost control of the police (not to mention private security goons).

Food and Drug Security

After Maryland decided to legalize medical marijuana, there were 146 applications for grower licenses, while the state plans to grant only 15. These licenses should be approved by the end of this summer. Two applicants are from Calvert County, one North and one South. The degree of planning and definition by these entrepreneurs on how they intend to set up their greenhouse facilities is impressive. There will have to be extraordinary security around the greenhouses. Bob Simpson, the applicant from Solomons, plans on heating his 38,500 sq. ft. greenhouse geothermally. 'twould be a good place to incorporate biochar as a long-term investment.

The reason for all the exuberance over getting licensed to grow marijuana is that there is pent-up demand for the product. Once that demand is given a legal outlet, will it last? Will a greater abundance of marijuana contribute to dissolution leading to breakdown of the rule of law? When the law loses its power, and people grow their own, how can the legal marijuana businesses hope to carry the profits built into their models? This won't progress overnight, but freely growing weed might be a leading indicator in the arc of collapse as we move from financial, to commercial, to political, and then to social breakdown. Yet, we will need marijuana, prescribed or not, for treatment of pain. Excessive casual use, however, could accelerate our demise as a society.

It's great that there will be high-security greenhouses built. Once commercial collapse occurs, the demand for marijuana may be superseded by a demand for food. If the rule of law breaks down, at least some food could be grown securely in these facilities. The greenhouse that I hope to build might eventually be part of the grow your own revolution, since my wife suffers from diabetic neuropathy. I am being careful to invest only as much as will provide a positive net return in a greenhouse, as costs can go quite high if you try to get fancy. The first stage might include a thin, simulated stone, concrete floor and clear polyvinyl sheet over a frame we have that was made for a gazebo tent. Eventually, I'd like to have a sturdy, classy looking greenhouse. Some kits are available that might at least get me to sturdy. Once I get to sturdy, highly secure might be another intermediate attribute to shoot for.

Aquaponyx

Listen to the arguments for vegetarianism and it won't take you long to be convinced that it is a morally superior choice over the typical American diet. I would like to at least stop eating animals raised in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Chickens may be future residents of our homestead, but it may be easier to avoid the complications of homeowner's association rules by setting up an aquaponics operation for obtaining our animal protein. I guess you could call aquaponics a form of CAFO, but I'm not ready yet to concede that fish deserve the same privileges as mammals or birds, especially as Jesus himself was at least an accessory to the consumption of net loads of fish.

+Jonathan Bates, of Paradise Lot fame, gave a presentation at a U.S. Biochar Initiative symposium that I attended explaining how he substituted biochar as the growing medium in his aquaponics system. There, as in a chicken pen, biochar could help grow edible plants and serve as grit for the crops (gizzards) that both fishes' and chickens' digestive systems rely upon.

The first step for us will be a greenhouse, which will require HOA approval, but the aquaponics system inside is not burdened with any regulations, to my knowledge. Bates touts the book, Aquaponic Gardening, in his USBI talk, hoping that the next edition includes information about biochar. In any case, I have biochar in abundance to apply to aquaponics. Bates' talk shows that the bigger chunks are preferred. I will want to charge it first, with fish fertilizer or some other nitrate-dense inoculant, in order to support plant growth.

My guess is that the aquaponics system, i.e. the tank(s), pumps, and connections, will cost less than the chicken farming infrastructure and it will probably yield more food. Sometimes, playing by the rules opens your eyes to better solutions, while keeping you in good stead with the community.

Paradise Shift

A friend of ours used to be a landscape gardener in Florida.  When she moved to Maryland, I observed to her that landscapes in Maryland looked like they could use a Florida touch. After consulting the book Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke and +Eric Toensmeier, I think I see why Florida's gardens do so well by comparison. The obvious factors are that Florida is flat, making it easier to work the land, there is more sunshine there, and that the many retirees in Florida are more inclined to gardening. As you move north from Florida, the ground stays flat for hundreds of miles, yet crops struggle to grow. As the book shows in Feature Article 4, there are areas of the country where the parent material of the soil (the C horizon) predominantly supplies the lowest amount of plant nutrients of almost anyplace in the world. One of those areas is the Southeast, from Georgia all the way up to Maryland. The C horizon there consists of a geological class called "ultisols."

Other advantages of Florida gardeners, i.e. the concentration of retirees and the sunshine, might be obviated by financial catharsis returning us to agrarianism and by a steady shift of climate northward with increases in global warming. While flat ground may be an advantage now, the low elevation of the state of Florida will also be its undoing, as it is eventually inundated with the rising ocean. On the other hand, the elevation of our land in Maryland may be just high enough to become waterfront property for our children to inherit.

In the meantime, dealing with the ultisol nature of our land will be an ongoing project. According to Jacke and Toensmeier, ultisols require "careful nourishment during early forest garden succession and tight nutrient cycling for the duration." When they wrote these words, the authors hadn't become familiar with biochar and its ability to serve as a nutrient sponge in the soil. Since then, however, Toensmeier has teamed up with +Jonathan Bates who is an advanced user of biochar. Together they have created an idyllic forest garden on just 0.1 acres of their Holyoke, MA residence. Their book, Paradise Lot, tells all about it. For a quick look, Geoff Lawton paid them a visit and posted a free (other than the price of registering your e-mail address) video to pique your appetite.

Accelerating Eden

Biochar will accelerate formation of topsoil, but ten years is a long time to wait. In my ignorance, five years ago I set up two garden beds using the native loamy sand that remained after our property addition was leveled. The results were so meager that forest vermin weren't even stopping by for lunch. The next few years were progressively more productive after successive additions of compost and biochar enriched the channery soil. Last year, I decided to expand with a new bed by using a method known as lasagna gardening. Also known as sheet mulching, lasagna gardening entails putting down layer after layer of organic matter on top of a poor growing surface, then waiting six months for it to break down enough to plant.  The up front work was considerable, but I was well rewarded with a bed that was more bountiful than the two that had been enriched year-by-year with biochar and compost.  (Biochar and compost were also ingredients in the lasagna garden.)  The takeaway is that, with poor soil, you don't have to wait ten years for a productive garden. You still have to add layers to a lasagna garden every year and dig it all in, but if biochar is included, even that can cease after ten years.

This year, I made two beds using sheet mulching and a very deep compost bed, following the same approach, in which I plan to grow mushrooms. My future forest garden patches will be grown out of sheet mulch, also. Perhaps the hardest part about lasagna gardening is getting enough of the right ingredients, green material, in particular. I've had to reach out to acquire enough of this high nitrogen material for my beds. I collect buckets full of used coffee grounds from a local doughnut shop and tons of horse manure from a local stables. It is best to pre-compost manure with straw or other brown material, before adding to the lasagna garden, in order to kill pathogens by the heat of composting. I'm looking at integrating my acquisition of green material onsite through raising chickens. Geoff Lawton explains how.

Got Tilth?

The shallowness of rivers out east (like the Patuxent) is a result of the relatively small drop in elevation from the headwaters to the continental shelf, which is relatively broad and shallow on the Atlantic coast. Our land in Southern Maryland is part of the Coastal Plain formed from ancient ocean sediments topped by glacial till. In more recent times, logging and agricultural practices allowed humus-laden forest soil to be washed into the rivers, leaving silty river bottoms and depleted sandy soils for today's farmers.

If you don't want to assume that you have sandy soil, it is worth taking half an hour to perform a simple test of your soil's texture. Soil texture is the most important feature of soil health. You want soil that is loamy in order to grow most crops. In performing the steps in the flowchart, use soil from a 6-inch band underneath any loose organic matter (the O layer) that may be covering your garden. This A layer would also be the soil layer to use for collecting samples to send to a lab for occasional soil tests. Lab tests are necessary to know how to correct for most nutrient deficiencies, but initial adjustments to soil texture (based on your ribbon test results) are foremost.


Thing about adjusting soil texture is that it is difficult in the short-term. You can't just throw sand into a clay soil to make loam. It might become hard like concrete. If you add loads of compost to sand, you will lose a majority of the nutrients and humus to leaching. Correcting the nutrient and textural deficiencies of a sandy soil through amendment with compost will require about 100 years of incremental compost additions. The best way I know to address non-ideal soil texture is to add biochar.  In the case of sandy soil, which will have nutrient deficiencies due to leaching, the biochar should be pre-composted in order to capture some nutrients and imbue it with a thriving population of microbes. Biochar should reduce the time required to correct texture problems by a factor of 10.

In preparation for winter storm Jonas, I emptied my rickety, elevated, wood drying rack of kindling into a huge pile. Doing so helped me to see that I could dry a whole lot more kindling by making this my usual practice, because the wood will stay dry in such a large pile. Heretofore, my biochar production rate had been limited by my drying rack capacity. Now, I could easily double my production rate by charring simultaneously with two kilns once I have a steady reserve of dry kindling piles. As with last year, 2016 looks like it will bring another Moore's Law improvement to my biochar productivity. Anyone in my area want to purchase some biochar? Or do you have 100 years worth of patience?