(Continued from Part 6.)
3.7 – Improving Our Soil Before A T2E
Those with experience growing crops have learned that the fertility of their soil or the ability to add fertilizer has a large impact on crop yields. The best option to prepare for an emergency is to add fertility now into our soil. It is like keeping our vehicles at least half full of gas, it will be ready to use when we need it. When I first started gardening I skimped on improving my soil and most of my harvests were mediocre. When I spent more money and time to improve my soil, it became easier to grow a more abundant garden. I am a fan of the Square Foot Gardening Methods to make my garden soil but you can find many great ideas on making great garden soil. Choose one and go for it. See the Square Foot Gardening Foundation website if you want to try this approach. We could also buy land that has good natural fertility to start a farming on. Regardless of our approach I recommend investing in soil now that so we can successfully grow crops now and in the future.
3.71 – Composting
If we or our family/friends have lawn clippings, cardboard boxes/packaging and food waste we can start composting now to make great soil at home. Compost is something we can add to our existing soil to improve its fertility. There are 4 main purpose of compost. The first is to provide a soil structure that is easy for roots to spread out in. Root are limited in compact soil. They do best in fluffier more porous soil. Second, compost will help with water retention and allow for good drainage. This helps our gardens use water more efficiently. Plants need to be in the Goldilocks zone for water, not too little and not too much. In normal times this helps to avoid wasting water and to have better gardens. In an emergency it will help our watering last longer which will save time and energy in a world where we are hauling water to our gardens and hand watering. Third, it provides crops nutrients and can act as a nutrient sponge. The big three nutrients plants need are nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Compost will provide these and other nutrients but it will also provide porous organic material to absorb and time release these nutrients back to the plants. Fourth, compost can improve microbial activity of soil. Microbes improve soil by releasing nutrients, improving the soil structure, and helping root growth. Compost has a similar positive impact for microbes as it does for nutrients. Compost add surface area for microbe housing, space to grow, as wells as organic material for microbes to eat. Compost is also full of beneficial microbes to revitalize the concentration in our soil.
To make compost a general rule is to use a range of 2 to 1 or 4 to 1 brown organic material to green organic material. This is the sweet spot for efficient composting. Brown organic material are things like cardboard, paper, or dried leaves. Green organics are fresh lawn cuttings, food waste, and green wood chips. To start compost we mix these materials in a pile or in an aerated container for composting in a sunny spot in our yard.
There are multiple ways to make compost, compost tumblers, cold composting, and hot composting to name a few. There are many books and many websites. Just start researching and learn the methods that works for you. Before an emergency we can take our time and use a mix of faster and slower methods but during a T2E we should focus on faster methods because we will be racing against a shrinking calorie clock. I will outline a few of these faster methods below.
A great inexpensive way to make our own brown organic material is to get a paper shredder that can process up to medium thickness cardboard that has a cross cut. Then start shredding excess cardboard shipping and packing waste and use it as part of the composting process instead of just throwing it out.
Another good source for brown and green organic material are wood chips. Consider buying a small to medium sized wood chipper to process branches. If the branches we chop up are older and dried out this will be brown organic material. If it is fresher material it will be green organic material. I have lots of branches to trim off my trees each year and I generate lots of brown and green wood chips with my wood chipper. I use an electric model because it requires very little maintenance and it just works when I need to use it.
One final ideas for soil pre-work. Buy extra fertilizer we normally use for our gardens. Build up a 2 or 3 year supply by buying it when there are sales. It won’t spoil and we will have an extra supply if we ever need to grow more crops.
3.8 Improving Our Soil After a T2E
If we decide to help spearhead a community wide effort to grow a surplus of food in a T2E we will need to choose soil enriching methods that are fast, low tech, and easy to source.
The low hanging fruit option would be to gather up community wide resources and apply them to our growing efforts. Neighborhood supplies and store supplies of soil amendments and fertilizer. This would mirror the community wide seed gathering efforts mentioned above. This will give us a boost but there will still be a large gap to close unless our town has a large agriculture distribution hub with fertilizer on the shelves.
I recommend the following fast composting methods. The fastest would be the Berkeley compost method which requires a large compost pile that is 36” x 36” x 36” that is mixed every day or two and kept moist but not soggy. This can make compost in 14 to 21 days. See Robert D. Raabe’s article on how to do it.
The other fast composting method is with a compost tumbler. This can generate compost in 4 to 12 weeks depending on how ideal the conditions are. A key to making good compost is to use a 2 to 1 to 3 to 1 ratio of brown to green organic material. Keep the moisture level in the Goldilocks moisture range, not to wet and not to dry. Turn it every 3 to 4 days. Put the tumbler in a sunny spot. Add some existing compost with active microbes to startup the system. Think of it like adding yeast to make bread. Next, once we have the right mix we need to stop adding more material. We should let that batch process. Save other organic material in a holding spot for the next batch. Finally don’t over fill the tumbler. This will limit oxygen exposure and slow down the composting.
Here are some ideas for good green organic sources: leaves, lawn sod, lake or river beds bottoms, shredded green branches, lawn clippings, food waste excluding meats.
Here are some ideas for good brown organic sources: broken up cardboard or paper, dried leaves, shredded brown branches.
Here are a couple links to composting with sod because it will be common in most areas. Sod Compost Link 1 Sod Compost Link 2
3.81 – Biochar Is An Abundant and Appropriate Technology For A T2E
Biochar would be another great way to quickly improve soil quality in a T2E. This is basically charcoal that has been soaked with organic material and nutrients. This soil improving method dates back to over a thousand years ago in the Amazonian Basin. In the 1950s, Dutch soil scientist Wim Sombroek noticed it in the Amazon and called it “Terra Preta” or black earth. Since then it has been studied in more depth and in the last couple decades it has been applied to farming as competitor/supplement to traditional fertilization methods. The biochar does not add nutrients by itself except for carbon but it has very high internal surface area and is great at holding water and other essential plant nutrients. Once it captures these nutrients it will slowly release them back to the roots of the plants.
To make Biochar we simply need to make charcoal and then mix it with compost and moisture for a time to charge it. Then use it to amend the target soil. The recommended addition ratio is 5% to 10% but adding smaller amounts will improve soil fertility. The debate is still ongoing whether biochar is a good economic method compared to other modern soil amendment processes, but if other methods were no longer an option it would be one of the kings in a T2E to improve soil. It will be within everyone’s technological reach to produce locally.
There are two common ways to make charcoal for biochar. The first is the trench/pit method. We dig either a pit or trench and fill it with wood. Next, we light a fire and over time we smother the fire to limit the oxygen before the wood is fully burnt. This will result in a portion of the wood heated to charcoal but not all burnt to ashes. The second is the barrel method. We will use a barrel within a barrel. In the inner metal container we place the wood to be turned in to charcoal. On the outside is the wood that will be burnt as the fuel to create the charcoal. The inner wood will be heated and not fully combusted but turned into charcoal.
To charge the biochar we can simply mix it into our compost pile or soak in a compost tea with aeration for a day or two for fast charging.
Here are a few links about how to make charcoal:
Make Charcoal Link 1
Make Charcoal Link 2
Make Charcoal Link 3
Also see a British Permaculture website that explains the methods to charge biochar.
This biochar idea also interlinks well with the cambium harvesting efforts mentioned above and heating thermal mass for greenhouses. The wood that is left over from this process can be used to make biochar for emergency gardens. In addition to using it for soil amendment, charcoal has many other great emergency applications like toothpaste, water filtration, deodorizer, and a hotter fuel for metal working. Learning how to make charcoal is a great emergency skill to learn now and it can be lifesaving in an emergency
3.82 – Pee-cycling
The final topic for emergency soil amending is pee-cycling. One if the topics that always interests me is taking the common raw materials around us and turning them into valuable resources. In a T2E there will likely not be a resupply of supplemental fertilizer at the local hardware store but we will still have a large source of fertilizer we currently just throw away, pee. Adults produce a bit under 2 liters of urine per day and this is enough to fertilize about 1/10th of an acre. Unlike poo, urine is nearly sterile and can easily be converted to fertilizer with just dilution. Typical ratios are 1 to 4 to 1 to 10 urine water ratios. If urine is applied undiluted it can damage crops instead of helping them grow faster because of the salt concentration in the urine. This free resource should be collected and turned in to a resource.
Warning! I do not recommend trying to compost with human poop, only pee. There are methods to do this safely but if we are trying them during an emergency with novices, this sounds like a recipe for disease and suffering to me. Save the pee and dispose of the poo in a T2E.
In some less common cases pee is not sterile and can have harmful pathogens. This risk will increase if we are using pee from lots of people. To be fully cautious we should set up a pee pasteurizing process for our fertilizer. The Rich Earth Institute in Vermont is a leading organization in this field, collecting, pasteurizing, and distributing recycled human urine as fertilizer. Here are the 2 recommended pasteurizing methods.
Heat to 70°C (158°F) for one hour:
This method, recommended by the World Health Organization, is effective in killing most pathogens.
Heat to 80°C (176°F) for 90 seconds:
Some systems use this method, which is also effective for sanitation.
If we followed one of these two methods we would have a very safe process. Solar cooking boxes could be a low effort way to do this. Turning this literal waste stream into a value stream is very low tech and can be rapidly applied during an emergency.
Here are a couple links to learn more about pee-cycling: Pee-Cycling Link 1 and Pee-Cycling Link 2.
3.9 – Where to Grow Our Emergency Crops
Another important question to answer is where we should grow our emergency crops. In WWII people started growing or expanding gardens at home. For us in a T2E this will only be possible if the water is still running to our homes or close by. If the water turns off then all growing efforts need to be moved as close as possible to water sources. The only exception to this would be land near water that frequently floods. This land would then become a 3rd or 4th tier choice then.
There is a reason throughout history that civilizations have started around water ways. These places require the least energy, in this case calories, to move water around, the soil near water sources is often very fertile, and moving heavy stuff, like crops, is much easier on water. Build gardens/farms near rivers, lakes, canals, and working wells. Once we have identified the places closest to the water, then choose the spots that are already cleared and have the best soil. Garden plots and farmland. Next, the owners of the land need to be convinced to share their land for this purpose. This is where the seed surplus, and community labor will come into play. If the owners of the land, their own seeds, labor, fertilizer, greenhouses, and security they are self-sufficient and no deal can likely be reached. However, if they are missing any of these factors then we can make a deal with them to supply what they lack.
After the cultivated land is used, then identify land that could be quickly cultivated like grass fields or fields with low brush that requires lower effort to clear. Another option at this level is garden and farmland that is further from the water but can be used if water is moved to those sites. If those areas are downhill from the water source these would be the best because a piping or hose networks could be built to move water there with less energy inputs. Work on these garden sites in parallel to increase the acres of crop land needed. Hopefully by this point we have the number of acres needed to feed our community but if not follow the above principles and move further and further from water sources until we have the need acres.
If we live in an area with sufficient rainfall for dry land farming then just ignore the water source comments above and only focus on the land with the best soil and then on the land that is the most clear and easiest to cultivate.
Another consideration to make is for mature fruit and nut trees in our community. A mature fruit tree can provide about 200,000 kcal per year and nuts can produce about 300,000 kcal per year. Find out who in our community has mature fruit and nut trees and use our group’s labor to get water to these trees. These trees will give an additional needed calorie boost but only if they are watered properly.
One final thought on where to grow. Using the considerations above, still try to pick land plots as close together as possible. This will make it easier to provide security and it will provide a smaller perimeter to keep animals out of. This would be a balancing act to be explored for the best trade-offs.
(To be concluded tomorrow, in Part 8.)
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