A. M. Kapuler Ph.D.
President
Peace Seeds
Spring 2006

 

There is good reason for optimism after a very wet and sometimes cold winter. Spring comes giving rise to spreens, a hybrid word coined by Lindsay Bradshaw that comes from new green growths of spring. It is reassurance that the light is increasing, that night is waning and another cycle in the perennial phenomenon of temperate zone life is miraculously coming true before our eyes. Leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, food, fiber, sustainability, fertility, society, civilization, a planetary consciousness aware of the interrelatedness of all continues to emerge from the growth of myriad millions of species. Quadrillions of creatures, from subvisual multi-molecular specks called viruses to the macro creatures like us they inhabit, have developed patterns of persistence, endurance and adaptability coming from uncharted interactions, some cooperative, some competitive, all with consequences in the lives, fates and histories of organisms.

It is with organisms in mind that brings organic soil into focus. During the recent years, molecular biologists have been exploring the microscopic biology of the oceans, soils, swamps, bogs, fumaroles, fissures and other niches where bacteria and their kin live. We now know that the green in the leaves of plants, the mitochondrial energy systems of our human animal cells, parts of the structure of the chromosomes and membranes of all eukaryotic (means ‘true nuclei’ cells (i.e. not bacterial) come from the two major groups of bacterial organisms that live here on and in this planet. These two major groups, the eubacteria and the archaea pooled their talents and most of what we humans generally call life is the result. Not a shallow consequence for the results of working together cooperatively. In spite of comets, earthquakes, continental plate shifts, changes in the sun and neighboring planets, life has been sustainable for several billion years on this remarkable, uncommon, small, rather inconspicuous planet.

On the thin skin of this planet is a biofilm of life. It is not the only biofilm made of organisms, there are others further inside the planet, inside our large intestine and over our teeth and in the soil we organic gardeners and farmers use to grow food, fiber, flowers, and a future worthwhile to everyone.

So spring comes and the biosomes (groups of cooperating organisms that give rise to fertility) move into vigor. The nitrogen in the air, the phosphate, calcium, iron and other minerals from the earth, the sunlight striking the green biopigments splitting water into hydrogenium (a hydride minus an electron) and oxygen, each and every part requiring a different enzyme system, a different set of genes located in different sets of microbial organisms. This is teamwork on the cellular, microscopic level. Biochemical free radicals, a diversity of kinds, are moved into, around and through cells to make energy. The discovery and nature of microbial talents continue to be unsuspected, remarkable and profound.

Recent discoveries looking at bacteria (microbes or molecular critters = crits) in the open saline oceans finds new crits with molecular talents. Some are diazotrophs, they fix nitrogen from the air. Some are phototrophs, they split water with sunlight, some are phosphate scavengers, others live and use a variety of energy systems based on particular and local ecologies.

In the soil, growing plants have the same issues about cooperators, growth enhancing and promoting organisms that inhabit the root zones of plants. Some of these are bacteria, others are fungi. Mycorhizal fungi are intimate with the roots of many plants. There are genetic signals between certain groups of bacteria, fungi and the roots of plants. These are built into the DNA, into the genes, with high specificity. Plants and fungi have genes in common for interacting with certain specific bacteria. Animals including insects and plants have genes in common for preventing the growth of fungi. Organisms that develop the prairies, the forests, the oceans are part of biosomes, the collectives of organisms and their interactions that are the core of how life has thrived on this planet.

So as we engage once again the gardening season, the next cycle, consider the weeds as first and second favorite allies in making your garden more fertile, healthier and more productive this year. They go together with the bacteria and fungi. The weeds mixed with soil make food for the bacteria who grow most quickly and provide food for fungi which inhabit the roots making domains for biosomes.

The floods have covered garlic and brassicas for weeks now. They seem to survive seasonal flooding quite well. Red Russian kale and Savoy kale are doing very well; the Romanesco broccoli and Openapa chinese cabbage are more ragged. Walking to the edge of the lake that will once again become the center of our vegetable gardening, I wonder at how the biosomes change when there is flooding and oxygen in the soil is drastically reduced. Nine years ago was the last flood and the underground rodents were chased to higher ground and we had great root crops for 3 years before they began to reinhabit the lowlands. So planting layouts are adapted to the seasonal ecology. Yacon, oca, garlic, potatoes, parsnips, carrots, beets, apios, burdock and turnips all go in the now flooded land.

Flood brings other consequences. River water used to dilute pollutants from pulp and paper mills, computer chip industries, chemically managed agriculture wash over soil managed organically for decades, a microscopic biofilm coating with a flavoring of efflux from plastics, cars, petroleum products, field animals, and the residue of burned fields and roasted coffee beans. And then there are the weed seeds that get a ride into our garden to be discovered during the cycle where lettuces have to be free of wild lettuce, where free ranging rapeseed (aka canola seed) floats, unsuspected and possibly GMO, into our work of breeding for the public domain and the organic movement while preserving the heritage of temperate zone food crops adapted to our bioregion.

Most of the soils I’ve worked with during the past decades of organic seed growing have been impoverished in one way or another. Hence I’ve routinely supplemented the soil with ‘amendments’. In the beginning, these were animal manures, some composted, some not. These gave way to powders of seaweeds, ground rocks and pellets of recycled fish.. We made compost and used it for potting soil but rarely had enough for acres of field crops. Several times during the past few years, I noticed that a handful of fertilizer under the transplants attracts slugs and snails who eat the plants after delighting in the amendment. Then I transplanted tomatoes into tilled, unamended soil, and topdressed 1/5th of the plants. The fertilized amendment had no effect. So after 16 years working the same ground, tilling in the weeds religiously, feeding the biosomes, some if not most of the plants we grow don’t need amendments.

I wonder how the organic movement got trapped into a supplement dependant analog of chemical agriculture. One of the principal ideas of organics, in addition to local, adaptive and sustainable, is microorganism-allied supplement-free agriculture. The weeds provide the food of fertility and maybe we need some seaweeds for trace minerals and the right magic dust of bacterial inoculants for biosomal crits.

In 2005, Monsanto purchased Semenis Seeds, itself the merger of several major seed companies including Petoseeds (USA) and Sluis and Groot (Holland). Thus seed companies who routinely supply the organic movement, sometimes even with ‘organic’ seeds, get their goods from subsets of a company that supplies napalm, toxic agricultural poisons and transgenic canola, soybeans and cotton.

An alternative to corporate agriculture and international food commodity marketing is at home organic gardening.

An alternative to expensive organic food is to develop personal, family and community gardens with shared costs, talents and services.

An alternative to being out of shape is to garden, using tools skillfully and motors rarely if at all.

An alternative to being bored and in need of entertainment is to complete the cycles between ourselves, our foodplants and their seeds.

Exploring the genome pool of the diversity of life gives some perspective on the extinction of species and the loss of habitats. Looking into the kinship relationship of foodplants to their wild relatives can lead to gardens in which the tree of life is the primary focus. Collecting species in a genus, for example Viola (the genus of violets whose center of diversity is the Andes in South America) or growing varieties in a species (tomatoes, mostly Lycopersicon esculentum) and organizing gardens to explore their relationships are two of myriad possibilities for gardening the gene pool and conserving local and locally rare species and varieties. As ‘development’ eliminates both the impressive and the obscure, as ancient and giant oaks and maples become monoculturistic housing projects and camas hyacinths, native to the pacific northwest for their edible bulbs and their blue flowers also find their numbers down to a trace of their widespread abundance a few hundred years ago, we can reckon that conservation of diversity is up to each of us. Kinship gardening provides a way to optimize diversity while exploring its nature.

During the past few gardening seasons we have been particularly pleased by the Amish and Andean Paste tomatoes, Purplus lettuce, the edamame soybeans Hakucho, Hidatsa and Oosodefuri, Nutribud Broccoli the Andean sunroot Yacon.

Best of organic gardening to everyone.