Our immediate need is to move last years left over leaves to another compost location by wheel barrow. This will make room for the leaves that are about to fall. We need to do this to stock leaves so we can make our Johnson-Su bioreactors that help soils store more carbon, slowing global warming.
Time is important. Leaves will fall soon.
Save the Earth - Save our Children
Marty Kraft 816-400-2277
DRAFT
Soil Microbe/Plant Partnership Can Sequester Carbon and Restore the Hydrologic cycle to Slow Global Warming
The soil is not a chemistry set. Soil is a community of living organisms that use the food provided by plants that gather the sun’s energy to photosynthesize CO2 and H2O into sugar. Plants pump the sugar out through the roots. After benefiting from this sugar; mycorrhizal fungi grow, go through their life cycle; and break down into glomalin, which glues mineral particles together forming the soil carbon sponge. Healthy living soil is full of spaces that hold water, extend photosynthesis during drought and absorb water during rain events. Soil microbes feed plants the minerals they need in the right amounts when the plants need them.
Adding fertilizers in most cases frustrates the natural symbiotic relationship between microbe and plant. Addition of herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides (poisons) kill or hamper the soil microbes, which keeps them from helping grow healthy plants and sequestering carbon. The prairies and the forests were grown without chemicals. Chemicals are not needed except in small amounts to restore damaged soils. ***The point is to restore and keep the plant microbial balance going.
We keep the process going by growing different plants in community, together. Each plant type has its own diverse community of microbes. These diverse microbes cooperate to support the whole plant community during stressful events keeping all healthy. Multi species crops have been shown to sequester more carbon and produce healthier plants. In the cities where we don’t have cows or buffalo to inoculate the soil from time to time we grow fungal rich compost. One method is the Johnson-Su Bioreactor which turns leaves and other yard materials into rich inoculant for you and all your neighbors. David Johnson says it mimics a buffalo or cow’s gut. More info at tracygarden.org
Microbes are too small for us to see. They do not have a press agent so we have to be their news outlets. Every time we mention plant diversity we should mention the microbial diversity that support the plants that are visible. Every time we mention flooding our drouth we should say how the soil carbon sponge built and maintained by microbes is working to extend photosyntheses which is synonymous with carbon sequestration.
We need to stress that this plant/microbe partnership is the most effective and least expensive way of sequestering carbon. There is no way that you could count the number of microbes waiting for us to alter our agricultural and soil practices to let them work and and add exponentially to their numbers.
We need to immediately explore ways of keeping the soil covered with photosynthesizing plants so that they aren’t part of the world wide heat island effect that absorbs sunlight turning it into heat and emitting it onto the atmosphere adding to global warming. Soil regenerative practices have even been shown to reduce desertification.
The soil carbon sponge world wide will hold vast amounts of water which will restore a powerful climate cooling effect. Water evaporates from plants and goes up into the atmosphere where it cools and returns to earth as rain. As it cools the heat is released and some of it exits into space.
Through the restorative microbial processes described the plants will become much healthier and will pass on the nutritional value to all of nature including humans. The system works and helps our gut be healthier.
Making healthy soil is not a chemical process. It is a biological process. The microbes in the soil, in the plant and in our gut are intelligent. They can sense a quorum in their numbers. The microbes can sense what needs to be done, when to do it, and then they can act together in unison to deliver to to the plants in the soil and from our gut to our bloodstream the minerals and nutrients our bodies need. We are incapable of doing this. So let’s just let the most numerous intelligent workforce on earth do what they are itching to do and repair the climate regulatory system.
Humans are intelligent enough to understand our limitations and know to get out of the way and stop interfering in the life process. We are not the gardeners on this planet. We are here to aid the real gardeners. Life knows what to do. Let it.
