Having carefully read the comments on this thread following publication of my article ‘Ahead of the carbon curve’ in the December issue of KG, pages 62-63, I wanted to respond to some of the specific points, especially those which have cast doubt on the authenticity of some of its content.
I have done my best to do that succinctly, but I apologise for this still being a rather lengthy post, although I hope there will be something here for forum members who want to explore various topics themselves.
Although I will always try to respond to claims of inauthenticity in my work, I rarely, if ever, due to their generally unproductive nature, enter into endless two-way discussions, and I intend to abide by that here.
The numbered points in italics are all comments taken from elsewhere in this thread.1. “It’s interesting he composts all sorts of printed matter, elsewhere organic practice seems to question the origins of the cardboard before they compost it and the acceptability of the pigments. I also compost everything I can think of but not tea bags, why use them?” GeoffAs you can see from the picture in the article I compost anything, basically, that has an organic origin and will rot down. The method I use for my plastic ‘dalek’ bins is simply to add fresh material to the top of the bin. This is a slow and ‘cold’ composting system in which I don’t turn the materials. In my experience it is by far the most common way the beginner/average gardener makes garden compost. I rely on the soil’s microflora/fauna, and on composting worms, which come up into the bin from the soil, to break the stuff down (more on composting worms under point 7.).
My experience is that there is generally a relaxed attitude to composting printed card packaging and cardboard, although it’s still advisable to avoid such things as glossy magazine supplements for garden use. Most printing inks are of vegetable origin these days, and balanced against the downside of ‘exporting’ a valuable resource either for recycling (which will require energy) or landfill (where a cereal packet could well become a source of the potent greenhouse gas methane), my preference is to turn it into soil-enriching compost. Plus I do not have a wheelie or recycling bin, which forces me to look at all my ‘waste’, as well as my own part in the waste chain.
If you have a link to any information raising concerns over using cardboard and printed card packaging as part of the compost recipe, I would be interested to read it.
I generally use loose tea to keep my use of packaging/materials to a minimum, but I haven’t yet found a source of loose leaf organic Indian Chai.
2. “I’m afraid I cannot see this idea of keeping a thin organic layer on the surface of doing anything to raise the captured carbon – surely traditional digging a spade down would do more. A foot of humus rich soil must be better than a few inches.” Geoff
The drawback with digging and/or ploughing soil is that it exposes organic matter already in the soil to the air and the oxygen in it, triggering a chemical reaction that turns it into the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (or CO2). So by digging you could be undoing a lot of good by liberating carbon from the soil where it was previously safely ‘locked away’. It also disturbs a finely balanced ecosystem on a regular basis.
The best approach if you already have a well-cultivated, regularly dug soil that’s been improved with organic matter over many years, is probably to think about ways of disturbing it as little as possible - ‘minimum tillage’. A foot of humus-rich soil that’s disturbed as little as possible is likely to be the best option of all in terms of carbon capture. I accept that when starting out, whether it be with an overgrown garden or allotment, or with a piece of rough land like I had, digging and soil disturbance is likely to be inevitable at the outset. But once you get going and the growing areas are marked out, you can start to move toward a minimal or no-dig way of gardening, which relies on disturbing only the top few inches of soil if and when necessary - perhaps to work in some compost - and rely on earthworms and other soil organisms to incorporate organic material into the soil (just like nature does).
I would urge KG readers to look at the recent Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) report ‘Safeguarding our soils: A strategy for England’. It is the most important piece of Government policy to come forward on the UK’s soils for a long time and can be downloaded as a PDF file from:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/qua ... rategy.pdf3. “It’s alright being against centralised recycling but where do most people live? Do they have access to land to add the compost to?” GeoffI am certainly not against recycling per se, but I do question the logic of rolling out an energy and resource-intensive ‘slop bucket’ scheme when better education could get more people making compost, even on a small scale. Bokashi buckets allow you to pre-prepare kitchen waste for composting (or for adding straight to the garden) in your kitchen, and even those without a plot can usually find room for a wormery to deal with most uncooked kitchen waste (but of course excluding meat, etc). There is nothing to stop those making worm compost, if they can’t use it themselves, from donating it to someone they know who has a growing area, even if it’s just on a balcony - or even to a local community garden.
Here’s a link to information about Bokashi (an Australian site but the principles are the same):
http://www.bokashi.com.au/How-Bokashi-works.htm4. “I’m waiting for future articles to repeat the theory once propounded here that green manure can rectify deficiencies, even trace element shortages. In a closed organic system using self made compost and green manure deficiencies can never be rectified, with the exception of nitrogen fixation, if it isn’t in the soil in the first place it can’t be in the compost or the green manure.” GeoffClosed organic systems (where the goal is to create a self-sustaining ‘loop’ that requires few if any external inputs like synthetic fertilisers and fossil fuels) are a proven, tried and tested commercial reality. I have seen this in action and it’s quite an eye-opener, as well as being a signpost to how all growing - whether in garden or field - might look in the future, and it’s a way of doing things that I aspire to in my own garden.
Tolhurst Organic Produce in Berkshire run an organic vegetable box scheme supplying several hundred families. As well as being organic, their system is also ‘stockfree’, meaning they use no animal manures to maintain soil fertility, or indeed any animal inputs at all - such as dried blood, bonemeal, etc. Nor do they import compost from outside, but make all their own from on-site vegetable wastes. But key to the whole enterprise is green manures, which are used to build and maintain soil fertility over a nine-year rotation.
Tolhurst Organic Produce has a very low carbon footprint and is at the cutting edge of demonstrating low carbon, climate-friendly farming. Anyone with any reservations about the untapped potential for using green manures should have a look at their web site. It’s packed with accessible information, including some verified detail on their carbon footprint. They also hold open days where you can go and learn about low-carbon vegetable growing for yourself.
For more information on stockfree (also known as vegan-organic) growing, the web site of the Vegan-Organic Network is well worth a visit.
http://www.tolhurstorganic.co.uk/index.cfmhttp://www.veganorganic.net5. “Plus the crass and ignorant comment about forest soil. Which coincidentally is EXACTLY what he then champions as what does he think soil that is not dug but covered with leaf mould and rotting leaves is?” Peter“Again he mentions DEFRA in order to try and add credence to his article. Does he think that we are that easily fooled?” JohnboyI was not seeking to ‘fool’ anyone. My comment in the article ‘Our emaciated farmland and forest soils, starved of organic matter, are blowing and washing away’ is the wording I chose to use after looking through the DEFRA report ‘Safeguarding our soils: A strategy for England’ (which I’ve already mentioned under point 2.) and from reading various news reports, including one from the BBC.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8272022.stmhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... ming-defra6. “With the bin removed his compost is a total disgrace and the classic example as how NOT to make compost! I would be totally ashamed if that was my compost exposed!” JohnboyThe caption to the picture of my compost-in-progress reads “With the bin removed, you can see how composting worms can turn virtually anything with landfill potential into climate-cooling compost. My underpants are in there somewhere...”
This is what you see when you temporarily lift off a plastic dalek-style compost bin when using a ‘cold’ composting technique (which I have described under point 1.). This is how I make compost with a wide range of ‘green’ and ‘brown’ kitchen, household and garden waste. What the picture shows is the profile of the compost inside the bin. The material at the top is the fresh addition, that right at the bottom - the dark brown, crumbly material - is the ‘finished’ compost that’s ready for use. In-between is the material in all the different stages of decomposition. Composting worms tend to gather in the zone where the fresh materials are starting to rot down, which is in the lower third of the picture in the magazine.
You cannot show this with the compost bin in place, hence I removed it to take the photograph. It was then, naturally, replaced.
7. “I suspect that the worms used as an example are not the 'laughing variety' from John's own bin but the turn-out of a wormery.” JohnboyPlease rest assured that the worms in the picture were taken from my compost bin and not from a wormery. When I set up my plastic dalek-style bins, the bin is set down on soil and the composting worms migrate into it of their own accord. I then leave them to do the hard work of turning kitchen and household waste into compost. If I’m emptying one bin and setting up another, then I’ll transfer a few handfuls of composting worms to the fresh bin, but it really isn’t essential.
It’s a common misconception that composting worms are somehow exclusively found in wormeries, but my compost bin, as I’m sure are those of many other gardeners, is literally alive with them.
8. “Who is trying to kid who? To convert the LH sample to the RH sample would take an awful lot longer than the text below suggests, if ever. My thoughts are that it would take more than a gardeners gardening lifetime. As it is I simply do not believe that the two samples are remotely related. Can you even imagine how much compost it would take to convert the area of an allotment?” Johnboy
The two soil samples in the picture were taken from my own garden. The sample on the left is taken from the terrace I am developing next, where the soil is as yet unimproved, while the sample on the right is taken from a bed of soil that has been receiving regular additions of organic matter since 2005. This sample is typical of the soil in my established garden beds, which you can see in the picture on page 60 of Kitchen Garden, October 2009.
The caption to the picture of the two soil samples clearly says that the compost I’ve made from kitchen/household waste has “helped transform my virgin soil”. I was not suggesting it did the job on its own. Indeed, the darker soil sample is a result of me adding organic matter since 2005, which includes seaweed, and composted bracken and leaf mould, both of which I make myself, and through growing the green manure buckwheat. I have also added some rock dust, and Dolomitic lime to raise the pH. (Incidentally, I have used no animal-derived manures or soil improvers/fertilisers in the development of my garden - see the link to Tolhurst Organic Produce under point 4.)
I’m pretty amazed at the results myself. The raw, unimproved soil here is acid, devoid of organic matter and has virtually no nutrients to speak of, although it has reasonably good structure and drains well (a boon in North Wales!). My soil was dumped by retreating glaciers, so it’s been hard work getting to this stage, but I’m delighted with progress. Perhaps my soil improvement is an extreme example, but it does nevertheless show just what can be achieved in only a few years, and it also demonstrates that it clearly doesn’t take a ‘gardener’s lifetime’ to bring soil into a condition where it will start growing good crops.
From my experience with allotments on long-established fields, the soil, even on an overgrown, neglected allotment, is often in pretty good heart because it will have been cultivated for many year’s beforehand. Soil structure also tends to improve when regular cultivations like digging cease. I tend to agree that on a brand new allotment site, where the soil is perhaps in a pretty poor condition (or the topsoil has been inadvertently removed), that it would take a large amount of compost to quickly get the soil into a fit state for cropping. But, equally, allotment sites tend to be located near towns and cities where green composting facilities already exist or are planned, and large quantities of green waste compost ought to be available. And there are always green manure crops which will improve both the organic matter content and the fertility of soil by utilising sunlight (see point 4.).
If any doubts remain as to the authenticity of the picture of the two soil samples, then you are welcome to come and scrutinise my soil for yourself.
9. “If you look in the October issue page 61 there are some of John Walkers beds that are roughly dug and spread with manure/compost and surprise I do not see any soil remotely like the LH sample not even a tinge of red! Come on now we deserve honesty!” JohnboyThere is clearly confusion here. The caption to this picture reads: “This is my kind of allotment site - peaceful and human-free on a warm summer evening”. This is not my allotment, but one of the organic allotments at Moelyci Environmental Centre (
http://www.moelyci.org), about 25 miles from here. I do not claim in the article that the picture is my allotment. Indeed, I think it’s quite clear that when comparing the picture of me in my garden with the one of the allotment site, that they are not one and the same.
10. ‘There are many many thousands of properties that have not got the facilities to make compost and if they did nowhere to dispose of it. At present these properties have nowhere to dispose of vegetable waste than in the dustbin. Once in the dustbin it is not possible to separate it out so it is destined to go into landfill. If with a slops bucket this waste can be kept and collected separately then Local Authorities have a chance to deal with this waste to the benefit us all. A win win situation!” JohnboyOf course there will always be households who are struggling to make compost, but everyone can try to do their bit - please see my response to point 3. Separation of kitchen waste from general (and un-compostable) waste is generally improving as environmental imperatives kick in. ‘Slop buckets’ must surely be viewed as a last resort.
The eggs are in the fridge......