In the preceeding account we have seen that the seas and the soils of the Earth have always contained well over 40 natural trace elements, and consequently, that these 40+ trace elements have always been present in the food of all living things. Indeed, Life originated in the rich chemical 'soup' of the seas of the Earth, and since the seas have always contained - and still do - the complete range of the 92 natural elements in solution, about 1/2 of these elements have been incorporated and used in the metabolisms and immune functions of all living things. Consequently, and for 3.5 billion years of its 4 billion year evolution - hence for 7/8 of its current span - Life has incorporated more than 40 natural trace elements as fundamental and indispensable components into the normal metabolic and immune functions of all living things. And when Life moved onto land, it found the full natural range of the 40+ trace elements in the soils of the continents as well. All of Life is built upon the 40+ natural trace elements
That is, until our modern chemical agriculture came along. Due to an appalling ignorance - until very recently, the biological functions of only a few trace elements were known - our modern agriculture monitors and maintains only 5 (!) of these natural and eons-old trace elements (boron, copper, manganese, molybdenum, zinc) in its soils , and three others (cobalt in salt licks for cattle & sheep; selenium in fortified chicken feed; and iodine in salt) are added at other stages of animal (and our) nutrition. This comes to a paltry grand total of 8 (!) trace elements.
Due to this profound ignorance and total neglect of well over 30 'unknown' trace elements, these trace elements have long become exhausted, and are now either severely deficient, or entirely absent from all chemically farmed soils. Consequently, all of our crops are lacking - and have lacked for several decades - more than 30 natural trace elements which are absolutely vital to the normal metabolic and immune functions of our crops. Our crops are suffering just as much as we are from this long-standing neglect and deficiency of well over 30 natural and indispensable trace elements in all chemically farmed soils.
Even our organically grown crops suffer from the same deficiency. While organic growers have wisely and rightfully eliminated most agricultural poisons from their crops, the organic growers are just as ignorant of the long-standing deficiency or complete lack of well over 30 natural trace elements in agricultural soils, and of their crucial importance to the normal metabolic and immune functions of all plant life and crops. The story of the 40+ trace elements is a new discovery. And other than the readers of my gardening column in a small local weekly, and the few thousand home gardeners who have bought my little gardening book"Weeds and Seeds" (now out of print for several years), few, if any other people know about it.
Our modern agriculture is still only a few steps beyond the simple, archaic innocence of sticking a seed into the ground and watching it grow. We have discovered and are using fertilizers, we are adjusting soil PH, and we have been cross-breeding plants for greater yield, hardiness and other desirable characteristics. But its basic modus operandi is still based upon Prof. Liebig's 150 year-old - and now long outdated - discovery that N-P-K (nitrogen, phosphorus, potash) are the chief ingredients of all plants. As yet, our modern agriculture has only a faint notion of the immense chemical and biological complexity of fertile soils - of what may well be called Mother Earth's Womb - and no notion at all that the vast and abiding universal laws that have created and govern all Life anywhere in this universe also apply to our agriculture. That we are dealing with fundamental universal laws - the laws of Growth and of Progressive Complexity - is still news to most.
This ignorance is still endemic. Until a decade ago, nobody knew that all living things - be this plants, animals or people - need far more than the 8 known trace elements for their normal metabolic and immune functions. And this includes the organic growers. Worse, that all living organisms - be this plants, animals or people - need more than 40 natural trace elements for the normal function of their metabolism and immune systems is still not fully recognized. Science still has a very long way to go. At present, the count of recognized indispensable nutritional trace elements - stands at 16 (arsenic, boron, chromium, cobalt, copper, fluorine, iodine, magnesium, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, selenium, silicon, tin, vanadium, zinc). However, this is very recent new knowledge, and has not yet crossed over from the biomedical laboratories to the agricultural sciences, nor worked its way down to the farm. All farmers - chemical and organic alike - still only monitor and maintain a paltry 5 trace elements in their soils.
Consequently, and not the least surprising, our crops are subject to one disease after the other - and typically - we fight these diseases with poisons. And while the 'Green Revolution' of the last few decades has dramatically increased agricultural yields via the major nutrients N-P-K (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium), the 5 'minor nutrients' ( calcium, sulphur, iron, magnesium, sodium), as well as through plant breeding and genetic engineering, this amounts to giving our crops the equivalent of 'speed'. They grow rapidly and well - but are victim to a whole range of diseases and insect pests.
We now have a tripple-whammy pox on our health. Because of our ignorance, our crops lack the complete range of the 40+ natural trace elements; this makes them sick. And we fight these unnecessary crop diseases with poisons, which makes us sick. To whit, the presence of DDT, and other agricultural poisons in the blood of all living things on the Earth, and in the mothers milk of all females. And since our food is our only source of these trace elements, it also makes us subject to all manner of diseases.And all of this is entirely unnecessary. All crop diseases can be eliminated entirely, simply by providing and maintaining the complete spectrum of the 40+ natural trace elements in the soil. This is not a hairy-fairy, ivory tower theory; it's nitty-gritty, down-to-the-dirt reality. I have done it for many years.
Not that I had any notion, nor the faintest idea originally. Like all gardeners, I was raised on, and practized modern chemical agriculture. But then we got cabbage worms in our large market gardens. (This disaster turned out to be, albeit much later, a godsend). And since our own year-round supply of cabbages came from our gardens, I did not want to use systemic poisons - the worst of the poisons - but the only thing that works against worms deep in the cabbages.
So, after wracking my brains for days on end, I came up with a devilish clever scheme. I would lay down a seaweed mulch between the cabbages, knowing that cabbage worms are wanderers to whom the other cabbage always looks greener than the one they are in. I figured the strong smell of seaweed would overwhelm their sense of smell, and they would get lost in the rough terrain of the seaweed. And between the salt in the seaweed, and the lack of food, they would not have a chance in the proverbial hot place. I was right. It worked like a charm, and I never again saw hide nor hair of another cabbabe worm.
The cabbages grew so well, and were in such glowing health, that I decided to mulch the tomatoes and cucumbers with seaweed as well. Besides, I could pick up loads of the stuff, for free, from the nearby beach. It worked just as beautifully for the tomatoes and cucumbers. I had the healthiest and most abundant tomato and cucumber crops I had ever seen. It was so dramatic that I decided to mulch the whole acreage with seaweed. At the end of the year, I finally realized that we had not had any plant diseases whatsoever. None; zero; zilch. And this despite the fact that all all the other gardeners around me had battled one plant disease after another. Meanwhile, all my carefully chosen agricultural poisons rotted away, unused and superfluous, in the garage.
The next spring, I decided to gamble and use composted seaweed instead of 'Damp Off' in my greenhouse germination beds for my seedlings. It worked like a charm. No damp-off disease. Nada; zero; zilch. All my seedlings made it, and I had seedlings coming out of my ears. A little note. Along with the emerging seedlings, an alarming filigree of white fungus appeared on top of the seaweed-fortified germination soil. I thought that I would have much reason to regret my gamble; but the fungus - I still don't know its name - proved totally harmless, and perhaps even beneficial. I had the most robustly healthy seedlings I had ever seen. And I still had not the slightest notion of what was yet to come.
I think it took another year before I also realized that neither we nor our three kids had had any colds or the flu for a long time, although these perennial afflictions had made their rounds through the schools and places of work. My wife, the kids, and I were suddenly and uncharacteristically immune. My own sudden immunity was most astonishing, since I was usually the first to come down with these things. Finally, it all dawned on me.
From my highschool days I remembered that Life had evolved - for 3.5 billion years - in the seas, and that the seas contain all of the 92 natural trace elements in solution. And I had brought seaweed into my gardens. The proverbial mental lightbulb lit up in my head, and I then knew the reason for the sudden strapping health of our produce - and since all of our own produce came from our gardens - of our selves. Suddenly it was all as plain as day.
To make sure, I did some controlled experiments - both outdoors and in the germination trays in the greenhouse - with and without seaweed mulch. The seaweed-mulched half of the test beds remained completely disease-free, while I got fusarium wilt, rust, blight, mosaic disease, blossom end rot, and damp-off disease (in the greenhouse), in the other half. The proof was dramatic and convincing. I then began to share this discovery with the readers of my weekly gardening column on Salt Spring Island, most of whom are highly expert gardeners. With much feedback from other gardeners, it then became clear that the 40+ trace elements in seaweed are also effective against the 'incurable' club root disease of cabbages, as well as the, until then, intractable virus infections of the soil. And by the way, commercial seaweed and fish fertilizers are just as supremely effective.
Since then, it was 1979, we have not had any plant diseases in our market gardens. None; period. Instead, we had the healthiest and most robust and productive produce I have ever seen. We also won many top honours, against tough competition, at the local gardening fair, year after year after year.
Simply by re-establishing the full natural range of the 40+ natural trace elements in our agricultural soils, we can eliminate practically all plant diseases, and fortify our crops against much predation by agricultural pests. And this can be done easily, quickly, and very, very cheaply with a full-spectrum 40+ trace element fertilizer. The additional cost of this 40+ fertilizer is more than offset - one application per year is usually sufficient - by the very substantial savings in agricultural poisons, and their equipment, application and personal protection costs. Since many of our agricultural poisons have to be applied at weekly intervals, this results in a very substantial net reduction of farming costs, as well as in a great reduction of the associated severe health hazards and their costs. This also dramatically reduces the presence of agricultural poisons and their residues in our land, water, food and environment, with equally dramatic improvements of our individual and collective health.
It's a triply-whammy win-win-win situation; supremely healthy crops, supremely healthy people, and supremely healthy environments. It is also much, much cheaper than agricultural poisons. And as if all this were not enough, the seaweed mulch also substantially enriches the soil year by year and in many ways - all the way from organic content, to moisture retention, friability, quality, and thriving soil biota. In short, it turns even the poorest soils into rich, fertile loam, and continues to do so year after year after year.
All agricultural pests can be eliminate as well with a simple, supremely effective, totally harmles and ridiculously cheap natural method of pest control. Here is how.
Meanwhile and all along, another beautiful thing was happening. Again, and only well after the fact, I eventually realized that our gardens had suddenly become free of all insect pests as well. Although very nice, this was a total mystery, which bothered me a lot. How could this be? These critters are everywhere - except in our gardens. What in heaven is going on here? Along with the seaweed from the beach, I had also unwittingly imported miniscule spiders to which I paid no attention initially. They just came with the seaweed. Again, and a few months after having blanketed my gardens with the seaweed mulch, I finally noticed that we had not had any sign of any insect pests either. None; nada; zilch. All the insects which had plagued our gardens until then had simply disappeared. Instead, and wherever I turned up the mulch to weed or whatever, there were virtual armies of these miniscule (3/16 from stem to stern) spiders.
Upon investigation I found out that these were hunting spiders which, instead of building webs, actively hunt their prey from dawn to dusk. Miniscule as they are, they are relentless, merciless and voracious hunters of all manner of insects, larvae and eggs. Pure carnivores, they are absolutely harmless to any and all plants, and they kept our large market gardens completely free of all insect pests. Again, nada; zilch; nothing. And unlike ladybugs preying mantises or predatory waps, these spiders stay put, and do not fly away. The only thing they need is a mulch, or dense ground-hugging green cover, because of their habit of hunting out of concealment. This also makes them practically invisible. Unless one turns up the mulch, one never sees them. But they do go up on the plants. The one and only sign of any insect pests in all these years was among one stand of 6'-0 high dill plants where I did find about half a dozen aphids among the many umbels of the dill. These spiders either do not venture that far up on a plant, or they missed these few aphids.
At first I called them "jumping spiders" because of their habit of interspersing their rapid dartings with sudden jumps. Later on I found out that these spider belong to the species of 'Wolf' spiders, so called because of their active search, hunting and pursuit of prey, rather than building webs and waiting passively for their prey. These spiders are a devastating and supremely effective natural predator of all agricultural pests - and far more effective than even our best poisons under the best of conditions. Spiders are not washed away by the rain; they stay put where they are; their populations automatically increase with the level of insect pests; they patrol every square inch of the crops from dawn to dusk; they do not need to be re-applied at frequent intervals, or ever; they are non-toxic; and it is impossible for insect pest to develop resistance to these spiders. And to top it all off, by consuming insect pests and excreting their metabolic wastes back into the soil, these tiny little spiders effectively convert insect pests into rich organic fertilizer.
In my research I found out that Wolf spiders are endemic around the world. Local varieties of these spiders exist in every climate and every country upon the Earth. Indeed, and under the auspices of the UN, the native variety of wolf spider is being used as a supremely effective method of agricultural pest control in large commercial plantings in Indo China.
Having turned from a spider hater to a spider lover because of their yeoman service in our market gardens, I then became very concerned that I would loose my valuable spiders to the plowing and rototilling of the next spring. I could not see how they could possibly survive the plowing, and rototilling twice, of the next spring. But our market gardens were simply too large to do anything else.
However, and to my great relief, they did survive. Against all odds, enough eggs and individuals survived the plowing and rototilling to generate new armies of these merciless hunters. It turned out that a single application of these spiders was enough. From then on, and year after year after year - and despite the spring plowing and rototilling - I had veritable armies of these miniscule spiders in my market gardens, as well as in our herb and flower gardens.
Without any insect pests of any kind, all my agricultural pesticides had become completely superfluous as well. And they too rotted away, unused, in the old garage, until we disposed of them. Ever since then, and since 1979, we have grown abundant and robustly healthy crops, free of all plant diseases and insect infestations, without any poisons and pesticides whatsoever.
In addition to all this, a seaweed mulch also results in these important benefits:
We now have the foundations and the means for a totally natural, supremely healthy, rich, abundant, and completely poison-free agriculture. And this agriculture is not only permanently sustainable - but it increases the quality, quantity, friability and fertility of the soil year by year by year. If the mulch turns only one inch of poor soil into rich loam per season, this will generate 12 inches of rich topsoil in 12 years. Our agriculture will get richer and more abundant with every season.
Now then; seaweed mulch is great for people and farms close by the sea. And it could also be commercially harvested and distributed to places far from the sea. But I am afraid that there is not nearly enough seaweed in the seas to supply our world-agriculture with seaweed.
But there is another, ridiculously cheap, easy and simple method of generating huge amounts of mulch on the spot and right where it is needed. It's simple. We can grow our mulch right in place. This is how.
Being well aware that seaweed is a severely limited resource in terms of a world-wide agriculture, I came up with another idea. Weeds are a huge and constant problem in agriculture, which we fight, tooth and nail, and at great costs, with poisons. But they are highly complex organic matter; exactly what is needed. Why not use them? And there is far more than we need; for the weeds, by their very nature, grow....well,.. like weeds. It's a constant and never-ending battle.
So, I tried it. And since beans are excellent nitrogen foragers, I tried it on one of my 50 foot beds of bush beans. Instead of weeding this bed, I let the weeds grow to about 5 inches, and then sheared them about one inch above the ground, and laid the shearings over in place between the rows of beans. I had instant, self-grown mulch. Beautiful. This substantially reduced the growth of new weeds, preserved soil moisture, kept the soil warm, and so forth, and so forth. A month or so later, when the sheared weeds had grown to about 5 inches again, I repeated the procedure. I had more beautiful mulch. I repeated the same procedure once more before harvest.
What I got was far beyond my wildest expectations. I had the proudest, most productive, and the healthiest bed of beans that I had ever laid eyes upon. My beans were standing thick, proud and in strapping health above their bed of weed mulch. It was a picture of sheer beauty and a delight to the eyes. I was roundly astonished. In the fall, there came yet another very nice surprise. This bed produced beans for a full month longer than the other beds of beans. Long after the other beans had called it quits, this proud bed of beans kept on producing beans. It only gave up with the advent of frost at night
The great argument against weeds is that they rob the crops of nutrients. This is not true. The weeds, being rooted to the place, naturally, do not go anywhere. The nutrients they have taken up are promptly returned to the soil as soon as their mulch decays. And since the weed mulch is an excellent moisture retainer, this happens very quickly. Moreover, and most importantly, the fertilizers the weeds have taken up are returned to the soil in far more complex, and perfectly 'available' nutrients to the crop. Those beans just thrived in their bed of weed mulch. And best of all, the miniscule spiders took to the weed mulch like ducks to water.
Given these beautiful results, I did the same thing with my tomato and cucumber beds the next year - with the same astonishing results. The cucumber beds were a thing of pure beauty, and a pure delight to the eye. When fully grown, my cucumbers where lying clean as whistle and in great abundance on a thick bed of 'weed straw', under the lush leaves of the plants. I had never seen anything as beautiful in my life. And the tomatoes? I had to make 3 foot diameter cages for them from 5 foot high wire fencing, and then triple-stake the wire cages to keep them from falling over with the weight of the abundant fruit. It was the first time in my life that I was - at five foot six and a-half, all in all - eye to eye with the top of my dense tomato shrubs. Needless to say, we had cucumbers and tomatoes coming out of our ears.
The next year, I mulched my whole acreage with the weeds. Everything did superbly well - except the onions and carrots. Shearing the weeds among the young carrots and onions was a disaster, and the weeds grew much, much faster than the carrot and onion seedlings. It just did not work. The next year, I tried a thick newspaper mulch instead - about 6 layers of newspaper - between the rows of carrots and onions, and this worked extremely well. It prevented the growth of weeds in the carrot and onion beds, and provided the same multiple benefits as weed or seaweed mulch.
I became known as the gardener who gardens with weeds. But here is a ready-made, no-cost, self-growing, in-place mulch whose decay not only returns all nutrients to the soil, but enriches its organic content constantly and substantially. Our soil became richer, more friable, more fertile and more productive year by year - while producing bumper crops. Grasses and buttercups were the only weeds which had to be guarded against.
Having started out, as anyone else, fighting nature every inch of the way - diseases, insects, weeds and the weather - I had turned around completely and become a gardener who uses nature. And the results were powerful, dramatic, even overwhelming. Not only did we have supremely healthy and richly abundant crops, but our soil became richer and more fertile season after season after season. And it was much, much cheaper as well - both in monetary and labour costs. Instead of the mental and physical trauma of working with poisons, fighting the weeds, diseases and insects, gardening had become a pure pleasure, a thing of joy, of happiness, of great satisfaction and deep rewards.
And when my youngest daughter, then only four years-old, came into the garden, picked a pod of peas and asked me, "daddy, can I eat this?", I could say "Yes, my love" from the bottom of my heart; for I knew that was good, that it was pure, and that only the sun, the rain, the wind and human hands had touched it; and then my heart lept with joy, the outrageous joy of life, of hers and mine, and that of the garden, and the joy of knowing that we are part of it, and it is part of us, and that all this is as Mother Nature and the universe had always intended it to be.
We now have the 3 basic principles for a rich, abundant, and completely poison-free agriculture. And this agriculture is not only permanently sustainable - but its soils become progressively richer and more fertile with every passing year!
2) Use weeds as a free and self-grown mulch for all agricultural crops, including fruit.
This eliminates the need for herbicides and provides the necessary environment for wolf spiders.
3) Use wolf spiders as a natural, and supremely effective control of insect pests.
This eliminates practically all insect pests; moreover, once introduced, this method
of insect control is permanent. A single application provides permanent protection.
We have to do this anyway. We already know full well that our present agriculture is unsustainable. It is a dead end. We also know that we cannot go on dumping huge amounts of poisons into our global environment. The first will starve all of us to death, and the second will kill us all. And all this is entirely unnecessary. We can have such a rich and abundant agriculture that it can feed 10 times our present numbers.
These are perfectly, and perfect, natural dynamics. It is exactly the same method as used by Mother Nature which has turned the vast and totally life-less barrens of the primeaval continents into rich and fertile lands. The Ukraine - the "bread basket of Russia" - for instance, has a 10'-0 foot deep layer of rich, fertile loam. There is no reason why we can't have the same, and more. Even if we only convert 1 inch of poor soil into rich topsoil every year with this method, this comes to 12 inches of new rich loam in 12 years - 2 feet in 24 years - 4 feet in 48 years - or 50 foot deep rich loam in as little as 600 years. And all we are doing is, employing, intensifying and accelerating the natural forces and dynamics of Life on the Earth.
This is no hairy-fairy theoretical stuff. It is on a documentary shown by one of the PBS Television stations about large-scale Chinese agricultural communes. These people have done it for many years There, all life-wastes are first composted - yielding methane for cooking and heating - and then returned as rich compost to the soil. This yields an unprecedented 3 harvests per season - while the soil gets richer and more fertile every year! It's on public record, for goodness' sake.
This is not some kind of magic; it is just the vast universal laws of Growth and of Progressive Complexity at work. And all we need to do is let them do their work - and not sabotage them on all fronts, as we are presently doing.
If all plant, animal, and human wastes - including dead bodies - are returned to the soil, all the nutrients and trace elements are returned with them. In this case, we need not ever add any fertilisers or trace elements again. Once fully established, the constant return of all life wastes to the soil maintains all of its nutrients and trace elements in a perpetual cycle; in other words - forever. This will also solve much of another huge problem - our waste and sewerage crisis.
It is obvious now that this is also an almost ridiculously cheap agriculture. A mulch, for instance, will dramatically reduce the need for irrigation, along with its equipment, labour and energy costs. It also dramatically reduces the growth of new weeds.
And we have already seen that the provision and maintenance of the 40+ natural trace elements wipes out practically all plant diseases, saving very substantial sums in poisons, application equipment, labour and energy. We have also seen that a single application of wolf spiders provides perpetual protection against insect pests, along with very substantial savings in the costs of pesticides, application equipment, labour and energy. And the resultant improvement of our environment and our health is, of course, priceless.
Against these very large savings in costs, we only need to add the extra costs of shearing and mulching the weeds at periodic intervals, and the costs of suitable equipment, labour and energy. And this does not amount to very much. All of today's cultivating equipment can be easily adapted to shearing and mulching the weeds, and the extra labour is still much less than all the labour for irrigation and the frequent applications of bacteria-, fungi- and viricides, pesticides and herbicides. And this method also eliminates the very substantial costs of soil improvements altogether.
The net result is a large and very substantial reduction in operating costs; robustly healthy, vigorous, and abundant crops; and a rapidly progressive improvement of topsoil quality, quantity and fertility. It is a win-win-win situation in every possible way.
And, of course, the complete elimination of all agricultural poisons from our land, water and environment, and the elimination of all poison residues on and in our food are priceless additional benefits which will dramatically improve our individual and collective health and well being. If we chose to demand the restitution of our birthright to our health, pure food, pure water and pure air, in sufficiently large numbers, we can have such an agriculture within a year.
All it takes is a massive public demand. Nothing more. All we need to do is raise a storm to force our authorities to mandate a poison-free agriculture. With the sole exception of the vital importance of the 40+ trace elements - which is a brand-new discovery- these things are being done already on very large scales in countries such as China.
This then, is the full scope and vast promise of our natural birthright to pure food, pure water and pure air. And it can be ours in as little as a year - if we so choose - and make it happen.
- now that we have the knowledge - we can use it - All of the above is the very simple recognition and application of the universal law of Progressive Complexity - the fundamental law of our universe which has created the progressive complexity of the evolution of plants, animals and people in the first place.
In these terms, it is now clear that our modern agriculture reduces the chemical and biological progressive complexity of its soils and of its crops on all fronts. No wonder it is unsustainable.
On the other hand, and simply by enhancing the progressive chemical and biological complexity of the soil, we we bring the immense power of this vast universal law to bear upon our agriculture, and we can have an agriculture so rich and abundant that it can feed ten times our present numbers - for all time to come.
We have to do this anyhow.
There is no way that we can continue to go against the vast universal laws that have created the universe, Life, and our biosphere in the first place. It is, obviously, and as we know full well already, a dead end.
Knowing this law, we can now use it and apply it in our agriculture and our gardens, even in our flower pots. And since this is a universal law, we can even use it on other planets to 'terraform' them to our needs, to create new biospheres and raise their biological complexity to a level which in which we can live, and thrive.
The sole and explicit purpose of our inborn capacity to understand the laws of the universe is - to use them
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