Subject: Re: Just a thought about Organic Gardening...will it work?
From: William D Hulet <whulet@uoguelph.ca>
Organization: University of Guelph
Date: Sat, 2 Aug 1997 19:52:33 -0400
Message-ID: <MOD$970802.12422@rec.gardens.ecosystems>
References: <MOD$970731.29184@rec.gardens.ecosystems>



On Thu, 31 Jul 1997, Pete Moss wrote:

>
> I found this at another web-site and thought it might offer some food for
> thought and start a dialog or at best an interesting thread:
>
> Masanobu Fukuoka is a Japanese microbiologist who wrote the book
> The One-Straw Revolution (An Introduction to Natural Farming). He
> successfully gardens using these four principals:
> 1. NO CULTIVATION- no plowing or turning of soil

This is absolutely correct. When you usually hoe a garden you are
planting the next crop of weeds. As well, you might aerate the soil with
the hoe, but you compact it back down with your feet.

> 2. NO CHEMICAL FERTILIZER OR PREPARED COMPOST- people interfere
> with nature, and, try as they may, they cannot heal the wounds
Somewhat loaded language. Fukuoka interferred with nature too.
He just did in in a much more intelligent manner than his neighbours.

> 3. NO WEEDING BY TILLAGE OR HERBICIDES-weeds play their part in
> building soil fertility and in balancing the biological
> community.
An overstatement. Fukuoka advocates weeding by cutting down large
weeds with a sickle. This doesn't disturb the soil (which plants new
weeds, which have evolved to invade areas where the soil has been
disturbed).

> 4. NO DEPENDENCE ON CHEMICALS-we make the plants dependent on
> chemicals to thrive by using them; nature, left alone, is
> in perfect balance.
> In a perfect balance nature does its own thing---which doesn't
include creating a big surplus for us to eat. There may be situations
where herbicides or fertilizer are useful or necessary---Fukuoka simply
wasn't able to find any.

> Your thoughts and/or take on these suggestions?
You missed the key points that Fukuoka identifies:

1 We know absolutely nothing! All our vaunted scientific knowledge
consists of half-understood facts, out-and-out falsities, and an enourmous
sea of ignorance. Enter into any relationship with nature with profound
humility.

2 Pay attention! Your garden is part of an extremely complex
ecosystem that is changing constantly. If you are going to act in harmony
with nature you must be willing to learn from it.

3 Every garden is different! You cannot apply any given set of
"rules" from one climate to another, one type of garden to another, or
even from one locale to another.

4 Things take time to change! You cannot expect to learn the proper
relations between the different parts of your garden without putting many
years of observation and experimentation into play. As well, when
transforming a garden from a chemical-based system to a natural one, one
has to gradually ease the various elements from one to another. (Fukuoka
killed off all his parents orange trees when he first tried to change to
organics "cold turkey".)

I think that the _One Straw Revolution_ is a book of religious
insight by a modern Taoist master. It just so happens that the example
that he uses is that of gardening, but his key insights are applicable to
every human endeavor. The key point of gardening his way is not in
changing the garden so much as changing the gardener.