Manure = "manuren" meaning "to cultivate land,"
First we must feed our soil - in return, it will feed us.
Check out "Manure Tea..."
http://www.gardengrapevine.com/TeaDistillGarden.html
And these farmers are "making power from poop"!!!
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/327785_waste16.html
This article from the San Fransisco Chronicle talks a bit about this lovely substance:
Add manure to the soil, and what was excreted waste becomes fodder again. Fungi, beneficial bacteria, invertebrates, worms and protozoa living in the soil feed on the manure (and each other). In so doing, they render a complex mix of both macro and micro nutrients ready for plant roots to absorb.
Cover crops and composted plant materials, otherwise known as "green manure," also feed the web of life in the soil, but they are not as dense with nutrients. Animal manure is a composite of the tons of plant matter that the animals consume.
"The animal ends up bio-concentrating nutrients," Meyer said. "You'd need a whole lot more leftover plant matter to put the same amounts of nutrients that animal manure provides back into the soil."
Animal manure also adds a more diverse mixture of microbes to soil than does green manure because of the contribution of the animal's own resident microbes to their manure.
"If you take really depleted soil and apply animal manure, you're inoculating that soil. So you're building the ecology of the soil. Whereas if you're only putting in green manure or plant materials, you don't have as rich or complex a biodiversity in the soil as you get with animal manure," said Jim Riddle, organic outreach coordinator at the University of Minnesota.
The carbon-based materials, or organic matter, found in both animal and plant manure improve soil function and structure. Organic matter increases the soil's "cation exchange capacity," a measure of the soil's ability to hold nutrients, and helps to keep soils loose and full of tiny air pockets.
Plant roots grow farther and quicker in porous soils, and water will enter more rapidly, reducing runoff and erosion. Finally, organic matter improves soil's drought tolerance, absorbing rain and irrigation water and holding it in reserve for plants to tap later. The water-holding capacity of soil can increase by 16,000 gallons per acre-foot for each 1 percent increase in organic matter.
Unlike manure, the typical N-P-K (nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium) fertilizer provides plants with a dose of refined macronutrients without adding any organic matter to the soil.
What are the alternatives to manure and organic manure? Synthetic fertilizer.
This is what we basically use for survival today.
Not very natural - and it is getting really expensive and seems to be contributing to global warming and polution:
Excess nitrates move quickly down through the root zone and enter groundwater, contaminating wells and flowing into coastal waters, where they promote excessive phytoplankton and algae blooms, whose subsequent decomposition robs the water and its inhabitants of dissolved oxygen. River mouths become "dead zones" devoid of life.
Worldwide, there are at least 140 coastal dead zones, ranging in size from less than a square mile to 27,000 square miles wide.
The Mississippi River drains 1.6 million tons of nitrogen per year into the Gulf of Mexico, creating a dead zone that can cover 8,000 square miles.
Oxidized forms of nitrogen contribute to the formation of smog and greenhouse gases. Because of nitrogen fertilizers, agriculture has become the largest source of nitrous oxide emissions in the United States.
Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas that can trap 300 times more radiation from the Earth than can carbon dioxide.
Like the hidden costs, the direct cost of chemical fertilizers has only recently become apparent. The process of "fixing" synthetic nitrogen from the air requires large amounts of natural gas, which is found either in dissolved crude oil, or as a gas cap above reservoirs of oil.
Transporting synthetic nitrogen is energy intensive as well; the United States imports roughly half of its nitrogen fertilizer from such countries as Venezuela, Trinidad & Tobago and Argentina. As oil supplies tighten, the price of synthetic nitrogen increases.
So what do we do?
I would suggest a good start is to dust off the old bike
and shovel some a that happen'n stuff!
