I don\u2019t know why it is, but I\u2019ve taken to waking up at about five every morning. I kiss my wife Emma on the head, creep downstairs from the loft of our apartment and spend the next hour or more watching\u00a0
Geoff Lawton<\/a>\u00a0videos from the PDC course. She knows I\u2019m doing it. It\u2019s nothing weird. But, for the most part, we don\u2019t talk all that much about it. This morning, however, I was watching the soil section, and in probably the clearest way possible, I began to understand more about how to explain soil systems. Then, at breakfast, I wouldn\u2019t shut up.<\/div>\nObviously, I\u2019ve not been unaware of the importance of healthy soils, and by happenstance, I\u2019ve probably even managed to make a good deal of it. But, my technique has largely been based on adding a steady supply of organic carbon and nitrogen matter, mostly in the form of brown leaves, boxes and newspaper to layers of manure, household veggie scraps, and fresh cut greens. I stack them atop earth and begin building layers of soil, usually doing an initial cover crop of legumes that get chopped-and-dropped. I probably would have stopped to learn more before now had the system not worked\u2014though slow\u2014as well as it does.<\/p>\n
But, this morning I learned a new way\u2014very practical and familiar\u2014of looking at soil. Firstly, Lawton explained the necessities of minerals beyond just NPK, using a wonderful analogy with the modern food system and its effects on people. Then, he explained pH balance, something I\u2019ve never spent a lot of time addressing, save for avoiding certain things that have been reported to me as overly acidic.<\/p>\n
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LEARNING MORE ON HOW TO THINK ABOUT SOIL I don\u2019t know why it is, but I\u2019ve taken to waking up at about five every morning. I kiss my wife Emma on the head, creep downstairs from the loft of our apartment and spend the next hour or more watching\u00a0Geoff Lawton\u00a0videos from the PDC course. She […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[9185,12803,11500,622,8748,8713,1091,12883,14252],"class_list":["post-21629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-design","tag-food-food-support-systems","tag-jonathon-engels","tag-permaculture","tag-permaculture-news","tag-plants","tag-soil","tag-structure","tag-why-permaculture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21629"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21630,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21629\/revisions\/21630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Seedling](\"http:\/\/permaculturenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Seedling-Soil.jpg\")
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