Soil is being depleted at a rate never before encountered on Mother Earth.
Plants can only upload minerals from the soil and if they are absent from the soil, then the plants, that make up our fruit and vegetables will be nutritionally deficient!
About 10% of the land on the planet feeds the entire population.
A 1992 Earth Summit Report stated that American soils, for example, are now 85% depleted of the essential minerals and elements conducive to growing healthy fruit and vegetables.
Considering the fact that this report was published over twenty years ago, the soil would now be considered to be useless in terms of growing healthy food.
That leaves many people in a state of undernourishment.
I suggest you look into this for yourselves, to understand the full extent of nutritional depletion in the food we buy.
Type the words : soil depletion, into your search engine and YouTube, to be surprised and shocked!
So what do we do about this problem?
Well, here at Bealtaine Cottage, the answer I have implemented over the past ten years, has been to continually mulch and build up the soil, all over the three acres of Ireland of which I am guardian.
This method uses tons of biomass, which I grow on the land, shred, then compost or spread directly onto beds.
You can see the bed I covered in cardboard, compost and shreddings last autumn.
The light material is shredded willow on cardboard for access paths.
The beds themselves will be heaped up with even more compost before planting out!
Biomass is carbon neutral and requires no shipping or transportation…it can be grown on site!
Biomass is all biologically-produced matter based in carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, so even dredging the ponds of weed will provide nutritive mass for the soil!
This pile of clippings will be shredded to produce more biomass to be added to the soil, building up a nutrient rich, resilient land!
