Category: Environmental
Battling triffids
Posted by Rupert on February 9, 2009
By Magnus
Our land was left to nature for 25 years or so. Lots of things grew, but the bramble was King, invading anywhere that wasn’t already thornified by something else. We cut it back between summer and autumn and since then have enjoyed a full view of the land in all its potential.
A local guy-who-knows-about-growing things came round to talk about trees. He took one look at our eager budders planted around last October, surrounded by roots of the evil thorn master and declared “these trees would be dead by in a year or twoâ€. An awkward silence followed. “No way they can survive when the brambles and bracken roots start running in Spring and Summer†he advised sagely, digging into his pocket for another camel and lighting it despite the drizzle. I felt like asking him for one but I wasn’t ready to smoke in camaraderie with this harbinger of doom.
He went on to tale horror stories about the voracious nature of the swine-bramble: they grow up to 10cm a day apparently (he recounted this with a knowing grimace, as if talking about the ogres that used to terrorize the village).
The solution, he lectured, amounts to an agricultural equivalent of shock and awe tactics: plough the ground up with a machine of some kind, poison the roots with herbicide, plough it up again the next year. He was sounding like a gardening version of Radovan Karadic: “cleanse the lot of themâ€. Start afresh a new society of pure breeds, unmolested by those wild, races…
I had to know if there was another way; an green lobby on the soil debate. I went back to my permaculture friends: Paulo, and well, that’s it really. But I also have a book by Patrick Whitefield solemnly called “The Earth Care Manualâ€.
“Soilâ€, Whitefield points out “is the meeting place of Earth, Air, Water and Life… (OK, that’s almost too cosmic for me already). “It’s the mother of all plants, and through them the animals, ourselves and our civilisationsâ€. He goes on to talk about how much is going on down there, worms aerating it, fungi feeding off it, feeding it, elements extracting heavy metals and a thousand other processes we hardly understand, but really vital to all life on earth.
When it comes to whether to till or not to till (ploughing or digging, even in the kitchen garden) he points out that some 80% of soil microbes live in the top 5cm the soil. Digging and ploughing kills most of them. These microbes, he adds, are the “powerhouse of soil fertility. By continually knocking them back we are weakening the soil’s own ability to generate its own fertilityâ€.
I am intrigued, easily convinced by this stuff I probably already knew inherently.
He goes on to talk about how tilling can lead to soil erosion, impairs soil structure, freaks out the worms who are the good guys down there… Oh, and there’s the whole labour saving point. Permaculturalists talk about no dig gardens… More work up front, less in the long term.
I sent Paulo news of Mr Grim’s predictions for bramble chaos and the likelihood that we would be consumed by an invasion of zombie brambles marching across the countryside.
“Ploughing and spraying is the conventional orchard way to do itâ€, he replies.
If we do this, he warns it will “cause more work in the long run – fertilising dead soil, dealing with sick and diseased trees etc. The process of succession has been going on – the brambles basically getting it ready to turn back into forest. Brambles are a response to bare soil and lots of light coming in. Think of them like a scab that nature bleeds over a cut. They are bastard spiky to keep out grazing animals and allow trees to grow – remember all the young quince and bay trees we found growing inside the brambles? That is a forest in the process of coming back.
Hmm. Wonder what Mr Normal nursery would have to say about that. Paulo goes on to add “brambles don’t grow under tree canopy, so what we are going to do is fill that space with other things and shade them out, sheet mulch (that’s cardboard and other stuff by the way) around the bottoms and they will die off after a few years. There will be a bit of work to do cutting off/pullling out the ones that come back, but this will be less and less each yearâ€.
The battle then, is only just beginning. Not just with the spikey weeds (thinking of them as former guardians of the land gives me a whole different attitude) but with local attitudes and practices. We’ll have to work with Paulo and the perma-way for a year or two and then compare. Why not?
There are bigger picture issues at play here as well: agricultural fertiliser and herbicide runoff killing fish and other life in rivers, causing huge “dead spots†in the sea, and gradually leading to infertile soils that need years to recover.
What about the millions of people eeking out a living on arid or polluted soils? There are so many now unable to survive without humanitarian assistance, yet, these common sense approaches that adopt nature’s own systems to restoring soil fertility, could change that.
Also, surely we should be repairing the land around us, not hacking into it further. Come to think of it, maybe we have a lesson or two to learn from the bramble, about how to be the lands’ guardian and protector.
Brambleberry wine toast to that!
2 Responses to “Battling triffids”
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February 9th, 2009 at 22:16
Go on, brambles! Don’t follow the old man’s advice. Shade them out. Give them a little run of light to the neightbour’s garden. Close off the light as the brambles follow the bait.
February 10th, 2009 at 11:31
Good idea Gavin. Sure, they’ll have to cross a road and climb a hill, but they’ll get there in the end. Little emissaries taking the odd (pruned) olive branch to the neighbours.