THE LIVING SOIL

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 14, 9 February 1942, Page 2

THE LIVING SOIL

NECESSITY FOR HUMUS

PROCESS OF GROWTH

Why have farming, gardening and fruit-growing become, in quite recent years, a constant struggle against pests and diseases? AVliy are these troubles not found in older land where chemical fertilisers are. not used? To suggest an answer to these questions —and a remedy—a bookSet is offered by the Humic Compost Club. They believe the plant diseases are dub not to fungi and insect pests, but to the unhealthy state of the plants which renders them unnaturally susceptible to attack, and that this ill-health of the plant is due to the ill-heath of the soil caused bj r the use of artificial manures in place of humus. There is evidence which suggests that this ill-health is passed on through plants to animals and man. The Humic Compost Club has been founded to encourage the fertilisation of the soil with compost manure made from animal and vegetable wastes, instead of with artificial chemical fertilisers. Their aim is to promote the health of the soil and so promote plant, animal and human health. Soil a Living Thing The Club holds with Sir Alfred Howard, Dr Rudolph Steirier and other pioneers that the health of the soil cannot be achieved unless the humus that has been taken from it is returned to it and maintained. Before the advent of chemical fertilisers humus used to be applied in the form of animal manures that are now impossible to get in sufficient quantities. . Hence the advocacy of humic compost. This compost is made from animal arid vegetable wastes which, If properly stacked and controlled, ferment and turn into humus through the agency of natural bacteria and fungoid forms of life. The soil is a living thing, and is designed to get its food from living things and organic substances. Humus is the substance with which Nature herself fertilises the soil. In nature, animals and plants die, their bodies decay and are gradually and slowly turned into humus, which sinks back into the soil and eventually provides plant food to noiurish a fresh cycle of birth, life, death and re-birth of living forms. This is the wheel of life. Nature's process of humus manufacture is copied, or paralleled, in the compost heap, the difference being that the process of transformation and decomposition is hastened. The natural processes, are merely assisted. Humus can only be made from organic, that is to say, from onceliving material. Nature of Fertility What is the soil fertility? What processes and conditions in the soil | enable it to nourish healthy, disease I free plant life? it may be asked. "The nature of soil fertility can only be understood," says Howard in his Work, "The Agricultural Testament," "if it is considered in relation to Nature's round. All the phases of the life cycle are closely connected; and are integral in Nature's activity; all are equally important; none can be omitted. We have therefore to study soil fertility in relation to a natural working system and to> adopt methods of investigation in strict relation to such a subject. "We must look at soil fertility as we would at a business where the profit and loss account must be taken along with the balance sheet, the standing of the concern, and the methods of the management. It is the 'altogetherness' which matters in business, not some particular transaction or the profit or loss of the current year. So it is with soil fertility. We have to consider the wood, not the individual trees. "The whole of life is njade up of twoi processes—growth and decaj\ The one is the counterpart of the other."