4 ms·
This is a great article. I forgot where I read it, but someone basically said that we need to stop treating soil as just dirt. I have found out through my rese
by bmitc 5y ago
This is a great article. I forgot where I read it, but someone basically said that we need to stop treating soil as just dirt.
I have found out through my research that replacing invasive species and lawns with native plants and also composting organic waste, leaves, and twigs and returning that to your lawn are two of the best things a single person or group of persons can do to thwart climate change. Organic material decomposing in landfills generates methane, which is 26 times more potent than carbon dioxide in terms of its greenhouse effects. Composting organic material generates much, much less methane, and you can use it to return sustenance back to your soil. Instead of taking twigs and leaves and removing it from your property, you can compost them as well and return it back to the soil or also just leave the leaves in some cases. Planting native plants is a big win all around, from soil conditions, to using less or no water or fertilizer, to improving wildlife and pollinator conditions. Additionally, replacing lawns, which should be viewed as wastelands and green deserts, with plants greatly increases carbon capture. These are things that nearly everyone can do literally right now. I've tried finding research, and my current knowledge is that composting could save as much as 8-10% of global emissions and restoring areas with native plants could save as much as 20-30% of global emissions.
A few specific references that I have been using are Nature's Best Hope by Douglas Tallamy, as well as his other books, and the Monarch Gardens project (https://www.monarchgard.com/ https://www.monarchgard.com/) by Benjamin Vogt.
It blows my mind that people keep looking for technocratic solutions when we have solutions right in front of us that could be done right now. Take a look around next time you're driving around and just note all the lawn spaces sitting there and doing literally nothing. They could be replaced with native plants with zero negative impact, and it would do wonders for the local ecosystem.
- throwaway1777 5y agoWhat’s the difference between composting in the yard and composting in a landfill?
- bwestergard 5y agoComposting in the yard, if done correctly, is aerobic. In a landfill it will be anaerobic, generating more methane.
- carapace 5y agoIn a word, oxygen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerobic_organism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerobic_organism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_organism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_organism - - - - "Compost" and "composting" is a fairly specific kind of process, it's just not correct to call what happens in a landfill "composting" (or contrast with a midden which is just a pile of kitchen refuse, and also not "composting".) The key difference in composting (as contrasted with just piling up waste material) is the specific formation of a kind of ecosystem within the pile. A healthy compost pile produces it's own heat. It's a concentrated and accelerated form of the natural processes that happen in healthy soil, and in many ways it really is a kind of organism. (The dividing line between organism and ecosystem is not sharp. E.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_mat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbial_mat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichoplax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichoplax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_man_o%27_war#Colonial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_man_o%27_war#Coloni... and so on... ) Anyway, in a landfill you get your pockets of mostly organic biomass, and decomposition happens, but it tends to be anaerobic (which generally is less healthy from the POV of human metabolism) and the results don't get integrated back into ecosystems rapidly (isolation is not complete, so they ooze back into the water table but they are almost always accompanied by toxic chemical wastes, so it doesn't really help.)
- oh_sigh 5y agoIf you do it wrong - nothing. As others have responded though, oxygen is the difference, and that is why you need to "turn" your compost every couple of days. If you don't, it will start to get very stinky - if you're doing aerobic composting shouldn't really have a smell, maybe something slightly earthy but that is it.
- janj 5y agoI’ve been composing for years without turning and without the stinky issue. My compost is connected to the chicken coop, they always have full access to the compost, maybe that has something to do with it. All year I add everything, yard and kitchen waste, without turning. I stop adding beginning of spring, towards end of spring I dig it out for the garden. Easiest method of composting I’ve come up with, no fuss, great soil. Just wanted to put out there there’s an easier way to compost.
- rhn_mk1 5y agoHow to find out which plants are native to which region?
- algoatecorn 5y agoIf you are in the US, most state universities will have an extension program that guides native plant selection. There are also quite a few regional native plant societies, many of which will even send free seeds.
- mcbishop 5y agoThere are native plant nurseries.
- hetspookjee 5y agoI struggle to find the answer too. I want to plant exclusively plants in my garden that are native to my region and find other properties. These sources do provide some information but none of them are really pleasant or on par with quality. - garden.org - https://plants.sc.egov.usda.gov/home https://plants.sc.egov.usda.gov/home - http://eol.org http://eol.org # This shows some nice graphs of what pest might ward of other invaders but its quite the challenge to find it. For illustration on what I mean with the graph, here's a good example: https://eol.org/pages/45515235 https://eol.org/pages/45515235 I am dreaming of having the time and budget to expand on this website of EOL and develop an open source farm where non-tech users can contribute through tools like iNaturalist and collectively create the graph of life. In such a way that we can formulate the world as a LP problem where we maximize for bio-diversity with respect to the surroundings. Imagine being able to insert any terrain, be it France or Somalia, and have a recommended plantplan over time be delivered. I think it's a matter of time till we're there.
- bmitc 5y agoI am honestly thinking about working actively on this problem. Right now, the information is spread out across several websites and databases. The best way that I have discovered is to find local to your state organizations that serve as stewards for native plants. At least in my state, there are at least three, and these places are normally non-profit organizations that also sell the native plants which are also grown in your state, making them a great choice. We just got our house last year and a yard to go with it, and it's my plan this year to go along with these local organizations to purchase all my native plants. I use the app Picture This to identify plants that are currently in my yard to know which ones I want to remove and replace with native plants. The app will often tell you where the plant is native to, and if not, I research it online.
- hosh 5y agoEvery year, landsats measuring soil temperature shows a spike in temperature at around spring planting. And this is because commercial agriculture kills off the soil in order to plant a single crop, maximized on yield. And every year, the soil fertility gets worse, because the ecology of fungi and microbes are not established or accumulating in the soil. It’s just planting on dirt. It’s not just nutrients. Living soil retains water, and regulates the release of water That has an impact on the microclimate. Going one step further, planting _edible_ native plants yields useful resources for humans, and helps decentralize food production systems. Add onsite composting and greywater.
- hetspookjee 5y agoI read a while back a comment that put it really aptly: modern day agriculture is hydroponics with the exhausted ground being the substrate.