The Helpful Gardener
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Drifting Clouds of Illusion and Science

This is the topic I have found myself questioning; without the crux of technological gain born of science, Western society is called to task for abandoning nature at best, or trodding it underfoot with no regard, at our insensitive worst. My own gardening has been informed by science, at some junctures very badly, but increasingly in a beneficial (and I have always felt), a more sensitive and caring way.

But F-san calls this all into question by the mere fact that I am H. sapiens, (a species admittedly given to delusions of grandeur and adoption of any number of "scientific" policies that have, in hind sight, turned out to be ludicrously stupid balderdash) and therefore likely to make a bad decision and stick to it despite all evidence that it is a bad idea...

and then pretty much proves it with his rice milling example. And his agricultural examples were pretty spot on too.

I still think we can find use for science as a tool, as long as we never use science to replace nature. Science today is beginning to use nature in ways nature suggests, rather than the forcing of square pegs in round holes (like frog genes in tomatoes :roll: ). F-san talks about non-discriminating thought and I think of my conversation with Dr. Ingham on the true benefits of compost. "It's not a particular organism that makes compost work, it is the fact that it is many organisms that makes it work." And she didn't care which ones, as long as it was behaving like compost. Non-discriminating thinking in my mind, masquerading as scientific thought...

Certain bacteria do very nicely controlling fungus. Certain fungus do very nicely controlling fungus, and others control insects. Certain insects control insects, or mites. Certain mites control mites, or other insects. And the specific nature of who eats who, and what plants select what bacteria and fungi, are both the day to day interactions that charge soils and plants naturally, and the controls that assure these systems remain sustainable. These are the very methods that power forest and field. And science grasps that process better all the time...

I hear F-san loud and clear, and question my tools more than ever, but most still pass muster in my book. The more we take the rest of nature into account as we garden, the more we create a Nature we live in. I do not find Man to be outside Nature any time he takes care of a piece of ground in a manner that accepts and preserves the largest possible majority of species that occupy it. When we can live with our planet in a way that preserves it and sends it to our children in better ecological shape than we found it, we will be farming naturally. Sensei's models achieve that. Modern agriculture does not.

gershon
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Three sentences stand out in the chapter:

1. The world used to be simple.
2. They trapped themselves in the endless hell of the intellect.
3. How is it that people think science is beneficial to humanity?

The second is one I'm often guilty of. As a result of the second, I tend to complicate things. However, I'm not a big fan of science. I am a fan of observing, but even that is too much.

Right now, it feels right to plant onions, broccoli, radishes, turnips, rhutabagas, peas and a few other things. It's about 2 weeks earlier than normal, but this weekend we will plant because it feels right to both my daughter and I. The seeds will know when to sprout.

As I stood on the back porch this morning, I ruined the feeling a bit. I thought about the stray onion and the stray garlic I saw yesterday coming to life. Blades of grass starting to turn green, the smell of the light rain we had last night on the soil, the birds who have started singing in the morning, the early morning light coming a bit sooner, the cottonwood seeds forming, the apple tree looking like there will be buds soon. And as I made this list, I thought, surely there must be a whole list of things I've forgotten and I started having doubts and started thinking the accepted planting times must be right.

There is a feeling that I should quantify what can't really be quantified. Who knows, maybe next year the birds won't come because the clapping mountains get them. Things aren't exactly the same from year to year.

My daughter doesn't want to talk about the book or the forum. She just wants to garden and not even look at anyone else's garden.

In my beliefs there is nothing else but God. An earthworm is as much a part of God as anything else. Some might call it nature, a spiritual force, or whatever. It doesn't matter.

Oh, I saw the first bees of the season yesterday. If the bee knows when to start looking for flowers based on some inner urge, shouldn't we be following our inner urges? Are we not as much a part of nature, God, the spiritual force, instinct, whatever one wants to call it? Did I ruin it by consciously noting the arrival of the bees?

Masanobu has a big difference from me. He is a farmer. I'm a gardener. I think they are vastly different as I have no profit motive. Once I have enough, there is no need to get more. If feel right doing what I'm doing, there is no need to do something else.

He starts the chapter in the autumn. He uses the word autumn 21 times in the book. In our beliefs, autumn starts the season of thinking, reflecting and studying. Spring starts the season of doing. The doing will last until the beginning of August or so when it will feel right to stop weeding. It will feel right not to plant anything new. And it will feel right to just sit and watch and drink our coffee in the morning.

Perhaps Masanobu has made it too complicated as I've said before. If we follow our inner urges, something will grow. That's good enough for me.

The Helpful Gardener
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It is often true that doing organically and without modern aids requires more thought than whipping out the motorized tools and chemicals. At first glance it can seem more "complicated" than the modern method.

I too have had issue with F-san's decrying science, but we need to consider his milieu. He came from the time when science automatically looked for a new chemical or another mechanized process to cut the corners, thus eliminating not just the toil of hand tools and natural inputs, but the jobs and people that went along with it.

Lately I have been spending a great deal of time reading Wendell Berry (This IS more topical than first glance may take in; Larry and I had a phone conversation about when he was first trying to get the American version of OSR printed to no avail, and Wendell took the ball and ran with it, getting his publishers to do so). Wendell is both a farmer and a gardener, and a pretty straight forward guy. He has not given chem ferts the complete heave ho, but sees them as additional expense most farmers can do without.

In his 2004 treatise, From The Roots Up, Wendell makes the argument for the new science, talking about The Land Institute.
In it's adoption of the healthy ecosystem as the appropriate standard of agricultural performance, the Land Institute has rejected competition as the fundamental principle of economics, and therefore the applied sciences, and has replaced it with the principle of harmony.
This is that place where "new" science begins to diverge from the old. But it is not so new; it is "new" only in our views of what has become Acceptable Practice in the eyes of Man. It is indeed older than time.
And so in espousing the principle and the goal of harmony, The Land Institute aquired an old and honorable ancestry. It aquired at the same time, and in the same way, a working principle also old and honorable: that of art as imitation of Nature. The initiating question was this: if, so to speak, you place a Kansas wheatfield beside a surviving patch of the native Kansas prairie, what is the difference?
This is F-san's question, when we kill the leafhopper, we kill his enemies, we eliminate the frogs and toads and all the other cogs in this machine we do not begin to understand. We damage the machine we cannnot build ourselves, yet desperately need for our continuance.Wendell continues...
Well, the primary difference, obvious to any observer, is that whereas the wheatfield is a monoculture of annuals, the plant community of the prairie is highly diverse and perennial. There are many implications in that difference, not all of which are agricultural, but five of which are of immediate and urgent agricultural interest. The prairie's loss of soil to erosion is minimal, it is highly efficient in it's ability to absorb, store and use water, it makes maximum use of every year's sunlight, it builds and preserves its own fertility, and it protects itself against pest and disease.
Now I don't know about the rest of you, but it is important to me that my garden function with those same five things in mind. I wish to build my soil, while tilling depletes it, and I will not work against my own ends. My water falls from the sky mostly, and I pay for the rest, so I want to maximize its full potential. I do not wish to pay for the energy of fertilizer when the power of the sun provides it already (not to mention the power of chemical fertilizer comes with a petrochemical pricetag, and a hefty carbon footprint). And as I will eat the produce, and want a healthy, nutrient maximized crop, I wish my garden to protect itself as much as possible without my interference. And my pets frequent my gardens as well, and I do not wish them (or any other critter that ain't eating my eats) harm.

We have created and illusion of science as beneficial; this knee jerk response of instant gratification, of dead bugs and foiled fungus, has lulled us into a stupor of ignorance. We do not recognize all the problems we create in our follies, issues needing new solutions which we continue to address by travelling further down the road to ruin. We garden in the fashion of the old woman who swallowed a fly...

And she's dead, of course!

F-san does not ask for complicated, he asks for the complex simplicity that is nature. Think of it as a Hippocratic oath for the garden; "First, do no harm." Study your garden habits in depth, and with a discriminating eye, and you will find the righteous path instinctively. As you said in another thread, gershon, "I am part of Nature." We are indeed, and all Fukuoka-sensei asks is that we start acting like it...

HG



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