The One-Straw Revolution - Multiworld India

Orchard EarthIt goes without saying that soil improvement is the fundamentalconcern of orchard management. If you use chemical fertilizer the treesdo grow larger, but year by year the soil becomes depleted. Chemicalfertilizer drains the earth of its vitality. If it is used even for onegeneration the soil suffers considerably.There is no wiser course in farming than the path of wholesome soilimprovement. Twenty years ago, the face of this mountain was bare redclay, so hard you could not stick a shovel into it. A good deal of the landaround here was like that. People grew potatoes until the soil wasexhausted and then the fields were left abandoned. You might say that,rather than growing citrus and vegetables up here, I have been helping torestore the fertility of the soil.Let us talk about how I went about restoring those barren mountainslopes. After the war the technique of deeply cultivating a citrus orchardand digging holes for adding organic matter was being encouraged.When I returned from the testing center, I tried doing this in my ownorchard. After a few years I came, to the conclusion that this method isnot only physically exhausting, but, as far as improving the soil isconcerned, is just plain useless.At first I buried straw and ferns which I had brought down from themountain. Carrying loads of61