sustainableliving
STEWARDS
OF THE SOIL Nurturing a Sustainable Connection to the Land
by Linda Sechrist
As the cities on my Stone Soup Listening Tour rolled by, it became obvious that there was a good reason why the sustainability movement got its start in the soil. Healthy soil begets healthy food and healthy people who recognize that the land is what sustains them, not the grocery store shelves.
Every hotbed of sustainable activity was abuzz with con- versations about fresh food and the Buy Fresh Buy Local aspect of growing a greener economy. My Stone Soup sister Sharon Joy Kleitsch, founder of the Connection Parnters, and I quickly discovered that our World Café gatherings always included stories about farmers’ markets, CSAs, farm-to-table restaurants and the small, healthy corner grocery stores in low-income areas. We also realized that no stop was com- plete without gardening stories.
18 San Diego Edition
Biodynamic Gardening Walter Moora, author of A Farmer’s Love, shares a rich story about his pas- sions: farming with respect for the Earth, and helping non-farmers deepen their relationship with the land. “People’s connection to the soil and their food is mostly lost,” says this biodynamic teacher and farmer, who splits his time between Ecuador and the U.S. Moora’s vision for the future includes farmers and gardeners that realize they are partners and co-creators with nature and with the spiritual world. His guided medita- tions help students, apprentices and newbie gardeners to sense the kind of connection with nature that Moora’s men- tor, Rudolph Steiner, sought to clarify through his lifelong research and investigation of the forces that regulate life and growth. “I’ve studied Steiner’s fundamental principles of biody-
Walter Moora
namics, which are a unified approach that relates the ecol- ogy of the Earth-organism to that of the entire cosmos,” says Moora. The method treats farms as unified organisms and emphasizes balance, as well as the holistic development and interrelationship of soil, plants and animals.
Organic Landscapes For Shawn Studer, owner of Instant Organic Garden, and Anna Allen, founder of Natural Living Source, a holistic relationship with the land honors water, nature’s endangered resource. In their organic land- scape programs, both recommend completely eliminating harmful pesticides, herbicides and toxic fertilizers that damage the soil and create health risks.
“Only organic fertilizers and products that are healthy for people and the environment should be used on edibles and landscapes,” advises Allen, who cites the organic practices used on Harvard University’s 25-acre campus. Fungi, bacteria, microbes and roots under the soil are now fed with organic compost and compost tea, rather than pesticides and synthetic nitrogen, reducing the use of irrigation by 30 percent and saving two million gallons of water annually. For San Diego’s landscapes and backyard gardens,
Shawn Studer
Studer and Allen suggest a garden-hose chlorine removal sys- tem, which protects soil biology by neutralizing nearly 100 percent of chlorine and other toxins in the water supply.
California Hydroponics “Reducing the amount of water necessary for growing fresh herbs, vegetables, fruits and flowers indoors is just one of the benefits of hydroponic growing, indoors or out,” say Jim Hill and Scott Stark, co-owners of California Hydroponics. Plants may be grown with their roots in the mineral nutri-
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