Healing Gardens

·        Humus is decayed plant life in its final form. It is rich in nutrients and organic matter. It is perfect soil.

·        The oldest existing writings on compost were found on clay tablets from Mesopotamia one thousand years before the birth of Moses.

·        In North America composting was used by native peoples long before the Europeans arrived.

·        By the middle of the 19^th century composting was used by most of the Yankee settlers.

·        In the past, composting methods consisted of manure, plants and white fish.

·        Generally speaking new land does not need to be composted, but once it has produced successful crops and the nutrients have been used up composting is then a necessary step in fertilizing the land.

·        It has been found that the best compost consists of three times as much plant matter as manure.

·        The Indore method of composting is when organic materials are layered in a sandwich fashion and mixed by earthworms or turned by human hands during decomposition.

·        “Composting has been a basis of the organic method of gardening and farming since the days of Sir Albert Howard, father of the organic method (Pg. 7).”

·        Today, the organic method of gardening and composting is as popular as it had been before the turn of the last century.

·        Composting is much more than a fertilizer or soil conditioner. It is a symbol of the continuation of life.

·        When composting the need for chemical fertilizers are greatly reduced.

·        Compost builds high-quality soil structure.

·        Good soil structure allows the plants and their roots to breath.

·        Soil that has had the benefit of compost holds more moisture.

·        Compost helps to build a strong soil structure that in turn can resist erosion.

·        Composting keeps the soil aerated which is crucial to the soils health

·        Compost carries nutrients to soil and plant life

·        Humus holds many nutrients that are readily available to plants.

·        Compost can help neutralize soil toxins.

·        Chemical fertilizers are not a substitute to organic matter produced by composting.

·        “The two most important aspects of a compost pile are the chemical makeup of its components and the population of organisms in it (Pg.29).”