Here is just one of our many tomato plants. The picture was taken on 9/9/2019. It had just been pruned and about 10 tomatoes were harvested from it just before the picture was taken. There were still over 120 tomatoes visible and ripening on it.

The last few weeks have been pretty hectic here. Working 100 hours a week is not enough to keep up with the work of growing all of our crops. Some peppers and tomatoes are spoiling before we can harvest all of them. We are not alone. This is the nature of growing produce crops, if they are healthy and well fed.

But I have been trying to find time almost every day to work on this email because I believe it is that important to educate people about the environmental and health problems our agricultural system has created.

For many years, I have been talking about the problems caused by industrial farming and chemical lawn care programs. Things like a 700% increase in cancer for children and pets (compared to 20% increase for exposure to second hand smoke) -- just because a 4-step lawn program is used on the lawn. After I started this email, the United Nations issued a report pointing to our industrial agriculture system as one of the biggest threats to our planetary health and human health.  
 
I have tried to put together an explanation of how and why this is happening. It has taken many hours to make sure I get the numbers right. 
 
Please take a few minutes to read this and pass it along to friends. The next time somebody dismisses their food selections, or criticizes a few weeds in your lawn, you can point out to them this not only affects their family and pets, but all of us -- including future generations.  
 
You can tell them your lawn care practices and the food you buy are negating your families carbon emissions -- and making you healthier as well.  
 
Energy saving light bulbs and talk about health care reform are great, but when it comes to the environment and our health, they are small potatoes compared to what is happening on our farms and lawns.  
 
The good news is that we can turn this around, one lawn and one farm at a time. We just need to understand the problem. 
 
Two of the most critical processes on earth, nutrient cycling and carbon sequestration, are being shut down. 
 
 
Think About This  
 
We can quickly start to absorb the exhaust from as many as 2 billion cars  
in the US alone  
-- just by changing the farm and lawn care practices we support.  
 
And this may be just a side benefit.

Consider the apparent contradiction between the next two paragraphs.

  "Imagine there was a process that could not only remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, but also replace it with life-giving oxygen, enhance the nutrient density of food, regenerate topsoil, restore water balance to the landscape, and clean up our waterways. Fortunately, there is. It's called photosynthesis."
 
"According to a 2019 United Nations Report, industrial agriculture, once thought to be the answer to feeding a growing population, has become one of the biggest threats to our existence.   Modern agriculture now produces more greenhouse gasses than all forms of transportation combined -- as well as nutritionally inferior food."

How has growing plants gone so far wrong?

Our choices of fertilizers is one of the leading factors.

Natural Fertility
For many millions of years, life has been reborn from one generation to the next by the recycling of life giving, essential nutrients.

In nature, every leaf that falls, and the nutrients it contains, are broken down and recycled to make more leaves and bigger plants next year. Animal waste is deposited on the soil's surface, and the nutrients in it are recycled. Every year, salmon runs bring nutrients from the sea far up rivers and streams. Nutrients that the salmon obtained from the sea are spread many miles inland when they are eaten by animals, or die. These salmon runs naturally fertilize inland forests.

In nature, as each
generation of plants or animals dies, most of the life giving nutrients they contain have been recycled from previous generations, and they will once again be used by future generations. 

This wouldn't be a green planet without nature recycling nutrients that are essential to life, and it happens on many levels. In nature, the tiniest soil microbes are a major source of nitrogen for plants as they die and decompose by the trillions around each plant.

People sometimes tell me they want to grow "naturally", without fertilizers. Although we, at Canterbury Creek Gardens, see chemical fertilizers as a leading environmental and health problem, it is very "natural" for animal manures and other nutrients to be deposited on the soil surface, and the nutrients they contain, recycled.

It is not only natural, but critically important to our health, and the health of our planet.

The Soil Becomes Alive and Goes to Work
When a plant has natural organic nutrients deposited on the ground within reach of its roots, the soil around it becomes alive. Actually, not just alive, but the most densely populated place on earth.

This deposit of nutrients starts a chain of events. A portion of the nutrients are soluble, causing nearby plants to grow bigger, more productive, and more able to fend off insect and disease problems.

This stronger, and healthier plant needs even more nutrients so it also stimulates soil biology by flooding the soil with carbon secretions (in the form of sugary carbohydrates) that microbes feed on. These secretions feed an entire ecosystem that detoxify soil pollutants, feed the plants, and produce growth hormones and other compounds that protect plants from diseases. Soil health is as important to plant health as our guts are to our health.

A naturally stimulated soil microbiota also means additional nutrients are mined from the soil and added to the food web. This is done by soil microbes that break down rocks and other inorganic mineral sources. This ecosystem works so effectively that it not only recycles nutrients, but produces an excess of nutrients and carbohydrates each year.

For countless years, topsoil has been the repository of these excess nutrients and excess energy produced by plants. This is the sun's energy, converted to carbohydrates by plants, and stored in the soil, potentially forming coal or oil deposits. This is nature's way of saving for the future. The grassy plains of our Midwest naturally contained as much as 20 feet of stored carbon and nutrients in the form of topsoil.    
 
Today, we are trying to hold on to the last few inches.  
 
The nutrients are now in landfills and manure lagoons.  
 
The carbon is now in the air.  
 
This is how the Great Plains -- the most fertile soils in the world -- were formed. Huge animal herds trampled the plants and deposited high amounts of manure. Common gardening and farming practices today remove crop residue for biofuels and manures are not present. The result is a damaged soil biology and therefore nutrient sparse food. 
 
    
Natural Soil Fertility

In nature, no nutrients or plant energy is wasted. This recycling, mining, and storage of nutrients and energy, done by soil creatures, is missing today because of the assault on soil life by modern agriculture practices. These include chemical fertilizers, pesticides, tillage, and periods of bare soil.

The reduction of soil biology has resulted in a loss of recycled nutrients, nutrient sparse food, and a loss of stored carbon.
  • "An individual today would need to consume twice as much meat, three times as much fruit, and four to five times as many vegetables to obtain the same amount of minerals and trace elements available in those same foods in 1940. ... Why are nutrients in our food declining? Well, for one, we are killing the soil it grows in." Scientific American
  • Estimates of soil carbon losses to the atmosphere, from agriculture, are between 45 to 90 billion tonnes, or 10-20% of all human CO2 emissions -- according to Dr Jonathan Sanderman, a scientist at the
    Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts. Fossil fuels are also used to make chemical fe rtilizers and intensively farm and process food with machinery, contributing even more CO2.
We are paying for the nutrient loss with our skyrocketing health care costs.

We are paying for the loss of carbon with a changing climate.

This is why the recent United Nation's study says modern agriculture has to change -- and quickly. It rapidly burns up the soil, releasing CO2, nitrous oxide, methane, and other greenhouses gases. It has also severely weakened the soil's ability to perform it's vital role in planetary health and nutrient cycling.  
 
What Has Changed To Cause This 
Only a few decades ago when I was young and living in Cleveland, trash was separated into rubbish and garbage. Garbage was anything biodegradable. Rubbish was cans, bottles and anything that was not degradable.  
 
I recently found out that this garbage was put on train cars, and driven to neighboring farms where it was eventually spread on the fields and used as fertilizer -- and just as important, it nourished the soil biology.  
 
Not only were nutrients returned to farm fields, unused energy (carbohydrates found in waste organic matter) was also returned to "feed the soil".    
 
Only a decade or so ago, crop residue was returned to the soil. Now it is used for biofuel production along with the crop part of the plants. Animals are absent on industrial farms -- no chickens, cows, pigs, sheep or turkeys.  
 
Since our food waste is now going into landfills, and animal waste is mostly removed, nutrient recycling has almost ground to a halt and carbon is being released from the soil faster than it is taken in.  

Carbon is an important indicator of soil health, especially biological health -- and it is spewing out of our soils faster than it is coming out of our car exhausts because of agricultural practices.  
 
I have talked to longtime organic farmers that only measure carbon in their soil to evaluate their soil fertility, and soil health. 
 
Chemical fertilizers damage the soil biology by depleting carbon content.
 
What has happened
As the biology becomes depleted, soil clusters that make up good, loose loam, and are maintained by soil biology, start to break down. Overall soil structure weakens, leading to compaction and increased erosion. Water retention and drainage decline. Salts build up in the soil. Since the soil is no longer storing nitrogen, it leaches into groundwater. Since less is held in the soil, more is needed to maintain the same yields, and the negative effects accelerate.   
 
This has been happening for decades now. A slow, but steady reduction in soil quality, that is causing soils to leech more nutrients and hold less carbon. 
 
Locally, this nutrient leaching has a direct and negative effect on our waterways and is the cause of the dead zones in the Lake Erie. Excess nitrogen also enters the atmosphere as nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas that can trap 300 times more heat than carbon dioxide (CO2).   
 
So many problems are created by modern agricultural practices (especially chemical fertilizers) -- greenhouse gasses, less nutritious food, and pollution of our waterways. 
 
Here is the difference soil management makes
Below is the result of decades of modern agriculture -- barren, lifeless soil with all the water quickly running off. Note the blue arrow for reference. 
 
 
Below is the same area after several years of returning to more natural soil management practices that create a more robust soil biology. You can again use the blue arrow as a reference point. 
 
Moisture, and nutrients are now retained in the soil. The soil is once again storing the carbon that fuels this process.  
 
This is regenerative agriculture and it works -- when we choose to support -- or practice it. 
 
 
When biology improves, soil organisms return to recycling of nutrients -- and -- breaking down inorganic soil particles like stones and rocks -- resulting in additional nutrients for plants, and healthier plants. Soil biology also plays a part in our health we do not yet fully understand.  
 
This is a creek bed in Zimbabwe shortly after the end of the rainy season -- already dried up.  
 
 
This is a similar creek bed on a neighboring farm. These pictures were both taken on the same day, again showing dramatic benefits achieved by improving soil biology.  
 
The difference in both of these examples was heavier and more concentrated grazing by farm animals. They are the result of mimicking nature -- trampled plants and more manure. 
   
At Canterbury Creek Gardens we try to educate people about the relationship between how we grow plants -- and our health and environment. We choose to sell only products that make our soils -- and us -- healthier.

We ask for your financial support to continue this project. Buy better soils and fertilizers -- and buy healthier and more responsibly grown food.
 
 

What You Can Do

In Your Garden
1) In your garden, you can easily follow practices that build soil biology and build more fertile soil. These practices help carbon storage, and produce better food. All of our soil and fertilizer products focus on mimicking nature at its best. Use cover crops, living mulches or beneficial plant debris mulch, like pea mulch.

2) Use a "living soil" when planting -- even in a container. This inoculates your soil with the beneficial microbes that work soil magic. We have had a lot of people say they could not understand why their plants were doing poorly with ("Organic" bagged soil). Sealed bags will kill any beneficial microbes and can even cause pathogenic microbes to grow to dangerous levels.

3) Avoid chemical fertilizers, and soluble or low quality organic fertilizers that make soil l ess healthy and prevent carbon fixation into the soil.

4) Read labels -- little things make a difference. National brand poultry manure fertilizers contain 1% calcium. Ours is about 8% calcium because it comes from egg laying hens which are fed a better diet. Only about 5% of poultry manure is from egg laying hens. This make a huge difference because calcium is so critical for soil health, and our health.

On The Table
1) When you support better agricultural practices (by buying these products), you are not only getting better food, you are supporting growers who are using their farms to pull CO2 out of the air. This is usually not happening in industrial agriculture.

3) Total farm land in this country is 899 million acres.That is almost a billion acres either absorbing CO2 or a billion acres of soil releasing greenhouse
gases into the air -- depending on what growing methods we financially support.   
 
4) What's good this week?  This is a very important question to ask produce suppliers because not only do better fruits and veggies taste better, they are more nutritious, and they probably come from living soils that are active CO2 absorbers. You eat better and are supporting better soil health. 

On Your Lawn
1) When you use quality organic lawn care products (like ours), that build better soil biology, you are also pulling CO2 out of the air and improving your soil which will also create a healthier lawn. You are feeding soil
microbes that make your lawn healthier.

2) Avoid chemical fertilizers and so-called organic fertilizers containing GMO products like corn gluten and soy meal. They contain Roundup, originally patented as an antibiotic. It can and does damage soil biology.

3) Urea is sometimes used in organic lawn care products as a source of nitrogen. It also causes a degradation to soil biology and is almost always derived from petroleum.  

4) Use a mulching mower to reuse as many nutrients as possible and return as much carbon to the soil as possible.

Encourage others to do the same.
1) Tell your friends about your success with our inexpensive lawn care products -- and our living soil and organic garden fertilizer.

2) Our produce is sourced as much as possible for the most environmentally friendly growing practices and best quality possible. Our local suppliers all use better soil practices. Our own veggies as grown to the highest standards known. Help spread the word about better food, not cheaper food, or more expensive food that is marketed as healthy.

3) If you would like to share your success stories, email them back to us and we will use them in future emails.

Think lawn care practices don't matter much

There are 40 million acres of residential lawn in the US that could quickly be turned into carbon sinks just by switching fertilizers.

Locus Fermentation Solutions, a Solon based company has developed a biological product originally designed to increase the health, size and yield of irrigated crops. But, they found that by improving soil biology, the treated crops also absorb increased amounts of carbon dioxide (C02). The improved soil biology can store the equivalent of up to two cars' annual carbon emissions per treated acre, according to company officials. From a recent PD story.  
 
Multiply that by almost one billion acres of farms and lawns across the country, just from improving soil biology.
 
It would mean removing the equivalent of emissions from 80 million cars just from changing residential lawn care practices alone. With a total of 268 million cars in this country, that is a significant percentage of cars. 


At Canterbury Creek Gardens, the practices we use include growing winter cover crops, and chopping them down in the spring and fertilizing on top of the mulch. Above, you can see some of the cover crop residue still intact. It started the growing season several inches thick and will completely break down by fall. Notice how the soil surface looks like the top picture showing the effects of large herd grazing -- crop residue and high manure levels -- recycling of nutrients and a net nutrient gain from rock powders.

The results are healthier, more productive plants that are producing more nutrient rich food -- and effectively sequestering more carbon from airborne CO2.

Our fertilizer works well, not only because it provides all of the needed nutrients, but also because it stimulates an improvement in soil biology. And it does it with mostly recycled farm waste products. It's green -- it's natural --  and it works!
   

The Importance of Proper Fertilizing
 
There is a widespread misunderstanding about plant food and fertilizer.  
 
This may be because we try to put plant nutrition into human terms. For us, food is something we consume that provides us with energy in the form of food calories. When we feel weak, we eat, and we feel better -- we've refueled our energy tank.  
 
For plants it's different.
 
Plants produce their own food energy using water, carbon dioxide and energy from the sun. This food (in the form of sugars and carbohydrates) is combined with other nutrients obtained from the soil to produce protein, enzymes, vitamins and other elements essential to plant growth.  
 
The conversion of solar energy to caloric energy allows plants to grow 24 hours a day. They can store excess energy created during the day for use at night -- like a battery stores electricity. 
 
Think of plant growth as a construction project. The plant supplies the energy and labor. The soil provides most of the materials needed for plant growth and productivity. These nutrients, along with carbon which is absorbed from the air in the form of CO2, are the building blocks of plant growth.
 
Without enough nutritional building blocks, the construction slows down or grinds to a halt. They also need them in the proper amounts, in the proper balance, and at the right time. Without mortar today, you shouldn't be laying blocks, no matter how many extra blocks you have on hand.  
 
But the project takes on a life of its own, growth (or construction) continues, and the building goes on, just maybe with a little shoddy construction. 
 
Like nutritional deficiencies in humans, nutritional deficiencies in plants cause stunted growth, physiological disorders, premature aging, and lower resistance to disease.   
 
Healthy Soil, Healthy Plants, Healthy people -- our food chain. The nutrient flow from the soil that goes into the plant, determines how well made the plant is. These nutrients continue to flow through the plants and into us, when we feed on plant foods. Their nutritional completeness makes our bodies stronger. Likewise however -- their nutritional sparseness means shoddy body construction or poor body maintenance for us. 
 
Fertilization is the term used when these nutrients are supplied to the environment around the plant.
 
Summation
Good organic fertilizers stimulate increased activity from soil biology. This makes plants healthier, more productive, more disease resistant, and means absorption and storage of atmospheric CO2.
 
Chemical fertilizers and some organic fertilizers, damage soil biology and release carbohydrates made by plants quickly back into the air. They also result in unhealthy lawns, unhealthy food, and unhealthy people.  
   
A well grown, healthy plant, growing in a biologically rich soil, not only provides you with better food, it is also absorbing more CO2 and "fixing" it into the soil.   
 
You can make a difference by using better cultural practices and choosing better food.    
 
Fertilize Your Lawn Now

Fall is the most important time to fertilize your lawn because this is the most active period for energy storage.

Our premium manure based lawn fertilizers applied now,  give your lawn what it needs when it needs it most.

They do not make your grass blades grow faster like soluble chemical fertilizers, which means more cutting.

We started making a premium lawn fertilizer by adding more amendments -- like our premium garden fertilizer. We felt we could offer a better product for the same money spent.

Overseed now with a quality grass seed inoculated with mycorrhizal fungus. This important soil fungus forms a transportation system for plants to obtain water and nutrients, and transport carbon deeper into the soil.

According to WebMD, weeds in your lawn are a symptom of unhealthy soil. Start improving your soil this fall to naturally keep weeds under control.