facebookinstagram
*Regenerative Cannabis. Create, Adapt and Flow with Nature’s Guidance.

Pure Farmer Blog

Microbe Manure, Synthetic Fertilizers and Breastfed Babies

mother2

I am a home birth midwife, herbologist and my partner and I have spent the last 15 years homesteading. I am always gathering information, some new and most ancient, about different herbs and how they help different ailments in humans and animals. If anyone is sick on the farm, we immediately start teas from herbs to cure any ailment. Drinking teas are a instant way to get the healing qualities of the herbs, as 5,000 years of Chinese medicine has shown us. We grow big gardens with many herbs that we use in our medicines.

We started to give the plants the tea remains and noticed a significant difference in their growth. Then we made huge tea tanks and threw some air stones in and let them brew. The plants in the garden responded immediately. We brew nettles, alfalfa bales, dandelion roots and leaves, horsetail, grass clippings and whatever is in season. All plants, when broken down, contain high nutrition. When they are steeped, the plants can get the nutrition immediately. This is a old world tradition in organic farming before there was synthetic fertilizers. Farmers made piles of plants to compost and then blend in with their soil. In our community, we have many old world Doukhobors and Quakers. They have the best seed and their gardens sing with health. People have been using plant material to feed their gardens since the beginning of agriculture. Around here they call it weed tea. There is a large trash bucket, filled with water, beside the garden and all of the weeds get thrown in it. A few shovels of fresh manure get thrown in to activate the tea. It is used all over the garden to bring quick nutrients to the plants and the soil. This is a long term garden plan. While it is feeding the plants , it is also building soil for years to come. Synthetic fertilizers deplete the soil and change the PH so dramatically, that you cannot grow anything in it unless you add a very alkaline amendment. It is a vicious cycle. This is a huge reason to turn towards whole food organic for your gardens. We have a lot to learn from old world Natural Farming and have the knowledge to blend it with new science.

mother1

I make a beautiful blend of herbs that I give to my expecting mothers to give valuable nutrition to herself and her baby for the entire pregnancy. This tea is high in all vitamins and minerals. I started giving my garden the same blend. It is full of nutrition and feminine herbs to support a healthy pregnancy. I could not believe my eyes with the results of putting it onto our gardens. With a simple pregnancy tea blend, our plants doubled in size and yeilds. When I added more green herbs to the teas, the plants became more green overnight and when I added phosphorus rich roots, the flowers and fruit got way bigger.

Herbs do not work on their own in our body. It takes the digestive enzymes and beneficial microbes in our gut to break down the herbs so it can enter our blood stream. Then we are able to get the medicinal values of the herbs. Our gut is full of beneficial bacteria which breaks down everything we eat. This is why we are seeing many advertisements about pro-biotics and beneficial yogurts. Whole foods need to be broken down. Plants need the same process with nutrients. With the weed tea, the manure added is being used for bacteria and other microbes that will break down the weeds. You could easily create this same situation with a indoor garden or a garden that does not have many weeds, such as a garden comprising of pots. Herbs can be dried and added to water, making a garden tea, in the same way we make herbal teas to drink. By adding beneficial bacteria to the dried tea blends, the microbes are able to break down the herbs and the plants get readily available nutrients from the bacteria excrement. We like to call this Microbe Manure , MM, for short. This is the basic process of using compost teas, but, by adding your own herbs and bacteria and/or efficient microorganisms (EM) , you have the ability to know what microbes are present in your tea and give them a diet of YOUR choice. Feeding the microbes certain herbs that are specific for the plants will create a nutritious Microbe Manure Tea. I feed my plants different herbs for specific results. When my garden is in a vegetative stage, I focus on green, nitrogen rich herbs like alfalfa, nettle, spirulina algae and kelp. During fruiting and flowering cycles, I make a blend that is high in potassium and phosphorus, like burdock root, rhubarb and wild yam root. When you make a tea from these herbs, the microbes digest all of the organic herbs and make pure, organic Microbe Manure that contains all of the nutrients that your garden needs. I add endomycorrhizae to the blend to have communication between the MM and the roots of the plants. The mycorrhizae makes it easier for the plant to digest the teas and helps to uptake much more of the nutrients available in the herbs. Mycorrhizae is dormant in the tea and does not come alive until it attaches itself onto a root. So while the bacteria is having a vegetarian all you can eat buffet, the mycorrhizae sits quietly waiting until it meets a root.

I love the simplicity of the whole process when I relate it to the human body. Plants respond and grow very much the same as we do. The moment we started to think about feeding the microbes to harvest MM, it was totally life changing. Everything that goes into our garden teas is for the microbes. Having healthy microbes means having healthy plants. The more processed our food is, the more ailments that we have. Many plant nutrients in stores are like processed foods for our gardens. These plant nutrients have taken away the job of the microbes and are offering the plant instant nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other minerals. Feeding your plants organic whole food Microbe Manure, gives you tasty, pure results.

We can compare the difference between babies that are breastfed (from healthy mothers) and babies that are formula fed. Many studies show that formula feeds muscles and bones, while breast milk feeds brains and DNA. I am able to see the difference between breastfed babies and formula fed babies. The formula fed babies are really fat and more mellow, while the breastfed babies are big, but not as fat and they tend to be much more active. Breastfed babies need to nurse often, while formula fed babies can be on feeding schedules. The synthetic nutrients last longer in their gut. I think you might be catching my comparison to plants. Whole food nutrients vs. synthetic nutrients. Synthetic fertilizers feed the plant only, while whole food fertilizers and MM feeds the flowers, fruit, genetics and soil. When a plant or human is given all the nutrients that it needs to have a healthy immune response, it can grow to the fullest potential and create healthy genetics for the proceeding generation.

So many foods and fertilizers are synthetic. They have gluten free, organic instant noodles in a plastic ready to go cup and organic, synthetic liquid fertilizers in a plastic ready to go jug. Both may sound like it’s ok to eat or to put on your plants, but what is the long term effects on your DNA or your garden’s genetics? What are the long term effects on your soil or the impact on the earth? When I am in a garden store, I always go back to the question, “Can I eat it?” Of course, you cannot eat organic compost or vital compost tea, but eventually you are eating it or ingesting it in some way. We grow gardens to make medicine that will be ingested and fruit and veggies so we can put them on our dinner table. I want to be sure that any plant I am eating or using as medicine has eaten pure, organic whole food. So often we go to the store and read the ingredients on the packages because we care about what we are putting into our bodies. We know that when we eat better, we feel better. Why are we not looking at the ingredients in our garden ‘s foods and thinking about our own health? And what about the health of the earth? Even organic synthetic ferts are not something that I want to be ingesting. Not only would I be weary about eating or drinking them, I am weary about putting that used soil into my garden, compost or water system. What do you mean by “flushing it out”? Where does the flush go? How does a organic ingredient become synthetic? is the process organic? is it beneficial to the earth? There is tons of scientific evidence to support the synthetic vs. natural debate. By looking through a microscope you can easily see that when you feed your microbes nutritious whole foods, they thrive and multiply creating healthy MM. When we look at microbes that have been fed organic synthetics, they are not eating the “food”, they are not multiplying and therefore are not creating MM. How does a organic grain of rice become an instant noodle or a organic whole nutrient become blue liquid? All of these questions boggle my brain so I like to keep it simple. We know what we are feeding our plants by knowing what we are feeding our microbes. Whole foods heal our body and whole foods heal our earth.