POLLUTION (and what it means)

Jeff Frank

Pollution has been around our world since man began living in cities thousands of years ago. Folk in those cities would throw their garbage over the walls; it would build up there over time. A neighboring jealous city would watch and wait and when the garbage got close to the top of the wall, would attack the city. Then the victorious city would pass a law to remove all garbage to a site away from the town, thus starting the first garbage removal service, which also would remove your dead for an extra charge, " bring out your dead". Sanitation from warfare, who would have thought? Thus an environmental business developed with the growth of cities and warfare was the driving force. Dis-ease would break out from century to century and wipe out millions of folk, however we got here to our age. Our sixty years of witnessing civilization and hopefully making a positive difference.
Pollution, as I was reminded recently by Pat Vogues of the NLSGA is coming from many sources, nuclear, carbon monoxide, electric wires (EMF electric magnetic fields or ELF extremely low frequency) Radon from the home, house hold products and our modern chemistry, including what we consume. The air we breathe, the soil we grow in and the water we drink is polluted. How do we as simple landscapers and arborists deal with such huge problems, in our businesses and homes? As the Dalai Lama said in Central Park recently, "the environment is in everyone’s self interests"
The effect of airborne pollution is staggering on plant and soil life. The EPA estimates at least 15 billion pounds of air borne pollution hit us in the eastern U.S. each year. The pesticides used only on Long Island are up in the millions of pounds. Our rain’s pH has changed to less than ‘5’, which in turn effects more negative changes to the soil life. A recent report in the Cornell Focus magazine questioned weather farmers can survive the coming climate change in New York State. Scientists at a meeting in Los Angles last fall described how they recently found that herbicides like Atrazine wick out of the soil in moist conditions (ground fog or irrigation) and synegertisticaly becomes so toxic that the amount of a half aspirin size of atrazine in this state will wipe out an acre of vegetation. Dr. Sandra Steingrabber’s epic book" Living Down Stream" on the effects of these accumulated problems affecting human health states scientifically that " twenty three states the rain contains herbicides like the triazines".
In pesticides only .01% reaches the target pest, 99.9% goes into the general environment. Uses of pesticides have created over 500 pesticide resistant insects, 285 herbicide resistant weeds that are passing on their resistance to other weed species! Only 3% of over 73,000 chemicals in use today have had any testing, according to the EPA. If you eat our modern food you have a chance of getting " Mad Cows Dis-ease" from the practice of feeding dead cows to their survivors for protein. Boy, has that backfired on all of us BIG TIME! So besides blessing our food, what else can we do?
I think a new mind set with new paradigm (a sort of road map) is needed for our leap into the next century that is based on RESPONSE and not old outmoded thoughts and practices. We are in the middle of great changes and many small "Butterfly Effects", and we need to be flexible in order to just survive.
There are ALTERNATIVE responses for our own health needs and our own backyards. A plant gets its immunology, its health from healthy soils rich in organic matter, microbes, and minerals. All three in proportion to the soils mixed with water, air, sun, moon and starshine. Soil in that combination is called a healthy "Soil Food Web" by Dr. Elaine Ingam. The soil is alive and keeps the plants alive and healthy. Plants grown in soil with out chemicals, pass on their immunology to our feed lot animals and on to us. "Healthy soils=healthy plants=healthy animals =healthy humans", Sir Albert Howard. So by DIET and EXERCISE, eating organically grown food, free range meats we get healthy making us less prone to the negative effects of all types of pollution. Reduction of stress by a healthy diet and exercise reduces all health problems being brought by our environment and our life styles.
In the same way our properties will respond to an organic approach by first, canceling out the effect of acid rain. The more organic the soil is the less it is effected by things we have little control over and this simple way gives us that control. The plants eat healthy when chemical N-P-K fertilizers are eliminated and products with all the nutrients are substituted. Dr. Justus Von Liebig in 1870 realized too late that all the elements were needed to be replaced each year not just N-P-K. Von Liebig the scientist that was responsible for perfecting a method to extract nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium out of petroleum distillates in 1856, thus creating the myth and the industry that all we need is to grow is N-P-K.
As a problem, pollution is the number one factor affecting our forests, farms, rivers and backyards the world over. We miss-diagnose most of our plant problems by dis-ease or insect, one leading to the other. Dr, William Albrecht of the University of Missouri said,"Insects, weeds and dis-ease are the symptons of a failing crop, not the cause". It’s true, in our backyards we find the plants responding to the care or lack of. However with organic responses there are fewer problems with weeds, insects and dis-ease. The upward costs to the homeowner level out, they love the organic responses to their properties and work with the Landscape Company, to be a part of the SOLUTION. The grass has to be cut at three inches and the clippings should be left. Cutting at three inches means the grass doesn’t grow much in the next week because the photosynthesis hasn’t been destroyed as when the grass is cut at two inches, one inch means a lot to a grass plant. The plant now spends its energy on root growth and storage of energy for problem times and health. The blade gets to break down and refeed the lawn in a process called EXUDATION. This does not lead to thatch, compaction is a thing of the past, and weeds are eliminated naturally by the healthy tall grass, shielding out the sun.
Thatch comes from roots that are too scared to go into the soil because it’s either too toxic or compaction or no air or food. With organics there is no thatch because the microbes lead the roots into the soil to find the minerals and food there.
Pollution from our modern industrialized society is not going to change overnight; we will be affected by these problems for the next several generations. If we recognize that there is a problem, we don’t have much time. However we can begin to change our paradigm, first about our own health and then the health of OUR PLANET HOME, SPACESHIP EARTH. It all revolves around DIET. Give your properties what they want to eat and they will resist the dis-ease, the weeds and insects themselves. You know it is very presumptuous of us to even think we can cure a problem with a chemical application. Feed the soil instead, P-H-C Plant Health Care, prevention over cure! Use an organic response not a chemical reaction. Use good organic fertilizers and compost and soil conditioners like FEEDBCK. Remember organics negate the effects of pollution inside of us and outside. By changing some thoughts about what we eat and what we use we can become healthier avoid doctors and we can use the same approach to our customers properties. Since we are the professionals we need to understand how to prescribe homeopathic remedies, using common sense and low tech alternatives, we become a part of the solution again.