Nitrogen fixers and nutrient accumulators for fruit trees?

General Fruit Growing
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I am not saying that people are just being mean. I don’t know where you got that. They also aren’t just telling the truth. They are using a form of science that is 200 years old.

I have noticed an increase in production from each of those practices in my yard. Did you read the part about modern science? We aren’t independent of the science we are studying. People are trying to go back to the science of 200 years ago, before Einstein, Niels Bohr and Heisenberg. We can’t really control for everything, let alone ourselves. We are part of the experiment. You never know where the location and the speed of the electron is at any time.

In my own garden, I don’t want to give up all of these helpful practices to control for adjusting one of them. Partly because I can see that they work, and I’ve read about them elsewhere. But it’s also because I wouldn’t really know, because I can’t really control for all of these things, least of all myself, which is perhaps the biggest variable of all.

If people really want to believe that they can go back to the 1700’s and 1800’s and apply only Newtonian science and that it is reality, I’m happy for them. But it’s not reality. Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg and all of the other modern scientists have shown that. If you want to see if permaculture and biodynamics work, go to some permaculture or biodynamic gardens and check out what is going on. There is a lot happening there. There are reasons why they work so well.

John S
PDX OR

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“Although this synergy had been traditionally reputed among American cultures, scientific confirmation has arrived only much more recently.” that’s from the wikipedia entry on the 3 sisters.

superman is always going to be exactly where and when he is most needed? because he’s omniscient? unlike poor batman, who has to rely on a primitive system of signalling to know when and where he is most needed.

what about scientists? how do they know exactly what to study? do they ask us? nope. do we tell them? nope. we simply give enough scientists enough funding and it’s inevitable that at least a few of them are bound to study something that’s actually relevant to our real needs. for example, joel williams’ presentation on youtube… Intercropping and Companion Planting.

so when somebody says that science is missing from something like permaculture, then they are basically making a joke that they really don’t get.

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There are a lot of specific questions with limited variables that our current science can answer well. It depends on the parameters of the question and what you can control. Any question that is really large and hard to limit or define is much more difficult. Can you make a good tasting, healthy meal with broccoli in it? Really hard to answer. If you taste that meal and like it, it’s answered for you. Not really a scientific question.

Is wheat good for you? Too hard to answer. Lots of variables. Ancient wheat? People with gluten sensitivity? Someone with poor digestion? Should you eat red meat? Too big. The science that we use is better for narrow questions that can be limited and measured accurately.

That’s why it is a poor choice for a tool to study permaculture and biodynamics. The variables are just too many and the question isn’t really limited in a way that can be helpful.

John S
PDX OR

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“False.” is a very aggressive answer to a question that has evidence on either side and may be too complicated to answer with one word.

JohN S
PDX OR

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Back in my Biology Bachelor’s Degree days, there was a contrast between students who were good at math, physics and chemistry (branches of study that involved a lot of calculations; surprising to me that most students were in this category), and the students who got good grades in the biological courses (branches of study where most of the stuff being learned was conceptual information as opposed to calculations). Among the students, this contrast was referred to as calculation vs theory. That’s the sense I used the term in, informally. Permaculture has a lot of conceptual information going on (with some background research to sustain it), but comparatively lesser research is being done on the synthesized methods being proposed.

There’s information out there on carbon and nitrogen fixation rates of plants in many different contexts, but I’m not aware of any such studies that specifically target (or even include) formalized permaculture farms and techniques. I, personally, don’t think the lack of studies are a demerit to permaculture… I think it works, and that the “theory” is sound, but that’s lazy thinking on my part. Not everyone has that same confidence, and the performance of proper studies in the subject can only serve to boost the credibility of permaculture by proving the effectiveness of good techniques and debunking the ineffective ones (so that they stop being used).

I had an agriculture professor that was into regenerative agriculture, particularly permaculture and biodynamics. One biodynamic technique he mentioned to the class was burning a mouse skin and spreading its ashes on the border of the growing beds to repel mice. When I asked for a mechanical explanation for the way the method worked, he said something about vibrations being emitted by the burnt mouse skin repelling the live mice… I always remember that professor as being one of my all-time favorites, but once explained, I didn’t think for one second that such biodynamic techniques were founded in science.

The wiki article mentions that biodynamics emphasizes spiritual and mystical perspectives, and mentions astrological methods, cosmic forces, and the burial of quartz-stuffed cow horns as examples of methods and function. I think it’s safe to say that science it is not.

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I already said that many parts of biodynamics are very weird sounding. What I am saying is that if you get weirded out by the strange methods and try to hold your feelings in check, that is not science. Did you catch the reference to Einstein, Heisenberg and Bohr? You are changed by science. You can’t stop your feelings about science because you are part of the science. That is modern science. If you want to do science from hundreds of years ago like Newton, then yes, stopping your feelings and pretending to be objective is great. You can’t know the location of the electron and its movement at the same time. Pretending to be objective isn’t objective. It’s just pretending.
John S
PDX OR

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I get what you are saying, and I think that is a good way to think about it. That said, without the scientific method and documentation of results, even if ‘we’ don’t yet understand or have the tools to measure those results, a conceptual idea is not modern science. It is only hypothesized ideas which have not been through the rigorous process of testing required to develop a theory.

I have plenty of conceptual ideas related to all of this but it’s not something I’ve spent the time testing, nor do I have the tools to do so.

I expect that more research involving mycorrhizal fungi and interactions with trees will show scientifically correlated results more so than testing for dynamic accumulators and beneficial nitrogen fixers. That is NOT to say the latter is not important or less valid, just that I expect fungi relationships to be easier to control and document. I know there is already research showing those correlations.

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I would hope we can agree that burying quartz stuffed cow horns to help plants grow better is not rooted in science, other than the nutrients from the cow horns breaking down as a fertilizer supplement…

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@JohnS,

I think you’d benefit from knowing that certain infamous quantum effects are typically irrelevant at macroscopic scales. Yes, the uncertainty principle means that the position and momentum of a particle cannot both be fully known at the same time, and yes the observer effect means that in certain cases, usually but not exclusively at the quantum scale, measurement of an object involves affecting the object as well. However: there is a very deep chasm between the quantum scale and the macroscopic. Most quantum phenomena, while technically occurring, are best ignored when studying anything outside of the sub-atomic realm. And while the observer effect sometimes shows up outside of quantum physics, it is quite rare and easy enough to account for or ignore.

Some examples: when spaceship flight paths are calculated, the calculations have to be extraordinarily precise, especially for probes and landers. As such, those calculations are performed to extremely exacting standards, and always take into account relativistic effects. Do you know what they don’t bother with? The uncertainty principle. Sure, technically, you cannot know the exact position and momentum of Voyager or Cassini-Huygens at the same time. But if NASA, lining up an interplanetary interception millions of miles away and years into the future, with all the complexities of orbital dynamics and relativity in play, can safely ignore the uncertainty principle, it sounds a mite bit strange that you’re telling me it applies so powerfully to your apples.

Similarly, there are actually real cases of the observer effect outside of the sub-atomic realm. Electronics are often effectively closed systems, such that even just attaching a volt meter can change the voltage of a circuit enough to give a misleading reading. So for certain micro-chip applications, engineers have to account for the resistance added by the volt meter they’re using. It’s annoying, but it’s also not a deal breaker than fundamentally changes how “science” or “engineering” work. It’s just one more step. And it’s a step that is usually perfectly safe to ignore. How much so? Well, biological systems are doubtless extraordinarily complex, and since they are made of interconnected sub-systems, with all kinds of otherwise closed systems occasionally interacting with others, etc. that the observer effect is guaranteed to happen in almost all cases. Which is why, obviously, you have to take the observer effect into consideration when you measure someone’s fever…

I mean sure, technically, measuring a fever is a Schrodinger’s Cat* sort of situation. The thermometer probe itself will absorb heat from the patient, lowering their temperature. You cannot know if someone has a fever until you measure their temperature, but the act of measuring will literally change their temperature! Whatever can be done?

What’s done is this: Just ignore the observer effect. It’s entirely irrelevant at macroscopic scales 999 times out of a 1000.

*Purists will insist that this isn’t even a true Schrodinger’s Cat, but honestly it’s kinda irrelevant whether or not a wave function is getting collapsed in this case.

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If we say it doesn’t work, that’s not science. We can reduce an effect and mock it, but it’s not science. Using science would be to observe if it does work better and then figure out why. There’s a guy on permies who has looked at a lot of the biodynamic stuff and actually experimented with it. He has come up with alternative ways of achieving the same effect that are easier and simpler. That’s science. Mocking people’s experiments because they sound strange is just public mocking. It’s not science.

It’s like when all of the doctors mocked the guy who said washing hands in surgery is incredibly important for safety. They said it was ridiculous. He got depressed and committed suicide. Later, they found out he was right. Same thing when another guy said that ulcers were caused by a particular bacteria, h pylori. They mocked him mercilessly. Eventually, he showed them that it was right. Actual science is doing the experiment and trying to find out why something works.

John S
PDX OR

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I believe comfrey to be beneficial for young fruit trees. Yet it needs s a headstart, or plant the fruittree in an established comfrey patch, so the roots of the comfrey are already deep down. If the comfrey isnt established, then u can only let it die back in winter. But an established bush can be chopped down 2 or 3 times so it great to get nutrients to the top soil from the area where the newly planted fruit roots arent active yet. Some part comfrey roots die from cutting back, leaving space for fruit roots to grow. Furthermore I use micro clover as a nitrogen fixer. Curious what stuff u will plant in the end;)

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Huh? We still pursue scientific knowledge in the same general manner and you wouldn’t know Einstein’s name if there wasn’t a body of research that supports his seven important theoretical contributions to science.

That in permaculture that is supported by peer reviewed research is scientific that that isn’t is not. It’s pretty simple.

Identifying the validity of research papers is a problem, but no legitimate scientist disputes the necessity of research to gain a reliable understanding of how things truly work. Controlled experiments are the holy grail of such research and even when there are many variables in play that create results that may never be absolutely definitive, claims in horticulture lacking such study are highly dubious.

People have become cynical about science mostly because research- both the pursuit of specific information and how it is interpreted is so highly influenced by captitalistic motives. Interestingly, some of the cynicism has been deliberately ginned up by the same capitalistic interests so that science that interferes with profits will be doubted.

Nevertheless, I’ve never known a skilled gardener that made all their decisions in the soil based on a recipe created by doctors of science alone. We are all at least partially guided by our own anecdotal experience and that is a big part of what makes gardening emotionally fulfilling. We tend to turn to science when we hit road blocks.

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Science has already shown that a) quartz is almost completely insoluble, and b) silicon dioxide is the most abundant mineral on this planet. There’s not much more to experiment with here.

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There’s a problem here. You have a contention that no idea can be discarded if it hasn’t been tested yet. While reasonably at first, the extent to which you’re applying the idea of empirical experiment exceeds reasonableness.

You see, empirical experiment isn’t the only process we use to evaluate ideas. Sure, in grade school textbooks we say that science only uses empirical experiments, but the reality is different. Scientists, and lay people, do use other forms of reason, even deduction, ie reasoning from principles. Yeah, technically, science tries to be as inductive as possible, but that inductive reasoning sits within a framework of deductive reasoning.

So, while a purely inductive reasoning scientist would look at the idea of buying a cow horn to boost crop yields and say, “hmmm, that idea has not been fully tested before, so we can’t say it doesn’t work” a real scientist would look at the idea and say, the quantities of nutrients involved, their rate of release, and the depth at which they are buried precludes any substantial effect, so it clearly won’t work." That’s deduction, pure ancient Greek logic stuff, and it’s correct. The real problem with the pure induction is you don’t know anything. You have to test everything.

Why run the experiment on just cow horns? Have we tried fox skulls? And instead of burying, have we tried burning or mounting on a roof? It might work better, and the only way to find out is by experimenting. And we’ll need to test if reading poetry to plants makes them grow faster. There’s never been a study to find out if Poe or Robert Frost’s poems are more effective at reducing negative energy in potatoes. And we have no way of knowing if the harmonies of Mozart or Lead Zeppelin make the sugars in cherries more harmonious. Let’s run the experiments first before we mock the idea. We literally have no way of knowing without testing first, right?

Or maybe we actually do have a reasonably good chance of knowing, without having tested first, what ideas are probable and what ideas are bollocks and fairly dust.

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Hi Jamie
Possibly in your location you may find arborists that will give you loads of woodchips which is one of the best soil amendments you can find. I add them to mulch around all of my fruit trees. Very thin layer at the trunk increasing up to 6” out just beyond the drip line. Over time I add more each years since they do break down into their organic components forming a layer of mineral rich humus that will greatly improve your soil te true and help maintain the moist aerated texture your tree feeder roots desire. This micro zone is perfect for earthworms to continue burrowing into the sand to mix it for you with the humus materials. If you can grow any variety of clover outside of the drip line, you can mow it and spread the clippings over the mulch to feed the compost critters that will benefit from feeding. This I think is the best way to naturally feed and improve your native soil. The nice thing about adding organics is that you cannot overdo it! Just continue each year to expand the mulch layer as your drip line expands and you will see your trees respond.
Best wishes
Dennis
Kent, Wa

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I’ve heard Dr. Ingham (Soil Food Web) say she could transform sand into a lab-verifiable loam using her principles.

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If you’re going to do woodchips, consider carefully how much, because the roots need oxygen, so, to avoid being smothered, they’ll grow up into the mulch, and if/when the mulch dries, the roots will be damaged. 3" depth, I’ve heard, is ideal.

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I use 10 inch woodchips with no problem for the past 10 years. Sawdust will cause oxygen problem, not woodchips.

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Idk I used about 10in chips and found some of my tree’s roots up in the mulch, so, let each person judge for themselves.