I'm a keen functional gardener, I don't grow things because they look pretty but I do it so I can grow food. This approach serves a few purposes; 1. I know where my food comes from, 2. ZERO food miles, 3. my kids get to see how things work - thus planting a seed in their head!
I'm a member of the Digger's Club - they are a group of people who practice VERY responsible gardening, promote sustainability and advocate heirloom fruit and veges. In their latest newsletter there is an article on Carbon Sequestering - but not the type you think you know about! Here's a snippet from the article:
"Solving climate change by bringing CO2 down to earth (i.e. sequestering carbon) has seemed like a utopian idea until we tested our soils this year. Most experts agree that Australian soils on average have less than 1% organic matter when 5% is generally regarded as optimum of good fertility.
Low organic levels are caused by many factors, chiefly the destruction of micro-organisms that live in the soil on which the organic basis of long term fertility depends.
One of the quickest ways to solve climate change is not to change to renewable energy like solar or wind power because that just holds our current CO2 at its current level. The quick solution is to bring the CO2 back to earth by growing trees or sequestering carbon in our soils.
This is a complex issue but in simple terms if we could increase our organic carbon levels by 1.6% across all the planet's cultivated lands then that would bring so much CO2 back to earth we would be in equilibrium again. Furthermore, for every 1% increase in organic soil content we conserve 14.4 litres of water/metre."
This is not a new concept...people such as Peter Andrews of "Back from the Brink" fame has been talking up this type of methodology for years. When are we, as a nation, going to listen?
