The Grey River Argus WEDNESDAY, June 21, 1944. MAN AND THE SOIL.

Grey River Argus, 21 June 1944, Page 4

The Grey River Argus WEDNESDAY, June 21, 1944. MAN AND THE SOIL.

11l a district where the climate does a good deal to discourage the efforts of even the most persevering amateur gardener, recognition is overdue of the work of enthusiasts banded together in horticultural societies, humic compost clubs, and -the like, especially insofar as it attempts to deal with the practical gardening problems of the West Coast. Probably most men in suitable circumstances will cultivate a piece of ground and raise food for themselves and their families; yet the truth that all of our basic purely bodily needs with the exception of air and sunlight are met by the soil seems, strangely, hardly to have occurred to many people. This is unfortunate, for a fuller recognition of our debt to the soil might help us to realise our responsibility, not only to conserve the soil but to maintain it in a healthy state. This point was raised strikingly some months ago in a series of broadcasts by Dr. Lai-yung Li, at that time attached to the New Zealand Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, who, remarking on man’s rudeness to the soil, pointed out that fertility is poured year after year into the cities, which in turn cast what they do not use into the rivers and the ocean. In this way phos phorus in particular is being taken from the soil in great quantities. Some of it is replaced in the form of phosphatic fertilisers, but supplies of phosphatic rock are being used up at an alarming rate. It is estimated that in some parts of America 36 per cent, of the phosphorus that was in the soil has been removed in 50 years. Some aspects of such problems as this, of course, are such that the individual gardner can probably not do much about them; but since they’ draw attention to the necessity for hint to repay the soil fairly for what he takes from it, they have their lessons for him It is such lessons that amateui gardening societies can do a great work in teaching. The humic compost movement which, ap propriately perhaps, seems to have had something of a mush room-like growth, has done much valuable work in this respect Though it may have turned away some with what might sometimes have seemed an over-zealous ad vocacy of its ideas about the health of the soil’, there can be no doubt that it has a very solid mass of evidence behind it. in the work done at Indore, in India, by Sir Albert Howard, and elsewhere by those who have been interested in his methods. Its emphasis, at any rate, on the basic principle of the encouragement of soil fertility with humic compost made from animal and vegetable wasitea seems the merest commonsense and marks a very long overdue return to a fuller recognition oi nature’s own methods. Apart from the advocacy of such basic principles in the treatment of the soil, .there, is room for the study of the special problems of individual districts and climates; and in this connection the local horticultural society is to be commended for its decision to establish its own trial ground. The greatest encouragement should be given to all that can be done in this and other ways to help al! tillers of the soil, however small in scale their activities may be.