Rooftop Ecology's Blog

10. Bacteria Mineral Water (BMW)

(1.) What is BMW?

It is not an overstatement to say that one farms with water. Water is not merely moisture, for there are also various minerals in water which affect the life of the crops. To obtain sources for clean and good water is a basic necessity in farming. In some countries, including Japan, they are actually selling specially processed water for agriculture or stockbreeding. This signifies the importance of water. Even the harvest yield and its quality depend on the water.

Manufacturers have complicated ways of explaining their products, however the the basic principles of making good water are simple; make the water particles smaller for better absorption and to condition with minerals and microorganisms. This can be made by you!

The minerals and IMO’s in the rocks will dissolve into the water and you will get treated water for agricultural use that is rich in minerals, microorganisms and oxygen.

(2.) How to make BMW

1.  Dig a pond  of 120cm depth.

2.  Cover with plastic sheet to hold water.

3.  Make waterfall equipment above the pond.

4.  Prepare variety of rocks (elvan must be included); break them with a hammer so they have sharp edges.

5.  Put the rocks in a steel sack.

6.  Put the IMO3 in a cotton cloth sack.

7. Secure both sacks so that they are just below the surface. The appropriate location of IMO would be where the water goes through the sacks and creates a whirlpool.

8. Let the waterfall smash down on the rocks.

9. At first, the IMO sack will drown. But after a while, the sack will float. This is when the material inside should be changed.

(3) How to use BMW

BMW can be used for many purposes. You can give directly to crops or animals. This will cure chicken or pig diarrhea caused by drinking water. Adding seawater (1/30) will improve the water quality because it is rich in salt and various minerals. When there is a drought, this water can be used for irrigation. It makes the crops endure drought better and makes them healthier. If there is an odor in livestock housing or when the fermentation of their feces is slow, the BMW may be used as a drink or sprayed on the floor. The odor will disappear and the floor will become clean.

Koreans called water coming out from between rocks “medicine water” and the water that ran through the humus of valleys “ginseng water”. This is because that water had special effects. BMW was developed in order to make this artificially and utilize it.

Seoul..

Well, it’s not Tokyo. The food pales in comparison and the beer doesn’t measure up either. You can say a lot about the Japanese.. the fact that they have a word for the concept of working oneself to death at one’s desk, says a fair bit, but leaving that aside, if you’re not dead, they do know how to eat and drink well.

Seoul, is.. Well, it’s different. It’s much less polite and much more in your face, but it has an energy that Tokyo doesn’t have for all its movement and neon. You stand and look lost in Tokyo, you’ll find yourself under a rugby scrum of people wanting to assist a foreigner. Stand and look lost in Seoul, you’ll watch the sun go down alone.

And yet, Seoul has an energy. I feel like I’m in a country that’s on the way up. It’s brash and when the Korean men drag their morning phlegm up from their toes, uncouth. Japan never struck me that way. It was to me sophisticated in the way that seemed decadent.

You won’t find decay in Seoul. You’ll find lively, bubbling putrescence. It’s much more creative!

The Nutritive Cycle Theory

Many think that the more nutrients the better the crops growth. But the growth of crops is not determined by the amount of nutrients. The growth of crops is determined by the Nutritive Cycle; not by the amount of fertilizer input applied. Optimum growth is achieved by giving the soil the optimum amount of the correct kind of nutrients at the correct time. The correct kind of nutrient varies according to the stage of the plant’s life cycle. Consider that you cannot grow to three meters tall, even if you are forced to double your food intake. Over-fertilizing, like overfeeding, is no good.

It is important to change your thinking. It is important to create an environment that helps crops take in what they need, when they need it, in the amount they need. Insufficiency and excess both bring disease. You should try to work with your crops not against them; try to understand their nature and so bring out their fullest potential.

1. Crops also have “morning sickness”

Like humans, crops also have growth stages such as infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Likewise, suffering from morning sickness is not confined to women. Both animals and plants also experience a similar phenomenon when they are procreating. Like women favor sour foods and make unusual additions to their diet, so too do plants and animals require particular nutrients at this stage.

Likewise, do children have appropriate dishes and quantities of food. Disregarding what is necessary for crops in their childhood stages by feeding them food suitable for adult crops will certainly have a negative effect on their development.

Conventional farming pays no attention to this fact. For example, let us look at rice farming. First, more than half the total fertilizer is given as base manure. This is akin to making a man drunk from early in the morning.

When crops take root, root settling fertilizer is applied again after ten days. This is like feeding a drunk man already stuffed from an eating binge. Force feeding in the absence of appetite leads to stomach pain. It also induces diseases and other health complaints.

When an ear begins to take shape, that is 45 days before the ear is fully formed, this is the time of the plant’s morning sickness. At this time (for argument’s sake let’s call it lunchtime) crops need a lot of food, but because the crops have been overfed earlier (at breakfast) they cannot take in the nutrients at this important stage. What happens then? Well, the crops become hungry around 3-4 in the afternoon, so they have dinner early. As the ears have already grown to 2-3mm 25 days before the ears come out, the fertilizer grows the ears but cannot increase the number of grains.

In the meantime the leaves have grown huge due to overfeeding and cover the paddies completely. In due course the sun is shaded out, air does not circulate and sheathe blight and drying of the leaves become serious problems. Even though “grain manure”, which is like a dinner meal, is given the crops will not absorb it because their stomachs are full and can absorb no more. However when night comes they will get hungry again, losing vitality. The result is a poor harvest.

Eating to the point of satisfaction instead of till fullness and eating the right foods at the right time is good for the stomach and the metabolism. Thus, when nutrients are supplied to rice based on the nutrient cycle, the rice plant’s digestion and the absorption power of its metabolism is strong. Under these circumstances plants are vigorous and healthy; they shrug off insects such that no pesticides are needed.

2. Different stages require different nutrients

Sometimes people hastily assume that Natural Farming is an unscientific “return to the past” form of farming that just uses more organic compost. But this is wrong. Natural farming is very scientific; it is based on strict theories and precise observation. Science is failing in its obligations to society when it clings to old theories and methods when better theory and methods have emerged with irrefutable evidence and results.

In Natural Farming, the growth stages of crops are precisely understood. At each stage of growth; vegetative growth, flowering, fruiting, coloring and maturity the correct diagnosis is made and the appropriate action taken. The principles of the growth cycle are understood and the cause of any abnormality searched for.

How to comprehend the growth stage

There is a visible and well defined pattern in the growth and development of plants. Plants undergo a number of qualitative changes in their life cycle; they grow, flower, fruit and die. Let us look at this pattern in more detail.

First, we can divide a plant’s growth into two stages; vegetative growth and reproductive growth. Vegetative growth is the stage from body formation to maturity while reproductive growth is from flowering to the ripening of fruit.

Second, the shift from vegetative growth to reproductive growth is gradual. The plant first gets ready for the period of reproductive growth by increasing the amount of carbohydrate in its body. This adjustment period between vegetative growth to reproductive growth is called the changeover period.

Third, from a physiological perspective, vegetative growth is a period of consumptive growth turning carbohydrate (C) to organic nitrogen (N) by inorganic nitrogen (n). Reproductive growth begins when the plant does not convert carbohydrate into inorganic nitrogen, but instead stores it in fruits and other storage organs (accumulative growth).

The growth and development stages of crops have qualitative and physiological differences. The required nutrients and their amount differ at each stage. By applying Nutritive Cycle theory, Natural Farming understands the crops, what they need and how much they need, their condition and what kind of environmental conditions are conducive to their growth. Natural Farming is not the crude practice of randomly dumping organic compost for plant consumption. Defining the ‘changeover period’ and concluding that plants will have special nutrient requirements during a period corresponding to morning sickness in humans is unprecedented. The results coming out of this approach seems convincing.

Look at the inner condition of crops

It is evident that the growth and development of crops depends partly on external conditions ie. climate, rain, topography, soil status, etc. Needless to say under optimum conditions you can expect optimum production.

However, we should keep in mind that external conditions are never constant. We never know when a favorable climate can turn harsh. This year’s rainfall can  change next year. Even the soil fertility is constantly changing.

Furthermore, the inner condition of the crops are also changing according to the growth stages. What the crop wants when it is an infant is different from when it is pregnant. The inner condition of the crop changes in flowering, fruiting, coloring, maturing and dormancy.

Prevailing agriculture methods tend to emphasize only the external  conditions, and underestimate the inner conditions of the plants. We cannot expect the best harvest when we only emphasize the external conditions that constantly change ever year.

3. The Four Nutrient Types

Natural Farming identifies four different nutrient conditions for plants. This classification was first introduced by American Scientist Guross Gureville.

Type         N                        C                                 H2O                            C/N Ratio

1.          High                       Low                          High                             Small

2.         Medium-High    Low-Medium        Medium-High          Small-Medium

3.         Medium                Medium-High      Medium                      Medium-Large

4 .        Low                         Large                      Low                              Large

N=Nitrogen                                      C=Carbohydrate                     H2O=Water

Type 1  has a lot of water and nitrogen. Carbohydrate is minimal. The plant has weak vegetative growth and there is no floral differentiation.

Type 2 has a relatively large amount of water and nitrogen. It also has enough C for active vegetative growth. However floral differentiation is so weak that even if it does flower there will be no fruit.

Type 3 has a relatively low amounts of water and nitrogen. Production of C decreases compared to type 2, but floral differentiation is strong and the fruit is good.

Type 4 has little water and nitrogen. No vegetative growth and no fruiting.

Perceiving the nutrient type of your crop and leading it to the right condition at the right stage is the crux of nutritive cycle theory. The nutritive cycle will be different for each crop and animal. Reading this precisely and acting accordingly may be the biggest secret of Natural Farming.

This is something I read about, but haven’t been able to find again.

Passive Solar heating is a black surface on your roof. It absorbs heat and transfers it to internal water pipes. They are on top of houses.

Roads are invariably black. They link houses together.

Having water pipes under the tarmac picking up heat could stop the tarmac melting in summer. It would also act as a heat sink so that in winter that same heat could be used to heat the buildings nearby. Connected to a methane cycle it could also provide refrigeration services all year round.  It would also allow for heated greenhouses and so vegetation growth all year round (though in practice if the daylight hours drop below 10 hours or your greenhouse is shaded by trees or tall buildings they stop growing due to a lack of sunlight). Alternatively, connected to a low pressure turbine as developed by the Israelis for solar ponds or a combined heat and power stirling engine boiler you could get some electricity out of it.

Not sure it’s a good idea in Japan. This is due to the fact that Japan gets hundreds of tremors a year.

Another problem is that roads are routinely dug up to get to something buried in the road. This has always struck me as dumb. Would it not be better to have a covered trench.  If the road has to remain black so as to use it for a heat sink then service channels should be placed under the sidewalk, with heat pipe access ducts allowing heat pipes to cross the service channels.

Wouldn’t it be better to invest in infrastructure that is easy to maintain?

Guess I am just tired of seeing the same road dug up again and again and again.

ZERI has a tarmac machine that picks up the road heats it, and the places it back down again. Good as new.

Well, good news. I have, through a contact at the Korean Natural Horticultural Institute been given the contact details for a mushroom spore supplier. This is good news as I was thinking if I wanted to do anything with fungi I would have to import spores from FungiPerfecti in Washington State, USA.  Customs would have been a big headache. It always is with introduced organisms.

Why mushrooms? Why coffee? Why soil? Why cancer killing?

Let’s address the first question, why mushrooms?

I highly recommend the work of Paul Stamets, owner operator of FungiPerfecti and all round mushroom messiah. His book Mycelium Running is a eco-toolkit on how to repair the world and ourselves using fungi. Topics include, how to replace pesticides with insect eating fungi, how to remove heavy metals and other compounds from contaminated soil using mushrooms, how to prevent toxic water and silt from runoff from farms and clear felled hills from damaging bodies of water using nothing but mushrooms.

So, that’s why mushrooms. Now the easiest mushroom to start with is the Oyster Mushroom. This will grow on just about anything.  And when it is finished digesting whatever you feed it, well then you have mushrooms but you also have other outputs as well.

Why Soil?

Mushrooms are decomposition agents, they take something born out of soil, which is pretty much terrestrial everything that’s not mined, and returns it to a state of being soil.  This is important for me as a rooftop gardener since I need to develop resources without buying them so that this process can be utilized under conditions of extreme financial deprivation.  Additionally, if Rooftop Farms are to take off in a big way, the system needs to have deep roots. These roots in my conception will be deep in the organic waste streams of cities.

I also need to power my roof like a machine so that yields will be significantly higher than if I just put the garden on the roof and left it.  The business of creating soil in this fashion turns food material back into energy, and that energy can be utilized to power the system.  What do I mean by this? Well a basic example would be worm and compost teas. Both of which will supercharge my garden.

Why Coffee?

Since I work at a university and uni students run on caffeine, there is an enormous untapped waste stream readily available right on my doorstep. I merely need to stretch out my hand and take it. Once the roots of the roof are in the bins of restaurants and coffee shops, we should be able to grow rooftop gardens with very few additional resources required and nothing bought.

Cancer Killing

Mushrooms create a wide variety of medicinal substances.  Some of the effects are cancer fighting, bacteria fighting, cholesterol reduction and anti-angiogenesis.  So growing mushrooms has many benefits.

We start this month..

Last night I met with Mr. Saehi Han, a corporate trainer who is part of a group trying to build an eco-village here in Korea. We hit it off straight away.  It is so refreshing to meet people who want to go beyond the usual ‘carry a cotton bag when you are shopping’ type environmentalism.

We hooked up on LinkedIn, which tends to pay host to a more serious group of people than Facebook. There’s a group concerned with water and water quality issues. The ongoing discussions are pretty interesting.

Anyway, he told me where they are at. They’ve registered their organization as a social enterprise and are looking to design an ecovillage with a view to getting government sponsorship. Merely talking with Saehi gave me the idea of pitching the university where I work the idea of an eco-campus.

The idea is that a university is like a village in the middle of the city.  It’s a formally delineated community with clear boundaries,  populated by talented people both young and old. It kinda makes me think of the Asimov Foundation books.

Anyway,  Saehi told me I had no credibility so I need to be more humble.  He also told me that there is a big difference between having the data and having expertise. I have the former but not the latter and until I get the latter, well all I have is an idea.

True enough.

Well Seoul Environmental Group didn’t last that long. It’s no-one’s fault really.  It’s just not the right time, place or people.

The idea was to bring together a group of people who would begin worthwhile environmental projects, spurring each other on and providing support. The problem was that everyone was moving in different directions. Meetings were a headache. I found myself travelling an hour each way to people who barely wanted to put their feet out of the door. People were just busy with other things.

Not exactly the Young Turks I had envisaged.

The quality of projects was not really up to it either. It was difficult for me to generate enthusiasm for internet sites posts on things like switch from flourescents to to LED lights.  I mean you have to have your head buried pretty deep not to think of that.

Anyway, it’s gone, defunct, kaput. I’ll start organizing based on friendship rather than common interests, for as I have seen those interests are not common at all.

Environmentalism in Korea barely exists.  At best it’s encompassed by the idea of ‘well being’, which is to say clean air, organic food and ginseng.  There’s little understanding or appreciation of subjects such as climate change, habitat restoration,  greenhouse gas emissions.  Indeed, the current green policy is one of canalizing major rivers in Korea; adding dams, wiers, concrete banks and the like.

In most ways it’s bad, but at least it means that while I am trying to get my project off the ground, most people will neither understand nor appreciate what I am doing. This means my ideas are less likely to get stolen I guess.