Computers Are Becoming Vital in Improving Soil : Your PC can link you to experts and message groups that provide information about how to better the land by producing compost.
When people hear the term computer composting , they think I’m suggesting that we grind up old PCs for mulch. And though we are talking about a means of protecting and enhancing the soil that sustains us, none of us will have to sacrifice our expensive computer hardware for the good of the garden or the field.
The computer composting I’m referring to is the sort that, as Ventura composting expert Eric Werbalowsky puts it, teaches us “how to be Johnny Appleseed with a horticultural education program on the Internet.”
Then he reeled off the names of some electronic databases that composters, organic gardeners and professional agricultural experts are already using.
Their goal is to promote and practice the gentle art of tending the land--the soil itself. The idea is this: If you have vital, healthy, biologically active soil, a lot of other growing problems will disappear. Organic, non-chemical, grind-up-the-green-waste ideas predominate on these electronic services.
According to Werbalowsky, there are already a large number of gardeners around the country who have been running to their home computers to seek advice from computer groups, whose members can be found through names such as tree.zip, plant.zip, slug1.thd and something one might expect, mlchmw.txt, which is about mulching equipment.
These pithy monikers represent the e-mail addresses of organizations such as the Master Gardeners’ Conference and the Montessori Foundation’s Horticultural Education Within the Schools Program. Go Gardening is the e-mail address for an organization called the Gardening Forum.
Users either delve into the electronic data much as they might browse through the best agricultural library in the world, or they post a sort of electronic cry for help on the Internet and wait for a response.
Individuals such as Werbalowsky--whose e-mail address is WERB@DELPHI.COM--is among those ready to play the J. Appleseed role. Later this summer, this hardy band will be joined by some people in Ojai, known as Harmonious Technologies, which plans to offer a sort of electronic composting college / catalogue sales service.
The group, headed by John Roulac, is already well-known in national composting circles for its best-selling book “Back-Yard Composting.” California municipalities have been buying copies in the thousands to pass out to residents to encourage them to compost rather than throw green waste into local landfills.
And techniques such as composting, urban tree trimming and mulching are particularly important for California, where our use of chemicals and a growing shortage of water so imperil our rich topsoil.
Computers, in their no-nonsense way, are a great aid in dealing with this issue. Paul Bartels, president of the local citrus growers association and owner of GreenSource, a mulch-producing operation in Fillmore, is a big booster of composting. And he is practicing what he preaches: Within 10 years, the grounds of the 30 acres of orchard he leases will all be covered in mulch for water retention and nutrient replenishment.
He predicts that big commercial growers will eventually notice--electronically--the experiences of folks like himself. “It’s going to show up on the computer screen--just like the info they’re already checking out about the best loan packages and most efficient watering patterns--in a form they have come to think of as irrefutable.”
Some of this, he said, is already happening.
“Their CPAs are recommending bugs (“friendly” insects, which eat pests) instead of spraying. The computer will (eventually) recommend mulch instead of bare land and fertilizers.”
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* FYI: Computer-savvy and environmentally minded readers interested in the latest information on composting, organic gardening, and even how to plant and maintain a kitchen garden from the 1776 Fourth of July era can hook up their modems and address e-mail to Go Gardening, tree.zip, cmpst.Txt. or a local expert, WERB@DELPHI.COM, whose human name is Eric Werbalowsky.
