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Does Nature Approve?

January 2007

If you want to have a successful healthy landscape that saves your money, time, energy and possibly your life, I suggest that you do as I do - and as I say. Look to nature. Before you do anything ask yourself. “Will nature approve?” If not, do something else. Look to nature for the answers. How can we improve nature? This is the most valuable lesson I’ve learned in my quest to provide the best overall program for my customers and landscapes we maintain.

A while back I contemplated discontinuing my natural product line, Ron’s Blends. I’ve spent over 10 years developing my products, but I was distressed by the cost and commitment required to produce products based on natural principles. Among other things, that includes harvesting manure from free range animals including rabbits, cows, chickens, horses and goats and collecting minerals to put in the products. Blending different mixes and mulches to make our products is quite labor and time intensive. I was hoping that, given the explosion of new product offerings in the organic industry, I would find some convenient ready-to-use products that would perform up to my standards.

So, I bought and tested the products I thought to be the most promising. Unfortunately, none seemed to work as well as the ones I had been using. Even though it was tempting to opt for the simple route of just opening a bag or uncapping a bottle of concentrate, it wouldn’t be fair to my customers.

So, again I looked to nature. Where in nature is compost created in a vacuum? Where in nature is compost extracted with thousand of pounds of pressure and water? Where in nature are beneficial microbes and fungus manufactured or sustained without the benefits of oxygen? Where in nature do thousands of chickens, cows, rabbits and goats loaded with antibiotics, hormones and growth regulators take a poop on any lawn or landscape? My answer to each of these questions was NOWHERE! Even though this could be possible, one thing that would never be possible without man is the application synthetic pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers which destroy most beneficial life in the soil.

Then, as I often do, I consulted with my mentor and friend, Malcolm Beck, the father of organics in Texas. I talked with him about these paradigms and trends in the industry. I came away, as always, with a renewed passion and burning desire to commit my service, products and knowledge with one thing in mind. Whatever I do must improve or benefit nature.

One idea I had was to make a better compost tea machine. Suspending a bag of compost in water to try to create nutrients and life out of this mucky mess just didn’t seem natural to me. When I ran my idea past Malcolm, he told me of a compost tea cook off he had entered. I anticipated that he would have been the winner, but he wasn’t. But, the winner was disqualified because he had the foresight to use his own water which was natural, not the chlorinated fluorinated city water supplied to the contestants.

Thankfully, I have a well on my property. When I switched to using well water to brew my tea, my results improved dramatically. Then I redesigned my compost tea machine. Instead of using one venturi tube, a nozzle-like device to increase oxygen in water, I used two. I put one venturi tube with two jets at the middle of the tank. I aimed one up and the other up - both pointed counter clockwise to establish a swirl in synch with the earth’s gravitation to eliminate anaerobic pockets. The second venturi is placed at the top to increase the airflow through suspended screen buckets filled with material that simulates the forest floor. That includes several forms of compost, earthworm castings, soil from our organic garden center, beneficial fungus spores, from my own proprietary knowledge - top secret (I made these fungal spores using alfalfa, corn meal, oat hulls, earth worm castings and up to 99 different minerals.) and a nutrient bio-stimulant (RONS Super Sauce.)

Now instead of just water and a bottled concentrate, I had a 400 gallon living breathing organism to apply to my landscapes. The results were phenomenal - up to 18 inches of new growth on trees in the worst drought in 50 years. Oh, by the way, these trees were stressed, diseased or dying. I’m not talking about a couple of trees, but over a hundred. Landscapes covered with disease and insects miraculously healed in less than 30 days. Black fungus, brown patch and take all patch disappeared.

We also used this solution on several trees with severe late stage oak wilt and have produced new healthy growth. Now we’re looking for some trees in the early stages to run a test. So, stay tuned for more results, because, like nature, we are getting better naturally.