Gbiota Blog
Key Points
Key points
When I am creating a project I find it useful to make a list of the key points. I have done this with the Gbiota project but I asked myself why keep this hidden so I am publishing this here.
No dumb donkeys
We live in the digital age where we seems to expect that any problems can be solve by a few minutes search on the internet. If you think this is the way to feed eight billion people food that will keep them healthy – (so they don’t get fat and sick and have their legs chopped off from diabetes) – and all in the middle of climate change with floods and droughts and a global political system which is decidedly wobbly – then you are wrong and this is not the site for you.
Life wasn’t meant to be easy.
But I have prepared a series of posts which analyse the key issues to develop a plan and appropriate technology to solve this horrendous problem.
Soaker beds
I developed the original Gbiota beds to grow plants which act as natural pre and pro biotics by having a moist, not wet soil. It is very easy to make soil wet, just hump on the water which will breed up the harmful microbes. It is much more difficult get the soil just moist which the beneficial microbes prefer.
I developed the original system using a system of pumps, timers and drains in about 2015 when weather conditions were very dry and they worked fine. But I learned two things.
Many people do not want the bother of installing and maintaining pumps, timers and sumps and then then in 2020 the weather changed dumping massive amounts of water – multiple rains of over 100mm in a few hours. It is not just the water falling on my block – it is all that water falling on blocks higher than mine which create a torrential flow over my block which the then Gbiota beds just could not handle.
In-Ground Gbiota Beds
Sump beds were developed first as a way of taking advantage of the partial flood and drain cycle. They have been used for some years now and being automated are probably best suited to commercial growers.
However many home growers were put off by the apparent complexity of pumps and timers so I developed the basic beds which are extremely simple and effective but they do need a manual check on water levels. This makes them very suitable for the home grower who just wants a dead simple system – all you need is a spade, some ag pipe, either clay or plastic film and a bit if energy to dig a small trench.
They are almost embarrassingly simple and we see the becoming very popular with home and small scale growers. They can even be partially automated. I describe the more complex pump and sump system first as they illustrate the basic principles and make it easier to understand the deceptively simple basic beds.
Food for health
Historically four out of every five people died before their natural age from an infectious
disease. Both medical science and our food system has responded by finding better ways
of killing these pathogens. While largely successful we have also inadvertently reduced
the number of beneficial biota which has led to an upsurge in non-infectious diseases such
as diabetes, heart attack and dementia.
We have learned the hard way that we are totally dependant on these beneficial biota.
Community food
Growers breed beneficial microbes in organic matter in the soil, also adding rock dust
which is broken down by the microbes into accessible minerals forming nutrient rich
biologically active soil.
This soil is placed into Bioboxes which are seeded and plants grown. The microbes and
minerals enter the plants we eat. The boxes are supplied to customers who harvest and
eat the plants full of living microbes to enhance the gut brain which controls appetite,
manages replacement of body part as they age and wear and host much of the immune
system.
Welcome to worm pooh
Health and life span
We all have to eat and what we eat determines our health and life span.
Thanks to medical science our life span has been increasing, no thanks to our modern food system our health span, how long we remain fit and healthy has been decreasing.
How Gbiota beds work
Wicking beds are now very common across the globe. Many have a base filled with some inert material – often stones. These are just self watering pots – nothing wrong with that they make life more convenient by avoiding frequent watering. But for a self watering pot the material and water in the base is – or at least should be – inert, when they may stand for extended periods without going putrid (or maybe not if you keep on topping them up).
Water
Water- that weird substances
Water has many weird properties apart from being one of the few substances which expands when it freezes so ice floats and pipes burst.
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Colin Austin
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