Upgraded beds – Introduction

The information paradox

The world is changing at an incredible rate, climate change, the virus and the polarisation of the political system are immense problems, new technologies like artificial intelligence may seem beneficial but whatever the benefits increase inequality between the haves and have nots.

Innovators, like me, ask how can we develop technologies to help mitigate these problems and often that it is the easy bit, a bigger problems in how to make that technology widely available with the relevant documentation.

It is tempting to focus on the new developments but at times an overview is needed to keep things in perspective. This is such a time so I start with an overview.

The birth of Wicking beds

It is approaching thirty years since I was invited to go to Ethiopia to see if there was anything I could do to help feed people in one of those terrible droughts.

I could see the two issues were lack of water and nutrients. Nutrients were the easy bit, weeds may be a pain but they are incredibly effective at extracting the last bit of nutrients from the soil and they can then be used as fertiliser.

Water was a bigger problem but I had travelled extensively in the Australian deserts and seen the natural phenomenon of water being collected in clay basins, flowing down to the lowest point then wicking up to feed luxuriant vegetation in the middle of a dry desert.

That was the birth of what I named Wicking beds – dig a trench, line with a water proof layer, clay or plastic film, load the base with weeds then back fill with soil.

There was no question of the weeds going putrid by soaking in stagnant water – this was in the middle of a sever drought.

Publicity v technology

On my return to Australia I wrote about this and the idea caught on, but some bright spark they could improve on this by replacing the weeds with stones and having a cloth layer to prevent the soil and roots entering the water zone.

This actually works fine – as self watering beds – but does little to improve the nutrients or soil biology.

But we live in an era where skills in publicity are far more important than being technically correct so Wicking beds, with stones, caught the public imagination.

Sponge beds

I had yet another idea, the sponge bed. This was even simpler that a Wicking bed, take off the top soil and level the ground. Fill with any organic material that is available then replace the top soil.

This give three layers, the underlying earth, a layer of soft spongy material with very high water holding capacity and a layer of regular soil on top.

Plants could be germinated in the top layer then put down their roots into the moist nutrient rich layer below.

There was no attempt to contain the water, they just relied on surface tension in the sponge to hold the water in place.

Have no doubt – though this was a great system but it just did not catch peoples imagination and it went the way of many other good innovations, just a dot in the history books.

The bugs arrive

We seem to have suddenly discovered microbes – well that is not true at all, bugs (or more politely microbes) arrived well before any other living creature, they were the first and they made all other life forms possible by making soil and nutrients available so plants could grow.

It is just that humans thought that bugs were bad and had to be killed off. But then in a flash of inspiration we suddenly realised that there were good bugs and bad bugs and that our very lives depended on the good bugs.

We spent a lot of time and money trying to work out how to kill of the bad bugs without killing of the good bugs but without much success. Then in another flash of inspiration we worked out that if we managed the conditions in favour of the good bugs that they would simply out breed the bad bugs.

And that is what Gbiota beds are all about, creating the conditions where the good bugs out compete and out breed the bad bugs – a concept worked out by nature a few millions years ago. But we got there in the end.

Flood and drain

Plants need nutrients, water and air.  We can get this with flood and drain.  The basic principle has been known for years.

Lower a container into water which will expel all the stale air.

Let the water drain out and it will suck in fresh air into the soil.  This cycle of flood and drain means the soil is actually breathing, expelling stale air and sucking in fresh air.

Making it work in practise

But of course we cannot just raise and lower a complete paddock so we have to use a different way, using a pump to flood the base of the bed purging out the air then let the water drain away to suck in the fresh air.

This work well but a snag appeared.

KISS Keep It Simple Stupid

I have been writing articles about breeding beneficial microbes in Gbiota beds and people tell me it all sounds too complicated so I have been experimenting to find the simplest possible way.

So I now try and make it simple, with the help of a few made up characters, which as they say in the films are purely fictitious and any similarity to actual people is purely coincidental. So welcome George and Mary.

The crux is for George to grow Wickimix, the soil that goes into Gbiota Wicking boxes. But there is more to it than that. He is certainly willing to make and sell Wickimix which helps extend his retirement funds but he is also happy to help Mary by giving advice and encouragement on what to grow in the various seasons.

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