The wicking bed is an innovative technology, essentially a new agricultural
system. They give increased food production, with significantly less water,
recycle organic waste to provide plant nutrients, reduce chemical run off
into our rivers and sequester carbon into the soil, helping to reduce
climate change.
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An underground water reservoir is filled with organic waste and
water.
Nutrient rich water, essentially a compost tea wicks upwards
to the root zone. The soil is
maintained moist, not saturated giving increased food production.
Water can also be harvested by directing run-off into
the wicking bed.
see "wicking_bed_technology.pdf" |
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Significant quantities of water are stored in
the reservoir so watering can be less frequent and making the beds
better adapted to erratic rainfall.
Production is higher than conventional systems with less need for
external inputs of water and fertilizer. |
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Any water applied is contained in the reservoir so run off into
aquifers or the river system is reduced.
Instead urban waste, sewage and forest trimmings to reduce
bush fires can be recycled, preserving nutrients. |
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Significant quantities of atmospheric carbon can be sequestered and
embedded into the soil. Carbon is embedded into chemically stable
humus by micro biological action which thrives in the moist
conditions.
This removes on of the major impediments to obtaining a global
agreement on climate change.
see carbon_capture_in the soil and
resolving_climate_change.pdf |
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Wicking beds are well suited to developing countries improving their
food security while allowing then to expand their economies while
controlling emissions.This removes on of
the major impediments to obtaining a global agreement on climate
change.
resolving_global_warming.pdf |
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Wicking beds are widely used in
Australia, largely by
environmentally sensitive amateur growers.
To achieve the full benefits of reduced green house gases and
pollution commercial farmers need to install wicking beds on a
significant scale.
How to achieve this scale is discussed in
large scale adoption
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l
Wicking beds
Wicking
beds were initially developed as a way of managing an erratic rainfall.
Experience showed then to be a highly productive growing system.
The wicking bed enables us to grow food with a lot less water, it can
be used to harvest water otherwise lost and particularly it can actually
capture carbon from the atmosphere.
The wicking worm bed is a highly productive growing system which not
only produces more food from limited water, but also recycles waste
organic material to provide plant nutrient and capture carbon.
The essence is to form an underground reservoir of water or pond
contained by a waterproof container or liner below the surface.
Water wicks by surface tension to feed the plants.
More information
wicking_bed_technology.pdf
wicking_beds_under_construction.pdf
wicking_worm_beds.pdf
Instruction on how to make a wicking bed
Answers to common questions
stones, sand and organic matter
bed_depths
New wicking bed site
www.easygrowvegetables.com
Climate change - capturing
carbon in the soil
With
the rapid growth of the developing countries, particularly coal burning
countries like China and India we are not going to be able to reduce our
carbon emission adequately to control global warming.
The only solution is to extract carbon from the atmosphere. Plant
already extract 30 times more carbon than total and made emissions.
The problem it that this carbon rapidly en-enters the atmosphere.
This chapter shows how we can retain this carbon in the soil
Resolving_climate_change.pdf
Wicking beds and climate change
climate change -obstacles to
getting a global agreement
food production and climate
change
plants absorbing carbon dioxide
wicking_ bed_ technology (pdf)
Review of Copenhagen (pdf)
The future of agriculture
(pdf)Comments welcome -
email me
Soil regeneration
Tests
carried out over 30 years ago showed that soil could be rapidly
regenerated by controlling the moisture level in the soil to
encourage the right type of micro-biological action.
Today this technology is important as it captures atmospheric carbon and
so can offset climate change. However it does require water to
maintain the soil moisture levels - in a dry continent like Australia
this presents a major challenge. Subsequently technologies such as
improved irrigation scheduling, local water harvesting, subsurface
irrigation and the wicking bed were developed for the more effective use
of water.
see soil_regeneration
irrigation scheduling
Improved
irrigation scheduling is the easiest and cheapest way of making more
effective use of water. Traditionally scheduling has been a hit
and miss affair which was marginally improved by using crop
factors and evaporation data. However this is an open loop system
with no in build feed back so significant water is still wasted.
Here we look as closed loop systems taking advantages of improved
instrumentation for soil and plant moisture monitoring to control
irrigation depth
Subsurface
and improved flood irrigation
Subsurface
irrigation was initially seen as way of saving water lost by
evaporation. A wide range of experiments however
led to the conclusion that practical difficulties severely limit its
application. The experimental focus was then switched to
developing a computer simulation of flood irrigation to improve its
efficiency.
Technically successful but with limited commercial
uptake this was not regarded as a success but it did lead onto the
highly successful wicking bed technology.
Local water harvesting
Australia
is often considered to be a dry continent, in fact it has
reasonable rainfall. The problem is excessive evaporation so much
of the rain is lost by evaporation before it can be used by plants or
captured in our dams.
Here we look at how local water harvesting can capture water but
minimizing this evaporation.
17 August 2010
