Soil: The Holy Source of All Nourishment

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind if you hear the word soil? What images does it evoke?

We walk on it and sometimes we might even consider it dirty to touch and, still, it’s the source of all that nourishes us: food grows for free from it, even in the wild, trees can give us oxygen thanks to the fact that their roots are deep held in its soft, brown, holy embrace.

It sustains us, it gives us life, it’s a safe surface for us to connect to the always pulsing heart of our planet Earth, almost as a portal between the atmosphere we live in and the underground.

What can we do so to preserve it? How can we give to it something in return, after receiving freely so much? Let’s go trough it.

Note: you can find an interesting article on the Curiosoil – Soil Literacy Day event, happened during the warmer season, at this link.

A protection layer to keep the good things inside

When it comes to soil protection and the preservation of its moisture, it’s essential to mention mulching; mulching consists of the practice of covering the soil surface with a layer of dry organic materials (among the most used ones we can find dry leaves, straw and even wool or other organic textile fabrics) that create a barrier against the hot sun rays, or even rain; it works as a natural insulation for the plants’ roots system, by keeping the temperature at its optimal level, and it’s as well beneficial to prevent eventual erosion.

By mulching we help the water to stay where we want it to stay, which is essential for our green friends to thrive, stay healthy and prosper, and so we become their helpful ally; do your mulching too!

Plants like their buddies’ company

To place many plants near others helps support their overall strength and health.

Sometimes we can make the mistake of considering each plant as a universe of its own, when in fact they are more like planets, interacting with one another and, sometimes, supporting each other. A good example of this is tomatoes and basil: both enjoy the same soil conditions and moisture levels, basil helps tomatoes grow stronger and taste better. It also keeps away bugs like hornworms and aphids and it brings in bees and butterflies to help with pollination. Or we can think of chamomile, which helps basil produce more of its natural oils, enhancing its flavor and its ability to repel pests.

Soil likes to breathe

Soil is a living medium, filled with roots, tiny organisms, water and air, all sharing the same space. When it becomes too compact and dense, it loses the small air pockets that allow it to breathe: oxygen can no longer reach the roots properly and water cannot move freely, so the soil slowly begins to suffocate.

Compacted soil also reduces earthworms and microorganisms, the quiet workers that transform organic matter into nourishment. When they disappear, the soil loses part of its vitality.

Healthy soil is soft, porous, and alive. To care for it, we must allow it to remain open and full of breathing space.

No-dig method

Beneath our feet tiny creatures make paths that carry water and nutrients to plant roots, while keeping just enough moisture for them to grow. When we leave this system alone, it can breathe, grow, and support plants easily.

If instead we dig or disturb it too much, the balance is broken: roots, earthworms, and microorganisms can be damaged or killed, microorganisms that break down organic matter are disrupted, so nutrients may take longer to become available.

When logistically possible, a better alternative to digging may be to top the soil with compost or mulch, as this helps the soil to stay healthy and the plants to grow strong without being disturbed.

Final thoughts:

Caring for the soil, caring for our shared world

It’s easy in the rush of everyday life, of our personal struggles and routine, to forget how, as the roots of a tree, we are all part of a shared system with its benefits and difficulties, that our actions, even the smallest, can have an impact on everything and everyone around us… and still, so it is. As mentioned for plants, we humans are also not universes of our own.

With the decisions that we make everyday we can make the boat that we all are in either seal towards a bright future or gravitate towards damaged shores; what you do and how you move in this world matters not only for you but also for other people, animals, nature, for the general well-being of our society.

The negative news we often hear can bring our moral down and put us under the impression that it doesn’t matter what we do because things will never get better, which can be the biggest of lies.

If you keep your street clean, the people passing by will benefit from it. If you keep your soil healthy, the worms will live and thrive in it… then the birds will eat them and, fed and joyful, they will fly above us. Then even more of them will sing behind our windows and the songs they sing will make all of our lives better.

When we care about our soil, when we care about our neighbor, we always have the power to create the symphony.

The Forgotten Ones: The Hidden Magic of Bugs

We call them bugs, their actual names are insects, arachnids, and myriapods… but we could also call them “the forgotten ones”, as they pass so easily unseen in front of our eyes most of the time. Many of us have learned to automatically classify these as annoyances, when encountering them, or almost as invisible; still, they have so much inner magic! Let’s explore it a bit together.

Note: all the pictures present in this article have been taken in the Aurora climate garden! Some by Réka Pálinkási and others are currently present in our iNaturalist location, which shows the garden’s rich biodiversity. You can check it at Biodiversity restoration – Auróra.

Honey bees and wild bees

While all bees are incredibly precious and essential for our ecosystem, when we think of them we often picture just the honey ones in our mind: the more social ones, which work together in their fascinating big hives, which have a queen and, after using their barbed sting to defends themselves, die. They are not the only kind of bees that exist, still! The wild ones are their more solitary counterpart, and currently the most endangered.

Different in shapes, sizes and colours, because of the natural places that they usually nest in (dead wood, bare soil, hollow plants stems, to name a few), they are at a higher risk of habitat loss: with the construction of buildings and roads that replace the natural environment, these tiny friends of ours become homeless.

Also, human intervention interferes with their survival in more than another way, as for example with garden maintenance, that with the frequent removal of weeds and dead plants makes even parks or gardens deprived of nesting spots for them.

Wild bees have a crucial role in biodiversity, they help to make agriculture more resilient and many plants for pollination rely specifically on them, not just honey bees.

So, how can we help them?

we can create bee hotels;
we can leave them water on dishes with some stones, so that they can land on these while drinking;
we can reduce the use of pesticides or, even better, avoid it!

This last mention introduces us to the little buddies that we are going to talk about next: pests and their predators.

All kind of pests that we can find in our gardens, like aphids (leaf lice), have their natural predators: if we wait for them to arrive, instead of trying to get rid of their presence with pesticides and any kind of chemicals, then they will protect our gardens all the season: ladybugs, hoverflies, lacewings, can all be our friendly allies and their presence is the sign of a healthy balanced ecosystem.

In nature everything has it’s own solution; we live in a system able to fix itself over and over, if we allow all the parts in play to do their part, by sometimes being humble enough to just sit and watch without interfering with it.

Next time a little bug will enter your home, please, be kind. They may be very small, less complex creature than we are… still, does this really mean that they don’t deserve our respect and care? That their life holds no value? They certainly are very helpful and even necessary to us in many ways but, even if they were not, is the fact that they are alive and part of our world not of a valid reason enough to be glad for their company? Even if some of them may scare us, as they look so different and almost alien to us, they definitely are not: to learn to see them as our friendly companions is the beginning of a bright future, that can lead us to wonderful places, made of prosperity and understanding.

Wool: a precious resource to not waste

On the 26th of April a wool washing event, organised by Marcell Csillag, took place in the Aurora climate garden; let’s go through it together.

Marcell is a textile designer by training, currently doing his master’s in Regenerative Design. The complex issue of local wool processing has been catching his interest and curiosity and so, over the past year, he has decided to learn more about the topic and, consequently, to do something about it.

Why we talk about “issue”

Nowadays, many small wool processors in Europe are brought to a harsh reality difficult to avoid. The industry has been going through a decline during the past decades due to many causes (to mention a few, the lack of raw material and a broken economic system). This has been leading to the unlucky consequence of most of the small wool producers having to stop their production.

In organizing his event, Marcell has been specifically inspired by Tibor Fuller’s small industry in Pécsvárad, after hearing about the current situation that he, as many in his area of work, is facing: because of the previously mentioned crisis, he had to stop his production completely 3-4 years ago, since without any adequate market he is struggling to find someone to take over his machines and continue operating them.
That’s where Marcell’s idea stepped in, when he realized that some together could have done something to stop this from happening, with a little collaboration and good attitude.

The event

It’s here that we arrive at the wool washing event that has taken place in the Aurora climate garden on the 26th of April (which, against the weather previsions, happened to be an unexpectedly sunny, warm Saturday).
After hearing about it from Marcell’s Facebook post, many people came to participate even from the countryside, many whole families included. Each person full of enthusiasm and happy to be a part of it, which can be seen as a clear indicator of the strong desire to support the small realities, of the sense of community, that despite these apparently cold and individualistic modern times we are living through, seems to still be inside many of us.

Step by step

At 9 am, a little crowd was already reunited and ready to start, the required setup all in place: huge bags full of untreated wool, some bathtubs, huge pots, a big table. As the workshop began, while Marcell started to explain and guide the people present through each required step of the process, the troupe from a news channel was recording everything with their huge cameras; a joy for the outside eye, to see such collaboration and attention focused towards a little and at the same time infinitely big goal.

The process started at 9 am and continued until 5 pm in the afternoon, to allow each part of it to happen following the right timing. The wool — approximately 50 kilograms — had to be washed with hot water once, and then again with the detergent (an alkaline solution) twice, then rinsed with just water another 2 times. Afterwards, it was all passed through some high-speed spin-drying machines, and then at the end, finally laid on some pallets under the sun, white, soft and clean, to make sure it dried completely.

Final conclusions

So much can still be done and saved if we look at the good but not only; if we are enough honest with ourselves and the world around us to look at the bad too, knowledging what must and could be changed for the better, deciding to then do something about it ourselves, how we can, with what we currently have.

Positive change is rarely perfect or linear, and still it surely is always worth it, despite any of it.

Some reflections on the project

Taking care

When it comes to helping our planet a truth that we may often forget is how, to do our part, it isn’t really necessary to create something from scratch: we have everything already here and our only duty is just to take care of it.

How do we do this in the Auróra Klímakert project?

Little by little, from a parking lot, a beautiful climate garden had the chance to grow and thrive, and it’s thanks to the process of taking care that it has been possible;

By using our food scraps as food for the soil, the recycling of unused materials, by curating the space in all its parts with patience, it clearly shows what happens when we take care of all that’s already existing: nature pays us back with 1000 more of what we have been putting in, for it’s how generous it can be.

Every little thing

If you’ll visit the garden and have a look around, if you’ll ask questions about what catches your curiosity, you’ll soon realise how every little thing in it is serving its own purpose, as none of its parts are useless.

It’s a small ecosystem with endless things happening inside of it, with each square of it serving its purpose by hosting animals and plants, even if some of them are almost invisible to the human eye.

We may not always notice at first glance but a lot of things are happening there all the time: bugs running around hunting for food, new trees bravely making their way from the ground to the surface, coming to life, birds searching for their next meal between the bushes, mushrooms nurturing and being nurtured at the same time in their own peculiar ways, all of this happening in a virtuous, self-sustaining cycle that never stops.

An open space for everyone

If you’d like to join us and be a part of this little-big change you can do it at any time, and for as long as you’d like, everyone is welcome. Every Tuesday and Sunday from 3 pm to 6 pm the Aurora climate garden is an open-door community space, where anyone can join and help with the little tasks of the day, or even by just exploring around, enjoying the space or asking questions.

You can bring your compost, which will later on become a part of the garden ecosystem, and at the right time, mostly in summer, you can even eat any of the fruits and vegetables that are growing generously on the garden bushes and trees.

Healing ourselves by healing the environment: the importance of green spaces in the city

The act of gardening, or even just doing any kind of work in nature, surrounded by insects and leaves, has a powerful healing effect on us that can’t be denied: our nervous system suddenly starts to calm down, our mind is finally able to go at a lower and more human speed, our breath becomes quieter.

In the frenetic rhythm of the city life, where in between the work and the other related obligations our minds and souls risk to get lost in the mechanical path of days, a reclamation of our human nature is maybe more important now than ever:

We need a more direct contact with nature to remember who we are, that our inner worth isn’t attached to how much we produce but to the simple fact that we exist.

We live in a modern society where nature and city don’t need to be harshly separated and, if we work towards it, can instead coexist in total harmony. The more green spaces we enrich our cities and towns with, the more value we add to the quality of our lives, and to the ones of the generations that will come after us.

If we can do it then we should, and the good news is… together we can!