Mother beds

Colin Austin © 11th November 2021 Creative commons this document may be reproduced without permission but the source should be acknowledged. Information may be used for private use but commercial use requires a license.

Healthy gut food at an affordable price

Gbiota beds were developed to grow plants to feed our guts. Technically they have been successful but may be a bit complex for many people, particularly pregnant ladies and mums who determine gut biology for our future life.

Everyone should be able to access healthy gut food at an affordable price so we need to develop a new system for distributing gut food. Experienced growers, either amateur or profession will set up full scale Gbiota beds to grow Gbiota soil.

This will be loaded into small Gbiota boxes, planted and delivered to the local community who will simply harvest the fresh growing plants and when finished have a replacement Gbiota box delivered – loaded with fresh soil and new plants.

This provides a simple, convenient and affordable way people, particularly mums can access fresh gut food.

This is a new way of distributing fresh plants – I call this the Gbiota mother and child bed and box system and is a much better way of distributing plants than the conventional way of harvesting plants on spec – hoping some one will buy them before they age – and if they don’t – sell them cheap or dump them.

Mother and child beds

In my sister post action plan for gut health I explained what the consumer needed to do to have access to food to feed their gut biology – Gbiota food.

But there are two sides – the consumer who simply has Gbiota boxes delivered to their door with plants already growing just waiting to be harvested and the growers.

Actually this is a major social change, it enables non gardeners to have access to plants that are picked and eaten without delay, genuinely fresh food which taste a lot better and is a lot healthier.

This is simply a better way of providing food, which otherwise is harvested on spec, spends days travelling from farm to warehouse to store to fridge before it is actually eaten. And if it is not bought it ends up as being sold as second rate food or worse in landfill producing greenhouse gasses.

But the grower has to prepare these Gbiota boxes so in this post I talk about what the growers have to do.

They have to set up and run a Gbiota bed which really acts as a mother bed to supply soil, biology, minerals and plants to the child box, the Gbiota box.

Basic principles

The basic principles of the Gbiota bed are described in the many publications on this site – as referenced below.

But here I want to summarise the key points.

Wicking beds, with their water reservoir at the base of the bed, are now ubiquitous and are a very effective way of saving water. Gbiota beds are based on Wicking Beds and have much in common but the key difference is that they were developed to breed biology to form part of our gut biology.

Highly effective for growing gut food but a bit complicated for many people.

Gbiota beds used as mother beds are very similar to the traditional Gbiota bed but with one exception – their primary aim is to grow Gbiota soil to go into Gbiota boxes rather than grow plants directly.

So while they are very similar to traditional Gbiota beds there are some differences. Gbiota bed technology is well described elsewhere on this site (see growing) so I am assuming that this has been read and I will focus here on how to set up Gbiota beds as mother beds.

Comparison of Wicking and Gbiota beds

If you are going to breed biology you must feed them and the basic input is food waste, with some animal manure to provide nitrogen and some biology, maybe some dolomite to balance the Ph, minerals and inoculants.

Putting it mildly this is a pretty potent mix which in a Wicking Beds, with its stagnant water reservoir could rapidly turn putrid breeding the wrong sort of biology.

Gbiota beds do not have a stagnant water reservoir but instead uses a system of partial flood and drain.

They use an external reservoir or sump which ends up containing a compost tea which is pumped into the base of the bed for a brief period then when the pump is turned on so water, or more correctly compost tea, rises up flooding the base.

An Ag pipe runs the entire length of the bed and up and over a soil dam. When water is pumped from the reservoir it will flood the base of the bed but when the pump is turned off the water will leak out through the soil dam and back into the sump.

This creates a short term water pulse which wet the soil but does not saturate it.

In the Gbiota boxes this flood and drain process is done manually by simply raising and lowering the external reservoir. In a Gbiota bed the partial flood and drain process is done by pumps controlled by timers.

The pumps may be turned on and off several times a day wetting and draining the soil with compost tea, which is never allowed to become stagnant, and with air being sucked in and out of the soil so it actually breathes.

The theory is very simple but like many things in life the practical application has a few hidden twists.

Comparison of Gbiota beds and Gbiota mother beds

Conventional Gbiota beds are used to grow Gbiota plants and follow the basic principle of minimal soil disturbance.

Gbiota mother beds are primarily used to grow soil which will be used in Gbiota boxes so customers can have fresh food growing in their homes – even if they have no interest in gardening.

Growing soil may seem a weird concept but it has been going on for millions of years and soil is essential for life on earth.

Humans, in their infinite wisdom and fascination for making us much money as possible as quickly as possible, have been using the wonders of modern technology to destroy global soil – a piece of stupidity which out ranks our desire to cook the earth.

But fortunately we know how to grow soil and it is actually a quick process – it does not take the millions of years it took nature to make our soils.

Dirt and soil

Dirt is just inert rock particles, the particle size may vary from very fine – as in clay – to larger particles – as in sand and gravel.

It may have a poor structure, making it very hard for plants roots to penetrate, and turning into a useless slosh when wet, which is why so many people hate clay.

It may contain a range of beneficial minerals, but these are typically insoluble, so are not available as a food source for plants. Clay, that stuff that people love to hate, is actually full of beneficial minerals – they are there – but just not available.

We now have two options, we can use the power of modern science to convert this dirt into soil by some wonder of modern chemical and biological technology – or we can study how nature has solved this over billions of years, try and understand how it works, then see if we can duplicate or even refine this to it works even better.

I don’t see these two approaches are in conflict but it seem stupid not to study the natural process.

I am really into studying and learning from past experience so that is largely my approach and what I see is that the natural approach is based on recycling, so the obvious next step is to see what is readily available for us to recycle.

And this is where we can learn a lot from studying how humans have evolved.

Human evolution

At one time there was a very successful species which we called homo sapiens to recognise that this was a wise creature.

And it was very good at inventing things, it invented guns to kill people so we could all be safe, atomic bombs to make sure we never went to war and it also invented a process called nitrogen fixing.

This process of nitrogen fixing – making artificial fertiliser – enabled humans to produce vast quantities of fertiliser from the almost limit less supply of nitrogen in the atmosphere.

All these were a great credit to the ingenuity of homo species but unfortunately homo sapiens – the wise human – went extinct – as species tend to do – and was replaced by a new species which was given various names homo stupidous, homo shortsightedness – homo economicus – home tycoonitus or homo politicus.

This new species was even better at inventing things than the previous homo sapiens but simply failed to understand that if you have the intellectual capacity to go around inventing things it is not a bad idea to make sure that these new inventions actually work for the benefit of the species rather than creating a neo-monopoly which makes a few people unbelievably rich while the rest suffer – while the basic resources of the planet to support the population is laid waste.

Food waste

So they grew far more food than was needed, so that a third of the food grown was wasted and put into land fill to break down to make methane gas to make sure that the planet would be roasted – which is clearly the aim of homo stupidous.

But it does create an enormous opportunity for any of the nearly extinct homo sapiens to make use of food waste as the basic raw material for making new soil for Gbiota mother beds – and making sure that if any surviving homo sapiens had grand kids that they would have something to eat.

Other organic waste

Food waste my be the preferred feed stock for Gbiota mother beds because it is so easy to decompose (try stopping it) but there is an even larger volume of other organic waste.

This is much slower to decompose than food waste but can easily be incorporated into a Gbiota mother bed with a bit of tweaking.

Give us your rubbish or l’ll chop your legs off.

Now here we have an obstacle which economist love to call a logistical problem. Food waste is generated in the billions of homes and cafes around the world. Somehow we have to get that food and organic waste into the Gbiota mother beds.

How do we motivate people to cooperate? Now here comes a bit of a motivational speech.

Every twelve seconds someone has a limb amputated as a side affect of diabetes.

Where does diabetes come from? Too much fat (in the pancreas).

Where does that fat come from? Our food.

Why don’t we stop eating when we have had enough? Because our gut biology is not working properly to tell us we are full so we stop eating.

How do I get a healthy gut biology? Well you can start by collecting up all your waste food and giving it to someone setting up a Gbiota mother bed.

Will that work? Well I am not an advertising guy – they are all busy being political leaders but it is worth a go.

Ingredient number 2 – chicken shit

Having all this waste food is a good start but to get it to decompose we need nitrogen and the easiest source of nitrogen is chicken shit (or in fact any shit, I have used human shit but I had to develop a way of managing it so I did not die from some weird disease so maybe stick to chicken shit. (That was supposed to be a joke which will only be understood by people who have shovelled chicken shit and know how sticky it is).

Ingredient number 3 dolomite or similar

OK I know that this is beginning to sound a bit like when you go to the doctor with some minor illness they give you some pill, then it turns out that that pill has side affects to they give you another pill to cure the side affect – but that pill has another side affect and so it goes on and on.

And true enough, chicken shit can be pretty acidic so you may need to add something to neutralise the acidity. Now I am assuming that anyone setting up a Gbiota mother bed is experienced in this sort of stuff and knows all about PH so I am not going to go into this but bluntly if the plants die it is probably acidic soil so throw on a bit of dolomite or lime or whatever is available.

Ingredient number 4 – minerals

Plants get their energy from the sun, and carbon from the carbon dioxide in the air. But they do need a few minerals to make photosynthesis work – and that has to come from the soil.

Now I am a great enthusiast for food waste and composting but even I have to admit that modern food is a bit light on in the mineral department. In fact one of the factors in our health is the modern soils are becoming deficient in minerals – so we need to fix that.

Fortunately there is an abundance of mineral on earth. Humans will have become extinct well before we have use up the Himalayan mountains and by that time there will have been enough new volcanic eruptions to keep us going for another few billions years.

So we do have to top up our ingredient list by adding a balanced selection of minerals – not that much – but enough of the right sort. (See articles on Biomin nb a subscription page).

Ingredient number 5 – soil

These ingredient will lead to a highly potent soil mix. But it is possible to have soil too potent. I have tried growing plants like cauliflower and broccoli in a potent mix like this and ended up with cauliflower trees that would be quite happy in a rain forest – it is possible to have a soil mix and water mix which is just too potent so the plants never fruit properly.

Many plants, like grapes and tomatoes need to be put under a bit of stress to fruit properly. It works just like with humans – scare them a bit with a war or Covid and they breed like crazy.

But there is another reason why we need to add some soil, particularly clay. This gives the soil what a traditional grower would call body. I am not sure of a scientific definition of body but it is obvious that some soils will hang together and form a distinct body or structure.

Natural Vermicast – and that is essentially what we are making here – has a beautiful texture very nice and fine but is powdery – but adding a bit of clay gives it an obvious feel or body – even though it is difficult to define.

May be we need a measure of tensile strength of soil.

Ingredient number 6 – bugs

Up till now everything has been real easy. If my grand daughter were to put down her mobile phone for a second she would be able to manage all this (except for shovelling chicken shit – not trendy and definitely not her scene).

But now we come to a bit of a hurdle – we need the bugs (or more correctly the soil biology).

Plan A and B

If you want to really understand soil biology – all you have to do is live for another two hundred years and study every technical paper on soil and gut biology and is should be a doddle – that is apart from the bit about living for another two hundred years and doing nothing else than reading technical papers.

That would even provide a minor obstacle to my grand daughters who can do everything – as long as it can be done on their mobile phones.

So this is where we have abort plan A and to adopt plan B and study what nature can teach us from the last four billion years.

We know that there are a few microscopic organism that can break down rocks. Fungi are the best at this because they have incredibly fine hyphae that can generate incredible stresses at their tips.

If you don’t get the idea just get a nail and poke the blunt end into your finger then repeat with the sharp end – you will soon get the idea.

There are a few other things that attack rocks – the lichens and mosses but they work on the same principle as fungi so we should be able to get by with a good dose of fungi.

Next come the spectrum of other microscopic creatures, particularly the bacteria, protozoa etc. There are so many of them – that is why it takes a coupe of hundred years to get the hang of it.

Compost tea

As you have guessed I am really into compost tea. I can collect some in a jar and bring back to my home and have a little perv under my microscope – which is really quite disconcerting.

What looks like just a bit of brown dirty water is actually teaming with weird creatures clearly designed by someone who is into science fiction horror stories.

But just take a look at the soil and if you look carefully it is again full of weird creatures – many you can see with your naked eye, the most obvious are the worms, then if you some good compost the soldier fly larvae and may be many other creep crawlies.

Now if you think about it – these are living creature with guts and stomachs just like us – and they are busy poohing away enriching the soil with their gut biology which is similar to our gut biology. Read about pooh swapping parties here pooh4nov21 (must read) and here .

This myriad of creatures is actually making soil. They are doing much more than making holes though the soil – they are emitting glues which form the soil particles into aggravates giving the soil that nice granular texture that is the difference between dirt and soil.

Sorry Amazon

At this point the obvious approach is to spend the next two hundred years studying all these weird creatures, make a list of the five thousand species you really need to make soil then hop on to Amazon and expect deliver by return.

Well, if that is your scene – go for it! But it is a bit beyond my capabilities.

So I cheat a bit and look and see how nature does it.

And what I see is a process of ecological balance.

Ecological balance

I can start off with what looks like really nice soil – with a nice texture and plenty of worms – which are really the canaries of the soil.

If I let that soil dry out the worms disappear and are replaced by a mix of ants and beetles which seem quite happy in that dry mix – but the plant don’t grow.

If I keep the soils saturated the soil get invaded by little green micro creatures from outer space with extremely bad breath, the soil pongs and the plants die.

So to grow plants I must manage the moisture levels so it is not too wet and not too dry – as I say Goldilocks moisture – and of course that is what Gbiota beds are all about – the partial flood and drain system with the leaky dam.

What that does is allow the beneficial biology to flourish and out breed the harmful biology. Simple but I still have to start with an inoculant to get the broad spectrum of biology in the first place.

The beauty of an inoculant is that once you have some soil that has been inoculated and the biology is happily breeding away then you can use some of that soil as inoculant for yet more beds with the biology simply breeding up so you can make new soil in bulk.

A little trick from nature invented a few billion year ago so the patent have well and truly expired.

All you have to do is find some friendly person (like me) to drop you a bag of inoculant and you are away.

Of course in two hundred years all this will have been replaced by a more sophisticated technology base on a better understanding of soil and gut biology but for now this is the best we have got.

Making the Gbiota mother beds

OK we have got through the ingredient lists now we have to make our mother bed.

Gbiota beds are well described on this web (see growing) so I am not going to repeat how to make a regular Gbiota bed and will just focus on the differences between a regular Gbiota bed and a Gbiota mother bed.

Regular Gbiota beds are used to grow plants, so I avoid working the soil as far as possible.

Gbiota beds are used to grow soil to load into Gbiota boxes so some some soil disturbance is unavoidable.

Plants help make soil

Plants are an essential part of the process of growing soil – it is not a factory operation – like making commercial potting mix.

Soil is made by the complex soil biology – plants exude sugars which feed the biology attracting them to the rhizosphere where the soil is made. Plants are an essential part of growing soil.

At the current state of technology I just used the area immediately above the Ag pipe for growing the soil which will go into the Gbiota boxes leaving the area – which is away from the pipe – as a ‘do not disturb’ area to let the biology to do its thing of breeding away.

Sorting the waste

In true miserly fashion I use any organic material that I can lay my hands on. Some of these are items, like tree prunings with quite thick branches, will take some significant time to decompose (a bit like huegel culture ) – others like the food waste will decompose remarkably quickly.

So I sort my waste into fast and slow decomposition material. The slow decomposition material I will bury just above the Ag pipe where is will be left for months to decompose.

The fast decomposing material I will place on top of the bed in a raised bed like a swale.

I first load the food waste, then cover with the chicken manure then put a layer of soil and minerals on top of this for seeding.

Germination is always a bit more difficult in a Wicking Bed type system. Some plants, like radish, are like fireworks. Seed and stand back so you don’t get struck by the plant zooming upwards like Jack’s been stalk.

Others, like linseed, broccoli sprouts, alfalfa are much more temperamental. As soon as they have put down their roots into the moist subsoil they are up and away but just getting them to germinate is a bit more difficult. Other plants like spinach are easily struck from cutting where they have immediate access to the moist subsoil.

Where I live in the subtropics in Bundaberg we have very high evaporation from the sun and the trade winds so the top soil, in a Wicking type bed, can dry out very quickly. But when is does rain it comes down as though it has a hate of rain gauges which must be destroyed at all costs.

This heavy rain can easily float away any seed which tend to float to the surface and which then dry out in the next days of glaring sun and blowing wind.

I am currently experimenting with a layer of leaf litter which has a similar density to the seeds so they are less prone to rising to the surface – which always happens however lightly or heavily you try and lock the seeds in place.

This is an area of ongoing experimentation – so as they say watch this space.

Seed production

At the current moment (just note that phrase which means tomorrow may be different) I am using my system as I expect a Gbiota mother bed and box system to work in the commercial market place. It is that – now discarded – concept of product testing.

I am using the mother bed to grow seeds which I then use to grow the actual plants for consumption in the Gbiota boxes.

The Gbiota boxes are largely used to grow baby greens, they are more nutritious and taste a lot nicer. Many plants will put out toxins when they suffer attack from insects (note I live in Queensland where we don’t need electric cars – we just ride around on the backs of the monster grass hoppers that live here).

These toxins can make the plants quite bitter so the trick is to beat the insects to the feast and eat young. (see tipping).

Money

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