Wicking beds for more than self-watering
Many people are using Wicking beds as self watering pots – nothing wrong with this but they are missing the real benefit.
Wicking beds can be modified to breed the beneficial biota in the soil, which enters the plants then our gut brain using the plants as natural pre and pro biotics (as we have done for thousand of years before modern chemical industrial agriculture).
Your gut brain and long-term health
Our gut brain is really important for our health but has sadly deteriorated over time leading to an epidemic of chronic (long term) diseases. Our gut brain acts as an intelligent control system which makes us want to eat the right amount of the right sort of food.
Enabling conditions versus real causes
Think about it this way;-
A car travelling at 180kph is involved in a major crash killing many people and injuring many more – who’s fault is it?
Could it be the car manufacturer – they could easily have fitted a lawn mower engine giving a maximum speed of 20kph or could it be the fuel company supplying high octane fuel rather than water which would limit the speed to 0kph. Either of these would have avoided this terrible crash.
These are what we call enabling conditions – you need a high performance engine running on high octane fuel to get those speeds and cause a crash but they are not the real cause of the problem – it is the driver who controls the car who is to blame.
Food is similar, there are all sorts of bad foods – sugars, fats, addictive flavourings etc which have enabled a major health crisis – but they are not the real cause.
Empty calories and failure to feed the gut brain
We have evolved, over thousands of years, an intelligent control system which decides how much and what sort of food we want to eat, produces many of the complex chemical needed to replaced our body parts as they age and wear and host much of our immune system.
Some eighty percent of the food we eat is just for energy – it is fuel and is very easy to produce in large quantities. Over the last eighty years the population has trebled but the food industry has increased the supply of energy food some forty per cent faster than the increase in population – an incredible technical achievement but not necessarily good for us people.
80% of the food we eat we just burn off for energy – often called empty calories.
But modern chemical industrial scale food production is just not suited to growing the foods our gut brain needs to flourish.
It fails to supply food to feed our gut brain – our intelligent control system and it is the failure of our control system that has led to widespread health problems – that is the real cause of the modern epidemic.
Goldilocks moisture and living soil biology
Plants must be grown in nutrient rich biologically active soil with the right moisture level – not too dry (or nothing breeds) or too wet (or the harmful biota out breeds the beneficial biota). Goldilocks moisture is needed — and Wicking Beds can achieve it.
This is really important for the health of the community – every eight seconds someone has a foot amputated from diabetes and dementia and heart attacks are increasing. The real cause can be traced back to not feeding our gut brain.
Fortunately breeding the beneficial biota and food for a healthy gut brain can be readily undertaken by home and local growers where plants can be eaten shortly after harvesting before the beneficial biota dies. Plants act as natural pre and pro-biotics.
A working home eco-system
My garden is just a regular block: the lawn captures carbon to make grass clippings for the in-ground beds, the trees take up nutrients and excess water from deep in the soil, the in-ground beds breed biota and grow plants that transfer the biota to our guts, and the boxes grow herbs and speciality plants. A functioning eco-system.
Learn how to grow natural pre and pro-biotics
To find out how to grow these natural pre and pro-biotics using a Wicking bed you can contact me directly from my web site www.gbiota.com. I am a real person – not some mega corporation trying to sell you something. Any competent gardener can do it but it does need to be done right.
