Vivian Kaloxilos, of the Valhalla Movement Network, asks Dr. Elaine Ingham to give an example of the use of compost/compost tea to control erosion. (Youtube interview Dec. 5, 2014)
Dr. Ingham gives the following, rather extreme example:
In the state of Washington, a client who was a vice-president of Microsoft, had a house on a steep slope overlooking Lake Washington. It was built into the hill on a 70 percent slope.
The trees on the property had been cut down and were replaced with unattractive shrubs.
To clear off the shrubs on the slope above the house the owner used Round-up and diesel fuel during the summer. Then in the fall, when the rains started, things went really bad. With the plants dead, the whole hill, the slope above he house, started sliding down toward the house. It promised to be a total disaster if something wasn’t done.
The first landscape specialist that the owner went to, wanted to cover the whole property with a slab of concrete at a price of several million dollars.
The second landscape specialist suggested putting in a series of six retainer walls, like terraces, each about fifteen feet high, also at a price tag of several million.
Since neither of these solutions would achieve the natural look he sought, a third specialist was consulted, a man using the biological approach that Dr. Ingham espouses He gave his plan which was to get the biology into the soil and immediately. How much? $300. He was hired.
The next day he came back with a small conveyer belt, and some really high quality compost.
He started at the bottom the slope with compost six inches thick, covering the whole hill with six inches of compost. Then he started over again with another six inches, and another until he had about two feet of compost covering the slope.
Then, using climbing gear, to make a minimum disturbance, he planted a lot of 8 inch to one foot tall shrubs and trees.
The plant roots, working with the compost introduced microbes, grew quickly and went deep into the soil. For example, the Butterfly bush grew from one foot in April to five feet in July and roots underground, went even deeper.
The slope became stable with the plants incorporated into the slope. Later an outlook tower has been placed near the top, and today the soil is so stable, that no one would suspect that once it was a crisis situation.
The place looks beautiful.
With this system, Dr. Ingham, using good compost, along with the right kind of seeds has been been successfully retaining slopes along roads all over the world—slopes that would just keep on eroding when other controls such as hydro-seeding were attempted. The same success was achieved with dam faces in the Ferguson Texas area—dams that were in danger of being lost through deep gullies caused by erosion.
Also, the slopes on roadsides are treated, using a type of snow-blower on a truck, blowing good compost, mixed with seeds and compost tea. This has worked in many places including Adelaide, Australia, where other systems had been total failures. All of the above material was taken from Vivian Kaloxilos” interview of Dr. Ingham on Youtube.
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