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In 1977 we grabbed the golden opportunity to live rent free on a friend's farm on beautiful Salt Spring Island - one of the Gulf Islands in Georgia Straight, off the coast of British Columbia, Canada. The empty one-hundred year-old 'Old House' was a bit primitive, but it had running water and indoor plumbing, and we soon made it quite liveable. |
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One of the many neat things were some mature apple and pear trees, and although long neglected and requiring much pruning, all still bore fruit. When the first fall rolled around, I was very astonished to find that one of the pear trees, a Bartlett, bore an incredible abundance of pears, far more than any of the other pear trees in its vicinity. I had also noticed that the ground around it was always moist. Mystified by the incredible abundance of its pears, and by the slight messiness of the moistness of the soil at its bottom, I poked around under the tree and soon found the end of a 2 inch pipe. When I traced it to its origin, I discovered that it was the end of the drain pipe from the kitchen sink in the little old house. This not only explained the mystery of the incredible abundance of pears on this tree, but it also bore a powerful and far-reaching insight.
Every time I did the dishes, which was at least twice a day, this pear tree got all the dirty dish water, and along with it, all the beautifully organic food leftovers on our dirty dishes and, although we used a low-phosphate detergent, a shot of phosphate.
And then I also remembered my dear old and long departed grandmother. She had such incredible gardens and fabulous geraniums - her favourite indoor plants - that people said of her that she could make an old walking stick bloom again. And from many happy hours spent with her in my pre-school years, I also remembered then that she always saved and used all her dishwater for her gardens and her beloved geraniums.
That first year, we sold a total of 1.200 lbs. of pears to the local grocery emporium, and at least another 300 lbs. to friends and drop-in customers. We also ate and froze a lot of pears, and made a lot of pear juice - all from this one pear tree, the only Bartlett among the pear trees. The 1.500 lb. figure is very conservative; personally, I am convinced that it was more like 1.700 to 1.800 lbs. The three other pear trees were D'Anjous, and lacking a direct pipeline to the kitchen sink, bore only 150 to 200 lbs of fruit each. Obviously, the Bartlett soaked up and kept all the goodies from the kitchen sink to itself, and as long as we lived in the old house, it produced the same incredible abundance of pears, year after year, after year.
The final proof came the year we moved into the owner's former house. Suddenly deprived of all the goodies from the kitchen sink in the little old house, the Bartlett's yield plummeted to the 150 to 200 lbs. of pears typical of the other trees, and has remained there ever since.
There is a very powerful insight here. All of the 'grey' water from our kitchen sinks is an excellent, powerful - and mostly 'organic' - fertilizer. Nationally and collectively, we are squandering two immense, cheap, and very powerful resources by dumping our 'grey' water into the sewers. The first, of course, is the water itself; and the second resource is the high organic content of all the food wastes and residues in the dishwater - an excellent, natural and powerful fertilizer and soil conditioner. (For a full explanation of why this is so, go to
THE NATURAL CYCLE in these pages).
Instead, we buy expensive inorganic fertilizers - which do nothing to improve soil quality - and which pollute our streams, rivers and lakes with their run-off. Meanwhile, the grey water taxes our sewers, and its powerful natural fertilizer content causes the devastating algae blooms in our streams, rivers and lakes. We could not do it more bass ackwards if we tried.
Meanwhile though, and like my dear beloved grandmother - you too 'can make an old walking stick bloom again'. Simply save some dishwater in the watering can for your indoor plants, or save all of it for your outdoor gardens. You will be amazed. You will have fabulous plants and gardens, save all the money spent on fertilizers and, in addition, you'll also be conserving precious water.
And for those folks who have dishwashers and outdoor gardens, you could simply unhook the drain of the dishwater at the drain pipe of the kitchen sink, and pipe it, via a length of garden hose, into an outdoor barrel. This is a very simple project, well within the reach of any handyman or woman.
And of course, all the fruit growers and orchardists could increase their yield about seven-fold - if they could get enough kitchen sinks hooked up to their operations. And to top it all off, they'd never have to irrigate and fertilize again. In addition, there is a slow but steady improvement of the quality and quantity of the soil.
The seven-fold increase in yield, and the massive savings in fertilizer and irrigation costs are typical of the 'natural', or 'bio-dynamic' agriculture outlined here. And the double-duty use of water - first for washing, and then for growing - would be a very substantial act of water conservation.
The same holds true for all farmers, of course. But to obtain sufficient grey water for large scale farming will require some ingenuity. However, the massive increase in yield, the equally massive reduction of fertilizer and irrigation costs, and the massive reduction of chemical fertilizer run-off, as well as the massive load reduction on sewerage systems, all make this well worth doing.
All comments are most welcome, and I'll gladly answer any questions you may have. pweis@shaw.ca
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