Perhaps ordinary people do not think that China once had a technology far ahead of the world, and the name of this technology is certainly not unfamiliar to every Chinese, especially a farmer with a few acres of land at home.
The name of this thing is "compost", which means that common livestock manure, or human manure, is used to make manure and then sprinkled on the edge of the field to make the crops grow better.
After thousands of years of development, this technology has been very mature in our country, and the West is still doubting whether this technology will cause bacterial contamination to crops such as garlic.
So what is the history of compost in China, and how do we solve the problem of bacterial contamination?
First of all, there is no need to worry about hygiene, because these fertilizers are not imagined, and they are directly scooped up and splashed on the crops.
The easiest way is to pile up the manure and press it tightly so that the manure will start to ferment, and the maximum temperature inside can even reach 70 degrees.
This is also the reason why the manure cannot be poured directly, because at such a high temperature, usually the effect of fertilizer has not yet been revealed, and the crops have been "burned".
At the same time, in the fermentation process, due to the activity of microorganisms, some organic matter will be completely transformed into humus, and at the same time, due to the indirect or direct temperature of microorganisms, some germs, insect eggs, weed seeds and other messy things will be killed.
Later, when it is used, it needs to be mixed with soil before it can be used, and the manure has become the nutrient for these crops.
As early as the Warring States Period, people have found that the silt in some ponds, river mud, etc., grow crops better, and some rotten leaves also have the same effect.
Later, it was discovered that weeds could be watered with boiling water so that they could provide nutrients for the farmland, as well as rotten human manure, silkworm manure, pig manure, and so on.
In "Mencius", there is also a sentence:
The ploughman's harvest is a hundred acres per man. 100 acres of dung, the farmer ate nine people, the last time he ate eight people, the middle food seven people, the middle food six people, and the next food five people.
It can be seen that if a person plants 100 acres of land and applies fertilizer, he can judge how many people can be raised on this 100 acres of land according to the skill level of the farmer.
In the Western Han Dynasty, there was a "Book of Pan Sheng" written by Pan Sheng, which also recorded a kind of "district field method", and also wrote the importance of timely composting:
The foundation of all cultivation lies in the time and soil, the manure, and the early hoeing and early harvest.
Today, the method of hoeing the land diligently, coupled with timely fertilization, to increase the fertility of the land is still in use.
In addition, the district field method mentioned in the book is actually to turn some waste materials such as straw under the land when ploughing the land, and then hand over the rest to microorganisms and time, and these straws will naturally become fertilizer.
There is also Wang Chong in the Eastern Han Dynasty, who wrote in "On Balance and Spontaneity":
Deep ploughing and fine hoeing, thick dung soil, reluctantly to human work, in order to help the soil, its trees and other fertile people, similar to the like.
Although this is an article about the virtues of man, it is not difficult to see from the sentence that the relationship between land and fertility was discovered and affirmed by that time.
Even some barren land, as long as it is cultivated and fertilized in time, it can grow the same vigorous crops as good land.
In addition, we can also infer from this passage that the people at that time also mastered the corresponding composting method.
Moreover, as early as the Han Dynasty, among the pottery excavated, there was also a kind of thing, which proves that at that time, someone had already begun to build a pigsty and a toilet together.
This proves that during that period, people had already begun to master how to rationalize the arrangement, as well as the use of human and animal excrement.
The real establishment of a scientific composting method was during the Southern Song Dynasty, which was more than 850 years earlier than in the West, and before that, some people would even throw manure directly into the fields.
Doing so will not only allow the manure to ferment directly in the heavens and the earth, but the bacteria and high temperatures that come with it may also threaten the crops, which will ultimately have the opposite effect.
However, later people learned to mix water into the manure, which will make the distribution of the manure higher and more rare, and the resulting temperature will be lower, which is similar to the current dilution with soil.
Prior to this, dung was often used to defend cities, such as the ancient "golden juice", which was made from things such as dung.
Chen Yang, an agronomist in the Southern Song Dynasty, wrote the "Book of Chen Yang's Agriculture", arguing that some people's claims that farmland will lose its "land power" after three or five years of cultivation, and that what is planted will not yield good harvests, which is completely wrong.
It is also proposed that the land can be made more fertile by applying fertilizer regularly, so that the land can produce good things all year round.
In addition, Chen Yang also mentioned the source of fertilizer in the book, including the waste of life, such as ashes from burning wood, fallen leaves, dung, or swill, etc., which can be seen that the ancients made full use of various things.
In addition, Chen Yang's statement can be regarded as a "dung medicine theory", because he once said:
Depending on the nature of the soil, it is reasonable to dung and dung as appropriate. The slang proverb is called dung medicine, and the use of dung is also medicine.
The ancients also fully understood the harm of excessive use of feces, and Wang Zhen of the Yuan Dynasty also agreed with Chen Yang's statement, and further proposed:
If the manure is used too much, the manure will be burned and killed, and it will be harmful.
In today's parlance, it is too much fertilizer that burns the roots of the crops.
In addition to the traditional manure, there is also a manure method, called manure treading, which produces "compound fertilizer", and the method is not difficult.
Just put some straw just under the animal, let the cow's manure and the straw be combined, and then combined with the cattle trampling on the two, so that it will eventually form fertilizer.
Later, these straws were replaced with plant ash, dry soil, grass, etc., and the scope of laying was not limited to the enclosure, as long as it was livestock, large in size, such as sheep, pigs, horses, etc.
They are all in the place of their daily activities, laying things and collecting fertilizer.
It is said that when supplies are scarce, even if someone goes to the toilet in the field, the feces produced by it will be scrambling to be used for fertilizer.
There was even a new profession born, a dung collector, who specializes in collecting manure, and one person is responsible for one piece, and each other cannot cross the line.
In a book of the Qing Dynasty, the preciousness of rural dung in the south of the Yangtze River was also described:
The peasants here cherish the dung as gold, and the side of the farmhouse must be placed in the dung house, which is low as the eaves, in order to avoid the wind and rain.
In the event of natural disasters or droughts, ancient farmers would pile up more fertilizer in the hope of growing more crops.
All these can prove that the composting technology in ancient China has been developed and used for a very long time.
Composting is not only a rational use of waste materials, but also a way to be environmentally friendly, recycling, and sustainable use, and can make our various foods and foods healthier, and at the same time, agriculture can be sustained.
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