Floral Splendour and Shortage of Nutrients - Soil: Reflections on the Basis of our Existence - page 46

Rich Flower Meadows Rely on Man's Management
Geology and fungal presence are not the only factors that determine what plant
species can grow in which soil: the way we humans manage the land is also criti-
cal. Traditional hay meadows and pasture are rich in flora but difficult to repli-
cate in a suburban garden, though you might suppose otherwise considering all
the meadow seed varieties you can buy at your local garden centre. Garden soil
is often too high in nutrients, and depleting soil of nutrients is no easy task. My
father would sow meadow flower seeds on a large patch of land at his summer
cabin in southern Sweden. But even when the seeds germinated, it did not take
long for grass to take over and outcompete the flowers. A few years ago he began
mowing the meadow with a scythe and removing the cuttings. The results have
been promising and slowly the land is starting to look like a meadow. Removing
nutrients from the soil is a painstaking job, but worth the effort in the knowledge
that a meadow rich in flowers will quickly be ruined by adding fertiliser.
At Hörjelg￥rden Farm in eastern Sk￥ne, southernmost Sweden, the land has
been carefully managed in recent years to restore it to how it would have looked
in the eighteenth century. Schoolchildren visit the farm to learn about how people
farmed and lived on the land in those days. The grass meadow is cut with a scythe
and the hay used to feed the farm animals during winter.
Back in the old days, the tradition was to cut the meadow when the seeds pods
of the greater yellow-rattle began to rattle in the wind. Only then was the hay dry
enough to be stored for winter (eighteenth century farmers had no fans for hay-
drying). The flowers that seeded before the meadow was cut survived until the fol-
lowing year; late-blooming species had to look elsewhere for a foothold.
The big challenge for eighteenth century farmers was to avoid depleting the
soil. Meadows provided winter fodder for livestock, whose manure was used on
the fields to add nitrogen and phosphorus. This process depleted the meadows,
but typical meadow flowers, with their small leaves that are not energy-intensive
to grow and slow growth cycles, are highly economical with nutrients. A diverse
array of species can share the space when no single species grows large and
dominates.
Nutrient-intensive species like nettles and broad-leaved grasses survived on
compost heaps and near outdoor toilets by growing extensive root systems, but
were unable to survive on the meadows. Nutrient-rich areas were uncommon in
the agricultural landscapes of yesteryear, and most plant species were adapted to
nutrient-poor conditions. Today, nutrient-requiring species have expanded and the
nitrogen content of the soil has increased because of man-made pollution.
The big shift coincided with the introduction of artificial fertiliser in the
first half of the twentieth century. Until then, nitrogen-fixing bacteria held a
monopoly on converting atmospheric nitrogen into amino acids and proteins.
Then came the Haber-Bosch process, one of the great innovations of the mod-
ern age and a breakthrough that earned its authors, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch,
the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 and 1931 respectively. The nitrogen pro-
duced in their process was mixed with phosphorus mined in North Africa to