What Is a Terran Diet?
Plants want to be respected, too
"What the Earth gives"
With the word "terran" is meant "what the Earth gives", that is, what nature gives as fruits
and plants that can be harvested without the plants being damaged. Thus, the goal
of terran agriculture is to grow more plants that do not have to be pulled out
of the ground, but can continue to live after being harvested.
This is the ultimate protection of nature. For just as active animal protection
means not to torture or kill any animals, so does an active protection of nature
and plants mean not to destroy any plants, that is, to kill them. The word "kill"
may annoy some when referring to plants. But scientific studies show that plants
also have feelings and react to their environment. Many people have experienced
that their plants flourish when they pay a lot of attention to them, and that
they even thank one with lush growth when one talks to them.
So a terran diet expresses respect for all plants, for all forms of life.
To nourish oneself solely with what the Earth gives freely sounds radical –
but the way there goes step by step.
Perennial fruits
Many kinds of fruits and vegetables known today already fulfill the definition of a terran diet: apples, pears, plums, cherries, etc., walnuts, hazelnuts, all berries, such as strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, etc. are permanent plants that produce their fruits for many years. In the nature cycle of the seasons, trees and bushes withdraw in winter, grow and bloom again in spring and bear new fruit.
Green everywhere
Many herbs are also terran. Parsley, chives, marjoram, thyme, lavender,
for example, are not pulled up, but grow again; they are perennials.
And many leafy vegetables also re-grow after being cut, without the plant dying.
Wild garlic, dandelion, stinging nettle, sorrel and swiss chard are some example
of plants that can be prepared as tasty salads or vegetables.
Many gourmet restaurants also use wild plants and herbs as a new culinary trend
and nutritionists praise the health-promoting substances in these plants.
Tubers and roots
Jerusalem artichokes, horse radish, black salsify, and many others, multiply by producing side-shoots, or tubers. When one does not harvest all of the tubers and leaves some in the ground, the plants continue to live according to their specie. With Jerusalem artichokes and black salsify only a few pieces of roots left in the ground are sufficient to guarantee a profuse harvest the next year. Fruit vegetables are our beloved tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, zucchini, etc. and here too, we want to try out a perennial rhythm. Here we have the task of finding a way to bring them through the cold winter months.
Grain meadows - a way of farming for the future
A perennial plant community known to everyone is the meadow.
It is the family of grasses, to which the grains we know belong. Already before the harvest,
the grain plants withdraw the energy and the stem turns into straw.
Botanically speaking, grain stems from the grasses, is perennial and grows again after being cut.
The roots remain in the ground permanently. In order to find our way back to nature
in the way we cultivate grains, we are starting several test fields,
in order to find out if a kind of “grain meadow” develops when we refrain from
working the soil for the most part.
Lamb’s quarters, stinging nettle and wild spinach
Fruit, berries, tubers, herbs, leafy vegetables, grains ... as you can see, a terran diet doesn’t have to be monotonous. Once you get caught up in the idea and are alert on your walks as well as asking questions and doing some research, the myriad possibilities of a terran diet will open up for you. Many tasty vegetables have been forgotten or are pulled up as “weeds” and thrown on the compost pile. Just in the latitudes of Germany there are 300 kinds of edible wild plants, for example, chickweed with its taste like young corn. Or dandelion and stinging nettle, which one can prepare as a gourmet spinach. Also delicious as salad or spinach: sorrel, spoonwort (scurvy grass) plantain, portulaca, wild spinach, march marigold, borage, etc. One can also grow perennial artichokes, green asparagus, kale, china root, dwarf peashrub, Indian potatoes, etc. in our latitudes and they are being tried out on the farms in peaceable cultivation this season.
Farming without plowing
The way agriculture is practiced will also change step by step as the switch is made
to a terran diet. For example, the soil will be worked less and less, when possible not at all.
"Why" asks someone who has learned that the soil has to be oxygenated by turning it over.
One can compare intact soil with a house with various stories. In the cellar are the supplies,
on the first floor the living room, kitchen, dining room etc., and on the upper floors the bedrooms,
balconies etc. Everything is organized; everything has its place. The refrigerator is in the kitchen,
the desk in the study, and so on. It is similar with the soil and its various layers.
The micro-organisms and tiny living beings each work in their respective layers and have
organized everything optimally therein, so as to serve the plants in the best possible way,
preparing and making available everything that the plants need.
Millions and millions of helpers work actively together to make the soil fertile:
micro-organisms, fine root systems and mycelium – invisible to us, but vital for the soil and plants.
When one now turns these soil layers over, the bottom lands on the top,
thus mixing up the soil as though one were to stand a house on its head,
throwing the furnishings into chaos. One can just imagine how much effort
it would take to put everything in order again.
The prerequisite for agriculture without, or with limited,
working of the soil is of course that the life in the soil is intact,
that a healthy, fertile layer of humus is produced.
In peaceable cultivation practiced for over 10 years now,
the practice of letting each field lie fallow every third year has
allowed the soil to become healthy. Thus, farming with less and less
working of the soil is one more step to a life in unity with nature.
The agriculture of the future
A terran diet paves the way for a new kind of agriculture, in which no plant is pulled from the ground, but in which one harvests the yield of perennial plants and the plants are allowed to stay alive.