Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Robert Norsen <bob@bnbrew.com>]

Yes Ryan, getting from poor or worn out soil to great soil, like you say, takes time -  Dr Elaine in her wonderful lectures talked about how nature can build an inch of top soil , microbes, soild food web and all in - did she say 50 years?   But with ACT added to rather ordinary soil and with suitable planting  a foot of top soil can be built in a 2 to 4 years.   That is when the example was shown of ordinary turf root systems 2 to 5 " deep but with ACT 36 to 49 " deep within I think 4 months time.    

 

Them little bugs is magic if you give em a break.   Bob 

Ryan Albinger <ryalbinger@earthlink.net> wrote:

Does a purchased mycorrihizal innoculant turn poor soil into a sponge that
holds moisture that way glomalin all by itself? Think big picture before
getting the cart before the horse. If it were that simple, everybody and
their cousins would be doing it. It is a system and it takes a systems
approach.
Good compost tea is a tool in the biological toolbox. Inncoculate the soil
with it, innoculate cover crops before working into the soil and see the
difference. Nothing will turn poor soil around alone by itself- no one
thing. Mycorrhizae form glomalin- sure. But myco. species will live on
plant exudates- thus they need good plants first. And you can't get good
plants without good biology and nutrients. And compost tea is a good
source to get good biology there and work to cycle nutrients. Good soil,
then good plants, then good mycorrhizal systems. (Weeds are a good
indicator of that's how this works)
Why did I not mention Mycorihizzal species in my list? What good would
Myco. species do in a aboveground application? Myco. needs contact with
plant roots to function and it needs to get in contact with them. That's
why I innoculate seed with mycorrhizal species, put them as close to root
as physically possible. I can look it up, but there is a scientific study
showing that watering in myco. species is not effective at innoculating the
plant roots. Besides, there are native mycorihizal species present in the
soil. In fact, it is possible to culture mycorihizzal strains at home for
literally 'dirt cheap'.
Getting the loose, crumbly soil that everyone wants. Again, compost tea
can be a part of that. 3 critical elements to get there. 1. Do no harm
2. Grow diversity of plants, animals, and microbe populations for the soil
3. Time. It won't happen overnight. Though there is a commercial humus
that can be made quickly that I need to look into. Is it practical on a
large scale? Would be wonderful if it could be. But it only takes raw
ingrediants to form good soil in context of putting the building blocks
there, it is the job of the microbes to do the work. To tie this together,
look at how the great praries formed the deep rich soil- time, biological
diversity, do no harm. The great herds of buffalo provided manure into the
soil ecosystems, their grazed forage offered some distribution of nutrients
to areas other than were grazed from, and the rotation grazing did not
concentrate the damge done by the millions of head of stock. But they had
thousands of years to put positve impact upon the land, a luxury you or I
will not likely have.
If there existed a single recipe to make good rich soil within the context
of years or even a human lifetime, there would be no one magic bullet,
there would be no one growing system, there would be no one answer to all
the questions. It would involve a multitude of steps, processes, tools,
inputs, a complex organization of putting to the soil what it needed, when
it needed it, and it would be limited within human constraints.

Ryan



> [Original Message]
> From: Tradingpost
> To:
> Date: 6/12/2006 9:11:51 PM
> Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Compost tea and bugs in a jug
>
>
> Of course you can do anything you want. My position is simple, no tea, no
> shortcut can substitute for building healthy, humus-rich soil in the first
> place. I don't argue that nothing good comes from compost tea. I notice
in
> your list - Bacteria, Fungi, Protozoa - you leave out Mycorrhizae - which
> according to our resident biologists is what forms Glomalin - which is the
> "glue" that forms aggregated soil that retain nutrients against leaching
> and absorbs 80% of its own weight in water while draining well. Does
> compost tea turn poor soil into a sponge that holds moisture that way?
Does
> it produce that earth-smell, black, crumbly soil so prized by growers?
>
>
> paul tradingpost@lobo.net
>
> Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
> --Henry David Thoreau
>


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