yes joy, a fermented weed concoction with the soil already having everything it needs, just not available, will unlock your nutrients.
Charlotte Anthony 5:58pm Sep 28
an easy to understand description of living soil, how every soil contains what is needed for plants to grow and therefore why adding fermented microbial "potions" can dramatically improve your plants access to what they need. .
this is from anne melloy from Elaine Ingham who is working mainly in the U.S. but very relevant to Goa as to soil everywhere. great for helping us get out of "green erwevolution thinking."
An Ecological Approach
Elaine Ingham Seminar
Elaine Ingham <
soilfoodweb@aol.com>
Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 3:34 PM
To:
ameloy75@gmail.com,
info@nature-technologies.com
Reading through your summary, there are a couple things I would like to point out.
You describe sand, silt, clay particles, rocks, pebbles, gravel, etc as the framework for the soil "house". In fact, sand, silt, clay, rocks, etc do NOT make any such structure on their own accord.
It is the life in that matrix that builds the framework. Sand, silt, clay, rocks, etc are merely the base materials from which bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, microarthropods, earthworms, enchytraeids, etc build the framework, build structure.
No life, no aggregates, no pores, no way to maintain structure, no way to alleviate compaction.
Soils people who do not understand how soil structure is built will often talk about how tillage aerates soil. No, really, all that tillage does is fluff soil for a very short period of time. As soon as water begins to pass through the mineral particles, the fluff is lost. Rather like making cotton candy. Sure, blowing air into a syrup solution causes a light, airy structure, but at the first sign of moisture, wind, or other disturbance, the fluff is lost and it all compacts right down again.
Life builds structure. Soil organisms are much more like people, who build houses, buildings, urban, sub-urban, town, village, farm infrastruture. Without humans, none of that structure occurs. Any disturbance can destroy that structure and it may take days, weeks, months, years to re-build. But, without life, no structure will be built.
Definitions:
Probably best to start with what soil is.
As defined by Hans Jenny, the Father of Soil Science: 1. The mineral component (sand, silt clay broken down ---- by organisms for the most part --- from rocks, parent materials, gravel, pebbles, boulders, etc), 2. Organic matter component (plant detritus, debris, residues, exudates, whatever label you want to give plant material, and any and all decomposed organic materials --- possibly we need to be clear what is meant by organic: any material which contains
carbon in chains ultimately produced by photosynthesis) and 3. Organisms which perform all the processes in soil that transform organic matter, release nutrients in plant available forms, structure soil, retain, hold and sequester nutrients, including carbon, etc. Of course all abiotic factors affect rates of transformation of organic matter, building of soil, etc.
Dirt then is comprised of factor 1 above: the mineral component, with a minimal amount, or no organic matter or organisms.
• compacted soils --- Compaction occurs when compression, occurring by whatever means, packs the mineral fraction, and if present, the organic fraction of soil to greater than 100 to 150 psi. Work done by Penn State clearly shows that most plants cannot push
roots through soil more compacted than 150 psi. Taprooted plants may be able to pressure their way through soil up to 300 psi. Compaction as low as 50 psi can reduce oxygen and all gas movement as well as infiltration of movement of water. This means if any organism activity is present, these compacted areas will rapidly become anaerobic.
• soil structure is the formation of microaggregates (bacterial function), macroaggregates (fungal function), peds (all soil organisms working together), passageways, hallways, small pores and large pores, allowing for the movement of oxygen and other gases, water, organisms and roots.
• soil aggregation: flocculation (chemical surface interactions involving clays surfaces), and structures built by bacteria and fungi,
• mineralization/oxidation actions Mineralization requires organic compounds to be converted to mineral forms. For each compound on the Periodic Chart of Elements, mineral (including purely mineral forms in the crystalline structures of rocks, sand, silt and clay, to the soluble and exchangeable forms of each nutrient) and organic forms occur, and the role and function of each in plant growth
should be understood. Oxidation: forms of nutrients when partially or wholly oxidized, along with the recognition that in SOIL, all these interactions are typically dependent on organism transformations. Extreme environments operate differently, but those conditions do not exist in soil. Reduction: All interactive sites wholly or partially occupied by hydrogen. pH: the concentration of hydrogen ions expressed in a logarithmic scale. Note that in SOIL, pH is completely dependent on BIOLOGY. Organisms control the pH of soil.
• photosynthesis, the process of storing sunlight
energy in carbon - carbon bonds
• Dynamic Soil Property, ----From Anne's summary: Dynamic Soil Property (DSP) studies which quantify the changes in soil properties over a short time frame such as differences from
native condition to cropped land on similar soils. Whoa ---- this concept is extremely scale-bound. When is soil NOT in a state of flux? Daily changes in organism activity abound. What are the daily, weekly, monthly inputs of organic matter? When did the herd of herbivores walk by? Rainfall, snowfall, temperature,s humidity all work to invoke changes. there is a seasonal cycle, and that cycle must be understood. This Dynamic Soil Property seems to actually be talking about DISTURBANCE impacts, not a dynamic property. A dynamic property, to me, implies how the system responds to normal seasonal shifts in conditions, not how the system responds to one particular disturbance, which may not happen again for decades, or centuries or eons.
How does each system respond to being plowed with a mould board plow? A chisel plow? A disc plow? A sub-soiler? A deep-ripper? A keyline plow with or without compost extract or tea? The response to each is different, and the effects will be different, especially if amendments are added in: inorganic feritlizers, or reduced waste, or compost or teas? If compaction is broken up and structure built, the long term response is going to be massively different than the soil just compacting back down again because no life survived the tillage event. What happens if a herd of
cattle walks over the tilled ground too soon? Or when the ground is wet? Will there be a difference if there is lots of organic matter, or none? how much life was present in that organic matter? Massively different end points............
So, by DSP do you really mean, what's the effect of disturbance? There is much more useful ecological terminology present that covers this type of subject material.
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So the question for the microbiologist is: What is the role of the mineral soil?
1. Mineral nutrients: The crystalline strucutre of clay, sand, silt, rocks, pebbles, etc hold withiin it a great deal of EVERY nutrient that plants require. Bacteria and fungi make the enzymes to remove those nutrients from that crystalline lattice work and pull those nutrients into the body of bacteria and fungus, retaining, holding and keeping those nutrients bound inside the organism. The organic matter, or food, for the bacteria and fungus to do this work is usually provided by the roots of plants, or to a lesser degree, organic matter present in the soil.
Consider that there is no soil on this planet that lacks nutrients. Do not be mislead here by thinking I'm talking about SOLUBLE nutrients, because I'm not. Plants need a certain amount of each nutrient important to that plant's growth. Those nutrients are present in the sand, silt, clay, rocks, pebbles, gravel, parent materials, and so forth. No soil lacks the nutrients to grow any plant you care to grow. Please look at tables that show TOTAL NUTRIENT CONCENTRATIONS from all soil, in any part of the world where they have been tested. All the nutrients the plants could possibly want are present. And if life is present, every second of every day, new nutrients are being replenished in that soil from the bedrock, parent materials, rocks, boulders, pebbles, gravel..........etc. Until the bones of the planet are gone, there will always be nutrients in the soil.
So why do plants grow better, green up, yield more when inorganic fertilizers are added? Because those fertilizers are the soluble forms of nutrients that plants require. All that is necessary is to convert the TOTAL sets of nutrients present in any soil, in the sand silt and clay, into plant available, soluble forms, and you don't needed inorganic fertilizers.
How does that conversion occur in the real world? Soil biology does that job. Inorganic, soluble fertilizers ONLY WORK, only give a plant response if soil biology is destroyed.
How did human beings destroy soil life? Tillage; compaction; use of high salt manures, and we have maintained that lack of life by using inorganic fertilizers and pesticides.
Want to return to an agriculture where we don't destroy soil, but build it? Must return soil life, in the proper balances, to cycle and retain nutrients, prevent disease and pest organisms from being able to grow, build structure to allow water, air and
root to move as deep as they can into the soil, decompose toxin, present weeds..............
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A clay particle is about the same size as a bacterium. But bacteria growing, increasing in number, given enough food, can increase to larger than the size of the Planet Earth within about 96 hours. Luckily, lack of food stops this from happening, but given infinite resources, they could do that.
So consider that within a few hours, a bacterial aggregate can be the size of a sand grain, and those bacteria happily glue all sorts of organic matter, clays, silts, etc into that aggregate. With the help of a few fungi, the microaggregates can be turned into macro-aggregates that people can see with their eyes. And consider all the benefits that come with building these structure, and that this structure can only occur IF THE ORGANISMS ARE PRESENT AND FUNCTIONING.
We can certainly see clays, silts and sand grains using a 400X total magnification. but if the sand is big and hard to see what is on it, then we back off to 200X, or 100X or 40X. Or a hand lens. We can look at interactions are any scale that is useful.
“The secrets of soil are being un-earthed. <wink> All puns intended!” Elaine R. Ingham. 2015
Elaine R. Ingham
Soil Life Consultant