Johnny Maximilian

It doesn't hurt to test your soil every season if you are not familiar with how your soil trends, at least w/ just basic NPK tests etc. I so far have been able to figure out my plants' imbalances through inductive reasoning (in other words blowing it out my *** primarily) as in just guessing from things like combining a lot of kelp with hard water can result in a calcium toxicity for plants because kelp is rich in calcium, etc. Although I test too. Your soil is in the acceptable range of things but I understand your concerns. I believe that level of phosphorus kills fungi, which locks up more phosphorus. I hear differing levels are suggested as to when the fungi are actually killed by salty phosphorus. The high potassium is probably because your plants are not high enough quality to need that much of that element yet despite your inputs. You can try a compost tea to attempt to get the beneficial fungi cycling the phosphorus again and you might stimulate your plants to take up more potassium by increasing their quality as well. Cultivating fungi in compost teas from your local forest can be a bit of a complex art form so you might want to try some powdered soluble colony forming units (CFUs) instead and just use the powdery spores rather than cultivating live beneficial fungus in a tea. Your organic matter seems fine, are you happy with the amount of nitrogen being cycled to your plants? This also depends on your environment. Are you happy with the form of nitrogen being cycled to your plants? If you are growing lettuce, a more basic pH is desired because a lower pH causes ammonia build up in the tissue and kills the lettuce while a higher pH favors organic nitrate cycling which assimilates much more slowly in the plant which lettuce prefers. What is your soil texture? A sandy soil supports acidity more often while a clay soil supports more basic pH loving life typically in nature. As for the pH, plants usually choose their own pH although the typical trend is usually an acidifying one where plants acidify soil (add hydrogen ions) a little bit or a lot depending on the plant. Your soil should trend towards acidity at the end of the season or else I would suspect that your organics are overriding that in particular the bacteria which make zee slime which raises the pH. Adding fungi spores will contribute to lowering the soil pH as well because they release hydrogen ions too. You can even just scoop a bunch of local forest soil into a bucket of water and distribute that over your plants, it should have plenty of local fungal spores at the very least to get things cycling the way you want.

Bryant RedHawk wrote:Sorry it took so long to get back to this thread.

About the fungi and electricity.

Fungi respond to the electrical impulses that plants give off sometimes in conjunction with a release of exudates, by letting these impulses travel along the mycelium threads, this seems to signal bacteria and other organisms that are far away to come to where the signal originated.
This means that many more bacteria can come to service a plant than what would be in the immediate vicinity of the plant.
Fungi also respond to the electric charges that we call lightening in much the same way, so far I have been able to record the event and the strength of the charge but I still have to find out the maximum distance and which if any bacteria respond.
It is also possible that along with a lightening charge dispersal there could be a response to the accompanying ozone which is created by the lightening.
Since I am in the process of the work, I really can't say much more at this time.

Redhawk

Dr. Redhawk,

Thank you for your post. I want to apologize for replying so late, but I suppose being on permies I should assume you would be proud of me for being outside instead. I have been thinking on your response for a long time now and greatly appreciate your research. I look forward to your book

"Interesting idea about a Rain forest helping to cause the Little Ice Age (what is known at this stage is that prior to any ice age a global warming event occurs, this ends with a stoppage of the main warm water currents and that is what causes the cool down to start).

It has been documented at the main Terra Preta sites that if the Carbon Rich soil is removed from an area and non carbon rich soil is put in it's place that within a short time (2-5 years) the non carbon rich soil will become carbon rich and have all the same qualities of the original Terra Preta.
The theory is that farmers creating TP would then take some of their created carbon rich soil elsewhere and let the space repopulate itself with new terra preta. Since it sounded rather improbable several experiments were carried out to 1. see if this was true  and 2. determine how this mechanism worked.
The study is still ongoing at this time, but they have concluded that it is possible that it is only a movement of already existing carbon rich soil being spread by bacterial and fungal movements."

I meant to respond to this but I had some back pain so I was wandering instead... I just wanted to say thank you Dr. Redhawk, that was a very information rich comment. I really like that experiment. It makes sense that below ground "contamination" can contaminate new stuff put on top! After all, that's the way to feed mushroom patches... Only one question left. I am still curious about your comment on fungi and above ground electrolysis reactions earlier. I found that piece to be the most interesting, personally. Would you mind going into a little more detail on that?  Thanks again Dr. Redhawk.

Also I meant to quote Dr. Redhawk above. I hope that's clear (not my comment).

Carlos Gomezvelandia wrote:Hi Bryant;
Have you ever (or any permie here ?? ) checked the research and method described and proposed by David Johnson from New Mexico state university?
It amazes me the simplicity of this method  and the “lazy” approach of doing as little as possible (Paul would love the Lazy part!) No-Turn System + aeration tubes +automated watering + worms doing the turning when added after the thermophilic phase .. for any permie interested, this looks awesome!

I think including the suggestions here by Bryant, the adding of soil layers, capping pile with soil, Biochar considerations etc would make this the “Awesomest Maximus”  :-o of all the systems!


Building it:

And for the hardcore geeks that want the FULL 52' lecture:

There were a lot of good notes in these videos (I watched both because apparently I'm a hardcore geek). I particularly liked David Johnson's notes on the nitrogen and carbon cycles in soil, and his explanation of CO2 controlled release. Concentrating on the CO2 release part, I found these notes to be really particularly interesting because I have been thinking about how CO2 release beneath plants from the soil affects plant growth. When presented with luxurious amounts of CO2 (to a point), plants will grow significantly faster., assuming soil and lighting and plant health is okay to start. However, we of course want to limit this CO2 release in organic gardening. This is why I think allying with specific fungi is such a good idea. By specifically selecting the mushroom worked with, such as the King Stropharia, one can increase plant growth 400-500%, undoubtedly because of the increase in CO2 release from the selected fungi, among other properties it has appropriate for gardening. Referencing Paul Stamet's "Mycelium Running" there. Of course, the best way to go about selecting your strain is to look at what is growing in your local ecology first. If there isn't anything there, then there are lots of mushrooms you can select from forests or other local mushroom producing areas or from certain companies even. If you select a local species (or a few), then run gardening trials, because certain fungal allies can also decrease plant growth, such as the often used oyster mushroom, pleurotus ostreatus, which can decrease yields by 40% (from Stamets again). I believe this is due to calcium lock-up, a common problem with certain mushroom producing fungi. However, as mentioned, certain species have been shown to increase yields greatly, so obviously not all mushrooms lock up calcium in soils.

Very interesting Bryant. All I know is their farms might have been over half of the cause to the Little Ice Age, so I wanna know what they had going on. I like that you emphasize their use of trash in their recipe. If you could, would you mind unpacking what you said about what we know about minerals and the microbiome but not about how the Terra Preta replicates itself? What do you mean by replication, and what do we know about how the terra preta minerals and microbiome?

For the next piece as well, would you mind explaining your idea about lightning strikes and above surface electrolysis reactions some more? Particularly the bit about fungi.

Thank you for the interesting info.

Thanks again Mr. Redhawk for a very informative post, all pieces included. I see you have an excellent understanding of the biological (or organic) chemistry of compost piles. This is an area of research I have just began breaking into the past few  years, one in which really got me into gardening. I realized in my recent research recently however, I have become extremely interested in the inorganic or salty part of compost, those which are predictable and do not change over time such as biology does. Both inorganic and organic chemistry are closely tied together in agronomy however...

Thank you for your notes on biochar, I found it very interesting. I realize now I mispoke, although I feel there should be a name for the empty porous to be biochar seperate from char not suitable to be used in compost. This is why I called even empty biochar "biochar" because it has the potential to hold life and is built for life, while other chars may not be. However, perhaps only the end product is "biochar," but then you might as well just call it "terra preta" at that point, right?

And yes, understanding that the biochar idea stems from Amazonian soil analysis is important in understanding the concept, particularly because the Amazon rainforest is a human-made garden and the best example of what biochar can do. Also important, pulling from the biochar book I referenced, other than understanding that carbon content is the backbone to the terra preta (dark earth) recipe, is that the recipe remains a mystery, and has been found to contain "burnt clays, human and animal excrements (rich in phosphorous and nitrogen), hunting, fishing, and cooking refuse  such as animal bones and tortoise shells (rich in phosphorous and calcium), ash reside from incomplete combustion (rich in carbon, calcium, magnesium, potassium, and phosphorous), the biomass of terrestrial plants (compost, rich in nitrogen and carbon), and the biomass of aquatic plants (reeds and algae, rich in calcium, magnesium, potassium, and phosphorous)." It's a mystery! One of the leading soil scientists in the field, Bruno Glaser, emphasizes that many of the interactions between the char, soil, and the microorganisms only come with time. In particular, the role of burnt clay in the recipe is not understood. He goes on to say the biochar could take 50 to 100 years to behave like terra preta, as the microbes transform the substrate into dark soil. While the recipe may be a mystery, we know it is a powerful way to restore climate balance, we have strong evidence of that. We can literally put the planet into another small ice age with biochar technique. However, climate change as a whole implies a whole lot more than just sort of neutralizing radical weather changes from human activities on our planet. We have to start from the earth up to achieve any sort of climate balance, and that's going to transform everything about globalization and industrialization.

And thank you for the advice on obtaining microorganism information in farming (particularly the part on composting, no-till and microscope research)... No wonder it's so expensive to get soil biology tested. It sounds very tedious. I guess I have been switching planting locations so frequently I have found the powdered CFU products to be very useful for quickly inoculating new soils with the populations of microbes I know I need to be working for me... But I realize some people may already be breeding their own already with permanent beds or forestry or have access otherwise to the colonies locally and for cheap. I spent 5$ on powdered CFUs and have inoculated a 500 square foot plot covered in free horse bedding with a lot of leftover powdered product, and I consider this reasonable allocation of funds for developing a new gardening sight. I grew excellent quality crops to show for it, via refractometer measurement anyway. I also purchased some expensive amendments at some point in that project, so those contributed too. My main goal right now is actually to figure out the proprietary blend for the best amendment I've ever used, soluble amino acids derived from soy protein. Like you said, the goal of good composting technique is to save money and recycle gardening materials, so hopefully I can figure out how to make this expensive product a commonplace recipe that can be made from many sources of common composting protein sources. I have a couple months at my current location potentially, so I am attempting to test around 12 variables attempting to create a spoon-fed home-made amino acid blend. If I am successful, I will have a gourmet product for perhaps half a buck per pound rather than 20-30$ per pound.

And I realize I mulch a lot as well... When I can get good free mulch that is! I imagine this might have to change as I try to market garden, simply because I can't imagine mulching an intensive greens production site because of how much time it would take to seed it properly. However, mulch is an ultimate tool otherwise and for the home gardener :D

Okay, I love this post. I believe what Mr. RedHawk is referring to is the recalcitrant nature of carbon in robust organic soils, or the entire point of biochar, which is NOT char, to clarify to whoever said that. Char does not have the same capacity as biochar, even the blank slated biochar that is fresh out of the oven, according to studies. Pulling from Albert Bates "The Biochar Solution," good biochar can have 150-200x the carbon surrounding soils have, and significantly more microbial activity to match, as it creates a coral reef effect once inoculated into compost and moved to the garden. I hope to come to understand the subject more myself...

I just wanted to include a few ideas that might contribute to this post. I very much so like the shotgun technique of inoculating compost piles by adding in soil, as mentioned your post. However, I can't help but think perhaps people should be adding in powdered CFU microbial products which also guarentee certain microbes. Of course, you could just go to a local forest and get soil from there. I use powdered products for my sheet-mulches and they work wonders.

Another thing, I like the cap suggested for the top of the compost pile to prevent carbon from escaping in gaseous form. The whole study is fascinating to me. I'd like to suggest also a layer of straw, leaves, or other seedless mulch on top of the soil cap as suggested in Toby Hemenways "Gaia's Garden" in the section on bomb-proof sheet-mulching.  I think this would help because the top layer of the compost pile can desiccate, which would greatly reduce the organic matter in your soil cap. I am currently avidly studying the detritusphere, or the fastest developing, uppermost layer of soil, which is also the saltiest layer, one which fascinates me greatly. I hope to come to understand no-till's and/or biochar's promises when it comes to managing this complex zone and becoming sustainable by design.

Just as a fun idea, I've read from Paul Stamets that the garden giant (king stropharia) mushroom aggressively colonizes compost piles, making it an excellent gardening ally, since mushrooms vastly increase the recalcitrant nature of carbon in soil and also increase cation exchange capacity greatly via an increase in oxygen. I personally hope to work with lepiota or king stropharia fungi in the future to compost grass and other stuff.