Interpreting Soil Micro-Organism Messages a Live Webinar with Dr. Elaine Ingham

i've been following elaine for about the last year.

if i were 15 yrs younger i would spend the money and take her course. that would give me time to recoup the cost and put a bunch of do re me into my retirement fund.

just saying, for you young folks with a slightly scientific bent and a bit of analism and looking for a new hat to wear, you could do a lot worse in terms of rural income and rewarding self employment. so if you are even younger than 55 then take a look at her courses.

after this webinar you may see what i mean.

cheers   james

As a supporter of the Low Tech movie, do we get a recording of this webinar?
Unfortunately I'm in GMT+2 timezone and can't attend live.

Martin Steinberg wrote:As a supporter of the Low Tech movie, do we get a recording of this webinar?
Unfortunately I'm in GMT+2 timezone and can't attend live.

The stretch goal for the Low tech Lab kickstarter is for the live webinar.  There may be a recording available after - if so, there may be a special deal to upgrade to the recording for those who had access to the live webinar.  Fingers crossed!

Same deal, I'm hoping for a (low-effort, free?) recording since this is in the wee hours of the morning for me. I love Elaine but I'm not in a position to kick in additional coin at the moment...

Same here. Was looking forward to it. Got the TimeZone messes up - will start @2am for me in my zone. Let's see if I can manage

What I am curious about: Is this an interactive Webinar, or will Elaine "only" talk and do her presentation?

I supported the kickstarter at Glory (100$) and was hoping to see this. I do not seem to have received the link, which is a bummer after rushing home to take part. Am I missing something?

Edit: S Rogers sent me the link, which I may well have missed in an email or had it filtered out somehow accidentally. Should’ve confirmed I had it earlier. Good talk when I got in!

Ben Zumeta wrote:I supported the kickstarter at Glory (100$) and was hoping to see this. I do not seem to have received the link, which is a bummer after rushing home to take part. Am I missing something?

Please check your purple moosage

Got in after help from S Rogers, thanks!

I did get a couple of good tidbits out of the webinar.
That said, I think that would've gone a lot better if the good Dr knew her audience a little better.  It seemed like she was coming from a point of view of trying to convince farmers to come over to the natural side.  I suspect that she does a lot of consulting in that arena and might be a bit jaded by it.  
Her contrasting opinion of permaculturists vs. soilfoodweb-ists(?) indicated to me that she hasn't spent much time around true permaculturists, but has probably encountered a lot of farmers that say "I do permaculture".  
Seemed like she felt she needed to sell us on the soils focus, when all we wanted was to get to the "how" as well as some good insights on the "why".  
I'm already sold on soil-building being the key to growing plants.  I was hoping to learn a little more about the techniques she teaches.
Only technique that really stuck out was:  Add compost tea when you plant seeds.  Better yet, soak your seeds in compost tea before you plant them.

Admittedly: In hindsight, it is much more easy to say, how something could have been better, but I will still do so:

I am aware of Elaine's work since a while, and I love it! So I was aware of the Soil Food Web principle she teaches in various public videos.

To my understanding:
She sells courses for soil analysis and more.
She sees a high benefit for Compoost tea applications.

While this "Webinar" was sold for ~75 Bucks, I got it as a perk from backing a Kickstarter. I however feel that there was hardly any value delivered here. Granted: Some might see this very different, especially if they have never heard of the shown concepts which are all over YouTube..

My minimum expectation of content (for a paying group who should know basics about soil life) was:
1st: How can everyone with minimum of equippment perform on a very basic level a useful assessment of the current soil condition to get a rough idea of what's going on and what should be done (no Microscope, no deep training). Combine with a 1-2 page handout and there we would have been a valuable first step.
2nd: While a "top-shelf" tea takes quite some assessment, I expected to get the basics of how to brew an acceptable Compost tea, maybe with 1-2 variations for different requirements. Combine with a 1-2 page handout and there we would have a valuable second step.

Yeah, for me it was a "perk" from a Kickstarter, but if I would have explicitly have had bought this webinar, I would ask for a refund. For everybody expecting something in the line as outlined above, you might share my thoughts. Granted: I may be a bit more sour, because it was tough to attend in my timezone (middle of the night). And if at the end I feel, I should have rather been in bed, it's somewhat frustrating.


To end on a more productive and positive note:
What came back to my mind is, that in general it's beneficial to increase fungal activity in the soil. And a fungal dominated tea probably starts with a fungal dominated compost. I was lacking the info of "How to make a Fungal dominated Compust", so I found some value in this Video, which might be of interest for some of you reading here:

As someone who has given many talks as an park ranger and environmental educator to audiences that I have no prior knowledge of, what Basti Hess describes was also my greatest challenge as an educator. I too often went too far in the opposite direction of what Basti described as lacking, instead bloviating esoterically to the handful of fellow geeks who were really interested and already fluent in the subject. The trouble is, this fluent and fervent group is almost always a minority, even with college classes. I can see how the good Doctor has had to broaden her audience to get the most people she can moving in the right direction and it is likely wise because biological management creates its own positive feedback loop. Then again, she answered one of my questions about seeding with minimal soil disturbance, so that was a plus for me. I still wonder what she might say about how wild soil disturbers and inoculators (like bears and pigs) effect the soil micro biome, and how that might inform our interventions and management.

well, as a follow up to my conversation above above, i do have something to say.

after this webinar you may see what i mean.

after watching the webinar, it may not have been as enlightening as i had hoped.

if i were 15 yrs younger i would spend the money and take her course. that would give me time to recoup the cost and put a bunch of do re me into my retirement fund.

just saying, for you young folks with a slightly scientific bent and a bit of analism and looking for a new hat to wear, you could do a lot worse in terms of rural income and rewarding self employment. so if you are even younger than 55 then take a look at her courses.

i still stand by what i said. as an opportunity to earn some cash, if you have the cash to get educated through her course and have that type of scientific mind/bent and want to work in the farming/rural community, it may be a way to go.

that said, i agree with some of the above comments with regard to the content.

i reread the blurb promoting the webinar and felt the webinar did not touch on:

- What does it mean when fungal-feeding nematodes attack grasshoppers or caterpillars?  How can you interpret this observation?  First: It is not normal for fungal-feeding nematodes to cluster around grasshoppers or caterpillars, but when they do, what does it mean?  Good or bad?  

What is the message being delivered when all the blossoms on your trees or shrubs are covered in fungus?  If you try to spray all the infected tips of the branches just makes the outbreak worse?  All the myriad of organisms whose jobs it is to wipe out the disease were killed by the toxic chemicals that were used.  

- How can we learn to interpret these messages from nature, and better focus on the managers of the soil?

she did touch on:

Permaculture practices rarely include the assessment of soil biology, and do not often include any explanation behind changes in soil life.  What does it mean when only bacteria are found in the soil?  Are those "good" bacteria, or "bad" bacteria?  What job to they do for the plant?  

while we may not have the education and the microscope to check the biology we are definitely interested in making it happen.

- What does tillage do to soil fertility?  Fifty-percent of the beneficial organisms in soil are killed from the crushing, ripping, and slicing that occurs during tillage.  How many times in a growing season will a grower till their land?  Most of the time, the answer is that the weeds have to be dealt with and ripping them out of the soil is the only way to deal with weeds.  But what does this management actually do?  It kills the organisms that, in natural systems, will deal with the weeds.

so, it may be hard to get all that into an hour and a half. unfortunately, i had to leave after the first question was answered, so i may have missed some good stuff in the q&a.

i did feel less time spent bashing and more time spent on whys and hows would have been much more productive.

while i have no problem with her promoting her work and website, it felt like, from the content of the talk it was more about that. that just might be me though. i liked what she was saying because it was a bit of a refresher but it did not seem to lead to anything helpful which is why i got the, come and take our courses vibe.

not really knowing her audience, in this case, was disappointing. i believe she has so much to offer and i found her being so cheap with good, applicable knowledge did more to deter than encourage follow up. again, maybe that is just me.

if someone had never heard of the stuff she talked about then maybe it had more value, however, i agree with the above comment that had i paid $75 for this, i would have been sadly disappointed.

that's all for now, hope to hear other's perspectives as well.