3-Steps to Rapid Soil Regeneration Part 1: Finding the Beneficial Microbes in your Location

Hello, everybody. Welcome to our first webinar in this webinar series. And we are the three steps to rapid solar Regeneration webinar series. And this is going to be Webinar one, which is going to be focused on finding the benefits of microbes in your location. So before we get started, we want to let a lot of folks be able to join. We want to know where you guys are coming from. So if you can in the Zoom window down the bottom of your screen, there is a chat button. And if you go ahead and just type in where you're from, we want to know what kind of reach do we have worldwide? So I'm seeing Poland, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Watts from the US, Canada. Wow. There's a ton of people that are in today, all over the world. We got Australia, came in South Africa. I think we've hit every continent so far, folks. Again, I still don't see anybody from the Antarctic, so we'll have to get that fixed. Wow. It's great to see just such an amazing diversity of folks coming in from all over the world. It's so awesome that you guys are going to get exposed to the Sofa web and the soil food web practices. Well, now that the Antarctic is melting, we should be able to have people growing plants down there. That's not a good thing. But we'll take it right? We're going to start growing plants down there. We might as well start it. Okay. I think that's enough time. We can go ahead and get started. Agent is going to go to the next line. All right. So today's topics, we are going to introduce today's panel. And so we've got a great panel of folks to talk to you about the soil microbes. And we'll also give an audience poll. We want to make sure that we can hear about you folks where you're coming from. And this is a quick poll. It should only take a few minutes for us to get through. And then we're going to get into part one, which is going to be identifying beneficial microorganisms. So we'll talk about the soil food web, organisms like bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes and so forth. And then we'll have a quick section of Q and A after that. So as we go through part one and you have questions, please click on the Q and A button. And I have a slide where I kind of guide you to where that's at and place your questions in the Q and A. Also, make sure you don't put your questions into the chat window, because that's not being monitored for that. And then we'll get into about the Sofa Web training program and current offer that we have got going on as far as a promotional series. So we'll have a little video, and then we'll talk about that. And then we'll get into part two, which is going to be gathering beneficial microbes from your local area. So how do you go get microorganisms that are going to be Indigenous to where you're at in the crops that you're trying to grow? And so we'll be talking about that. And then we'll have a Q and A following that as well. And again, as we go through that section and you have questions that come up, go ahead and please place them in the Q and A section. And we expect today's Webinar is going to take about a total of about 120 minutes or 2 hours. Okay. Next slide, Adrian. All right, so who do we have on the panel today? Well, we got doctor Like Ingham, the founder of the Sofa Web school, a pioneer in soil Sciences. So this is the reason why everybody is here. So it's great to have Alaine on the panel today. Obviously, we got Dr. Adrian Gotchax, who is a soul food web researcher and a mentor. And then we got Dr. Adam Khan, who is a soulful web science. Communicator. So all part of the Sofa website school. We were going to have Eric filer today, but he had a soil emergency, so he couldn't make it. But he's a soul food web school mentor, and he also manages his own company called High Desert Soil Works. And then I'm your host. I'm a sole food web consultant as well trained through Dr. Elaine. And I own a company called Sprouting Soil. Okay, let's go ahead and get into the meat and potatoes of today's Webinar. Next slide, please. Quick poll. So we're going to go ahead and launch a poll. And what we want to know is if you go next slide there, Adrian, the poll is going to be asking which best describes you. Are you coming to this from a farmer, rower or AG professional, or you coming this from an environmental advocate or both? There's a number of folks that kind of fit both those categories, and there's also some people that don't fit in either one of those categories. But you're here because of some other interest that brings you here. So thank you so much for taking our poll. And you'll see a window pop up on your screen if you just go ahead and click on the button, and then it should go ahead and clear the poll from the screen for you. Okay. So while you guys are answering those questions, Adrian, you want to go to the next line. So I mentioned about Q and A nd. So this is a way for you to be able to ask questions of us the panelists, we won't be able to get to everybody's question. So if there are some questions that we can't get to apologize. And if we have the capability, we'll send you an email or follow up to answer your question. But if there's a question you ask, it's really interesting for the panel to be able to talk about. Then we'll bring that up. And we'll have a discussion amongst the panelists. And you'll see in the chat window or in the Zoom window, there is a Q and a button. So if you just click on the Q and A, that will pop up that screen. Okay. Thanks, Adrian. Next slide. And then we've got three steps to solar generation webinar series. And so we're really excited to actually host this promotional series. This time, we're going to be really diving down into the microbes. So webinar one, which is what we're doing today, is going to be finding the beneficial microbes in your location. And really part one of this is going to be how do you identify the beneficial microorganisms? What does a bacteria or a fungi or protozoa look like? And then part two is going to be talking about how do we gather those beneficial microorganisms from your local area? These are the organisms that we want to be able to get into your soils. And for a lot of, you know, farming activities or residential yards, because of the things that we've done, we've kind of chased out those microbes, and we want to be able to get them back into that soil. So we'll talk about that. And then webinar two, which will have a little bit later in the month, is going to be talking about multiplying the beneficial microbes. And this is really going to be a deep dive on aerobic. Composting. And this is the methods that Elaine has created. And so we're really going to get into how do you make good compost and what is good compost? Because compost is a huge scale of quality out there in the market. So we'll talk about that. And then webinar three. I'm really excited about the webinar three. This is going to be applying the microbes to the soil and to crops. And we've got a farmer who's been doing this on a very large scale who's going to talk about his successes. And this is Adam York of York Farms in Illinois. And right now, they've applied the soil food practices to about 10,000 acres of their own corn and soybean crops and been working to help other farmers apply those practices to about another 1000 acres. So we're going to get a perspective from a farmer who's actually doing the work out there and what kind of results that they've been seeing. So I'm excited for this webinar series has been great. Okay. Next slide, please. So we're going to get into part one, which is identifying beneficial microbes. And Lane is going to run us through this series, but we're going to start off with an animation that kind of helps set the stage as far as what are the benefits of microorganisms, what is the soil food web? To understand the soil food web, let's start with the term food web. We all know about the food chain, the animal Kingdom on top of which are us humans. Right? Well, if we look a little closer, we can see that some members of the food chain don't just eat one thing that goes for humans too. So the reality is more like a web than a chain. This is the food web. There happens to be a food web in the soil, too. This is the living part of the soil, made up of insects, earthworms, and much smaller microscopic creatures such as fungi and bacteria. Dr. Elaine Ingham has pioneered research into the microorganisms in the soil over the last four decades and has worked with a team of research scientists to understand how they interact with each other and with plants. The soil food web can be thought of as the soil biome. Just as humans have a gut biome responsible for digesting our foods, so too the soil has a biome, which breaks down organic matter and releases nutrients in plant available form. This is how nature has been feeding plants for billions of years. The major groups that make up the soil food web are bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes. When in balance, these different groups interact with each other and with plants to create abundant ecosystems such as the great forests of the world. Have you ever wondered how forests can be the most productive ecosystems in the world without the need for any fertilizers or pesticides? The answer lies in soil biology. With a healthy biome, the soil can provide plants with all the nutrients they need and with a number of other benefits, such as protection from pests and diseases, protection from drought, and from flooding. The soil food web is essentially nature's operating system. Unfortunately, we humans have disturbed the soil food web in almost all of the soils that we manage, causing it to become unbalanced. As a result, the plants we grow struggle. Plowing is the major cause of the problem as it destroys the larger microorganisms, such as fungi and protozoa, leaving the soil food web out of balance. This results in a system breakdown. Nutrients are no longer made available to plants, and protection from diseases is compromised. Before the Industrial Revolution, humans would plow using oxen or a bowl, which provided around three or 4 HP. Modern tractors can yield 400 HP or more. So far, more damage is done to the soil biome by modern machinery. The use of chemicals has compounded the problem. The good news is that we can restore the soil food web to most soils within just a few months. This results in a number of benefits both for farmers and for the environment. With a balanced soil food web in place, farmers need not use fertilizers at all. They don't need to use pesticides either, as nature's operating system protects plants from attack. Herbicides used to kill weeds are not required either, as weeds only thrive in conditions where the food web is out of balance. Restoring the soil food web means farmers save money on chemical inputs across the board. It also means that their yields increase dramatically in some cases. Farmers working with Dr. Elaine Ingam have seen yields increase by over 200%. This is because the soil food web provides plants access to a constant flow of nutrients from soil organic matter and from the soil particles themselves. That's right, sand particles contain nutrients. And guess what? Fungi and bacteria can harvest those nutrients. They then make these available to the plant in a process that the plant actually controls. This means that plants get access to the type of nutrients they need precisely when they need them. That's how you maximize yields and optimize profits for the environment. There is a whole host of benefits of having a balanced soil food web. Humanity is facing a number of existential threats. Let's take a look at how some of these are related to the soil. The most obvious one is soil erosion. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has estimated that we only have around 60 years left before all the world's topsoil is depleted. Other estimates are as low as 30 years. The soil food web prevents soil erosion by both wind and water by building structure. Please watch the animation on soil Structure for more information. Another existential threat we are facing is ecosystem collapse. The UN has recently stated that insect populations have been decimated by around 25% each decade for the last 30 years. That means that there are 57% less insects today than there were in 1989. Bird populations have declined by one third in the last 15 years in parts of Europe. So how does the soil food web help? Well, the UN has identified the use of pesticides as a major cause in the decline of insect populations. Please watch the animation on pests and diseases to find out how nature's operating system protects plants against attack, eliminating the need for pesticides. Another threat to life on Earth is climate change. Fortunately, the soil is capable of holding tremendous amounts of carbon in the bodies of microorganisms and some mega organisms, too. The biggest living organism in the world is not a whale. It's a fungus found in organ that is the size of 1665 football fields. It is between 2008 thousand years old, and it is made mostly of carbon. By restoring the soil food web, we could put a stop to climate change. Please watch the animation on soil carbon sequestration for more details. At the Soil Food Web School, we train people like you to help farmers transition away from using chemicals to farming in harmony with nature by restoring the soil food web. For more information about the numerous benefits of the soil food web and how you can get involved, visit Soilfoodweb.com. All right. I always love those animations. And just as a reminder, if you go out to the Southwest.com website, the series of animations that they talked about here are available on the website, so I highly encourage you to go check those out. Okay, at this point, I'm going to hand this over to Dr. Lane Ingham. We're going to talk about microorganisms. So, Elaine. Yeah, some of my favorite critters. So I like to start with the bacteria, because when we do the food web, the bacteria are some of the first things to really get established in the soil. So what is it that bacteria do? And we have a nice little picture over on the right hand side of your screen where you can see some little tiny dots in there. You can see a colony of bacteria as well, and the bacteria sitting on the surface of an aggregate. So you're going to have to have fairly sharp eyes in order to see all those bacteria. Or you've got to have a good microscope where you can do some shadowing and increase the visibility of these tiny, tiny organisms. A single bacterium is a diameter of about 1 μm, so that's ten to the -6 meters. So bacteria perform some very important processes for us. They decompose organic matter. They tend to like simple structures. So we can differentiate between bacteria and fungi. Both of them decompose organic matter, but the bacteria go after the less complex types of organic matter. Well, the fungi go after the much more complex bacteria and fungi both have nutrients. Excuse me? They both extract nutrients from the organic matter, from the sand, the silt and clay. And it was not believed for a long time that bacteria and fungi could pull nutrients out of San Silton clay until it was, of course, demonstrated not that many years ago that, yes, indeed, those are pools that your bacteria and fungi can pull out of the sandstone clay, those nutrients that your plant may require. So why is it that the bacteria and fungi know what nutrients they need to pull out? Well, they're told basically by the plant through the exudates that the plant is putting out. When your plant needs more iron or more boron or more nitrogen, it will put out exudates that will tell those bacteria and fungi around its root systems to please get to work, go make this enzyme so you can pull these nutrients out of the silica, bilayers, the structure of the sand, the silts and clays, and of course, in that rocks, pebbles, boulders, parent material are all broken down. And nutrients extracted from those different pools of nutrients going back to the bacteria, they are consumed by protozoa. And we've got a picture of the protozoa right below the bacteria box where we're looking at a test state amoeba in that picture. So it looks like a little jewel sitting there in that picture. And so we teach you the variability and sizes and shapes and how big are they? All of those things we teach you when you come and take the foundation courses. So we consume the bacteria are consumed by protozoa and bacterial feeding nematodes. Well, fungi are consumed by fungal feeding nematodes. And microarthropods that consume fungi. So the smaller micro arthropods are typically going to be chowing down on fungal hyphae, where the larger micro arthropods are eating the microarthropods. So it gets to be quite a food web. When you look at all of these different ways that the organisms perform things, bacteria, fungi them both build soil structure, but the bacteria build micro aggregates. So the bacteria going to take the clays, the Sands, the silts and glue them together in what I think of as condominium housing for the bacteria. So they're making those micro aggregates so they are protected from their predators. Fungi, on the other hand, being larger, typically they are going to form soil structure by making macro aggregates. And that means that fungal hypha. And you can see a picture of that fungal hypha. You can see that it's uniform all the way along. We have some SEPTA inside that strand of fungal hyphae. And so that fits the definition of fungi. And so we teach you all of those characteristics when you take the classes. And so the fungi wrap their hyphae and that's we're looking at a single hypha in that picture. So we build sole structure by forming macro aggregates that the fungi hangout in because, again, that's a protective habitat for them. They're going to be not bothered by their predators most of the time. And, of course, both bacteria and fungi are going to retain nutrients in the soil. If the fungi and the bacteria have the nutrients to grow, they are certainly going to grow. And so those nutrients get tied up in their biomass. They will not Leach, they will not leave the soil solution. So you hold on to the nutrients that you need, especially important when we have winter time periods or we have wet, dry seasons. You've got to have something that's going to be holding these nutrients in the soil when you get massive amounts of water moving through your soil. So nematodes. Well, wait a minute. Protozoa, we want to just briefly cover the different kinds of protozoa. There are flagellates, amoeba, and ciliates. The flagellates and the amoeba are kind of the good guys in the soil because they require aerobic conditions for the most part, whereas ciliates, most of the general species affiliates require reduced oxygen conditions, which is going to be a place where disease causing organisms can hang out safely. Protozoa eat bacteria. They release the nutrients that they consume from the bacteria in plant available forms, the protozoid and the nematode. So the bacterial feeders or the fungal feeders have much less requirements for the nutrients in the soil. And so when the nematodes and protozoa are eating bacteria or fungi, they and the predators are getting too much nutrient content. And so they are going to be pooping basically those excess nutrients out into the soil. And of course, what's right there waiting for the nutrients to be delivered to it in a plant available form. The plant. So predator prey interactions are going to result in nutrients being given to your plant. So, of course, all of this is occurring right in that zone around the root, because that's where the exudates came from. That's what was feeding the bacteria and fungi. So all the way through this is quite an amazing way to very easily and rapidly get through and produce these nutrients that can be made available to plants. So bacteria, again, to kind of bring up some new things. Sorry. And I'd like to ask anyone else on the panel that has a comment to make on any of these to please chime in. Sure. This is a great video. It's showing different types of bacteria in here. I love seeing all the different Rod shaped Bacillus bacteria floating around in here. And that's kind of a cool thing when we're looking through a microscope. Bacteria come in different shapes and sizes. There's quite a variety that you're able to see. And so the functions are that these bacteria are going to make enzymes and pull nutrients into their bodies. They're going to build up that biomass. So when a bacterium gets large enough in size, it will undergo binary fission. And now we got two bacteria. And if you're in a really good, happy place for these bacteria, they can grow very rapidly. You may start out with one bacterium, and by 24 hours later, you may have over 6 million individuals in that part of the soil. So obviously, they're changing a lot of things in that soil. They're extracting nutrients, they're building micro aggregates. And another thing that they do is cover the plant surfaces, both below ground and above ground with the protective layers. So the disease causing microorganisms or fungi or spores of the bacteria or fungi, when they land on your plant, they aren't actually touching your plant's tissues. That layer both on the top of the leaf and on the bottom of the leaf, is too thick, and those spores can never make it through to their source of food. So we want to protect all of our plants surfaces, both in the soil, in the roots as well as above ground. And so think about if you eat an Apple coming off an Apple tree, you're going to be chowing down on some of these microorganisms that are protecting the surface of that Apple, preventing diseases and pests from being able to establish on the surfaces of your food. And so you take a bite. These bacteria are the same ones that belong in your digestive system. That's how you maintain your digestive system. So let's move on. I wanted to say, too, that this video comes from a compost tea that a student of mine, Simeon was making. And part of how I could tell that just from the video is the amount of mobile bacteria. We have a lot of activated organisms in this image, a lot of critters that are ready to find something to stick to and grab hold. So just like you're saying, Elaine, one of the mechanisms that we use in the soil food web school to cover all of those plant surfaces is by making a Cristen extract and then feeding those microorganisms to get them to grow and be active. And this is an example of one of those active growing compost teas. One thing that I'm just going to make a comment to that when I talk to a lot of people about soil food web and start getting into microorganisms. It's funny how much bacteria has gotten a bad name because there are so many bacterial diseases and everybody has antibiotics or antibacterial products and so forth. In reality, bacteria are wonderful microorganisms. We need them to survive. And I think, Adam, you're going to cover get into some of this about the role and importance with just human health. But then also don't shy away from bacteria. There's a lot of good guys in there. We can make certain that we have mostly just the good guys by maintaining aerobic conditions. Now, there might be some minor diseasecausing organisms in there, but they will be out competed because the diseasecausing organisms typically have enzymes that only function in reduced oxygen conditions. So if we keep there, our materials fully aerated at all times, the only organisms that are going to be growing are the good guys. So let's keep going. We've got lots of other to look at. So these strands that you can see the Brown one right in front of me. Adrian, would you like to point out, I think you've got the pointer. There you go. Nice rich, dark Brown color. And you can see the Scepta, the cross walls in that strand. You can see the clamp connections. And so they're little bumps because with the basidiomyce. And so we know that this is a basidiomycet. Some of the best types of fungi in the soil come from the basidiomycet part of the fungal world. And the nuclei of the basidiomyce fungi, many of them have gotten too large to pass through the small pore in that septum. And so now the fungus has had to grow an additional little bump of hypha so that those nuclei can pass from one cell to the next and reproduce. So it makes it very easy to see that you have one of the best of the fungi. Seasons are only going to be doing good things in your soils, all the positive things that fungi do. If you look a little beyond that strand of fungal hyphae, you'll see a lighter Tannis Brown. Now that one, there are no cross walls that I can see. There are no clamp connections. So it's still probably a good guy because it's wide diameter, it is colored. So we teach you all these factors that you have to know to be able to identify those things that are more likely beneficial and those things that are more likely not so wonderful. And then the truly bad guys as well can't always tell everything from morphology, but we can get a pretty good idea. So again, these are consumed by nematodes and microartopods earthworms as well. Some of the larger critters will also eat the fungi. They build soil structure by forming macro aggregates and they retain nutrients in the soil. So releasing enzymes to go in and collect the nutrients that are in the Sansa clay, rocks and pebbles, as well as in the organic matter. Now in this picture, Where's the organic matter, it's all that amorphous stuff, and you can see where some of it is a nice reddish Brown color, some of it's more dark chocolate, cocoa color. So you're looking at the difference between humic acids, which have a very dark color, and folic acids, some olMIC acids in here as well, where you can see that the plant material, the organic material is clear, it's colorless. So it depends on the complexity of these materials. And again, we teach you about all of these things when you come and take the classes. Should we go on to I want to make a comment. I do a lot of microbial assessments of agriculture soils. A lot of my clients are in the agricultural space. And I get really excited when I start seeing fungi in the soils because the vast majority of the agricultural soils I look at are devoid of fungi. And we'll find that in highly disturbed soils, especially if they're tilling or plowing, it really plays havoc with the fungal networks. So you want to see these you want to see these kinds of fungi in your agricultural fields for sure. I just wanted to make that comment. And they are excellent at producing these compounds that are long lasting. I saw that we had someone asking about glamalin, one of those molecules that is long lasting and can be a great source of carbon going from the atmosphere through the plants into their exudates. 40% of those photosynthesize carbon, on average, gets sent down and out of the roof into those exudates and taken up by these microorganisms. And for the fungi that are consuming those sugars, lock it away into those thick cell walls that you can see right here, into those which are laced with all kinds of pigmentation. As you can see here, the melanin in that fungal cell wall that then as this fungus gets to live its life, that carbon stays there. As this fungus dies, it becomes part of this organic material here and continues to stay there. So this is one of the ways in which the soil can be a huge carbon sponge. The soil is a sponge, as BD first House likes to describe, but went in many different ways before we leave the fungal world here. Dr. Cobb, anything to add? Our resident my colleges? Yes, I appreciate that. I really enjoyed the comments that you made. And Brian, yours as well, because I've done some research. I primarily have studied mycorrhizal fungi, orbuscular, mycorrhizal fungi from glomerumycoda. They partner with around 80% of the plant species in the world, including most of our crops and the grasses and legumes that grow in our pastures. And so they're a really important group of fungi that help plants directly absorb minerals from the soil, especially phosphorus. And some research I did among smallholder farmers in Zambia, I found half of the mycorrhizal fungal, fungal biomass in all of the farm soils compared to some of their local grasslands. So when they converted those grasslands to AG fields, it knocked out at least half of the total microbial biomass. But especially mycorrhizae and the organic matter and the soil structure and the PH were all messed up in their AG fields. And these are even farmers that are not using large mechanical tillage, and they are putting some commercial fertilizers in, but they're not spraying a lot with herbicides and all, but still leaving those fields fallow just destroyed the fungal connections right when the dry season, when there was nothing growing there. Other practices that they utilize, some burning of crop residues and all seem to really just destroy that incredibly important element from their soil system. One really easy way to determine whether you have dirt or you've got soil is to take a small amount of what you think is soil and mix it up with a little bit of water. Let the let it settle for about 10 seconds. Put a drop of that on a microscope slide and take a look at what organisms you have. So we're helping you here, be able to see what the bacteria looks like with the fungi. We're going to go through protozoa and nematodes real quick here, but you can start seeing for yourself. Do you have the diversity of microorganisms? And when all you have in your soil, it's not soil. If you only have bacteria present in your soil, it's dirt, not soil. You're going to have to use inorganic fertilizers. You're going to have to use pesticides, most likely herbicides as well. So you're kind of going down this pathway that you don't need to follow, make certain that you are not killing, not disturbing, not making it impossible for these other very important microorganisms to stay alive and continue to form their duties. So going on to protozoa here, we're looking at a test state, Amoeba, and you can see at the close the almost pointy end, you can see that Amoeba is putting out a pseudopod, a false foot. It's actually going out looking for bacteria, and it will cause the bacteria it really wants to eat to glue to the end of that pseudopod, and then it'll pull that pseudopod back in and consume the bacteria that it's collected. Sometimes you'll see that what it's doing right now was starting to engulf some of those bacteria just engulfs and pulls it right into the body. Starts chewing away on them. You can see some of the bacteria that are in the digestive tract, basically of the amoeba chewing away at those bacteria getting nutrients that it wants. But every single bacterium has way more nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, magnesium, calcium, sodium, potassium, iron, zinc. All of those nutrients are so much higher in the bacteria that this Amida is going to be releasing plant available forms of nutrients. And that means the nearest roots will be able to get a chance, a good chance to take up those nutrients and get all of the nutrition that that plant requires. If every second of every day your plant is pulling in all the nutrients it needs, it's going to be highly resistant to any disease or pest that you want to talk about. So how do you stop putting out pesticides? You've got to get nutrient cycling going in your soil the way it's supposed to work. And what this looks like in this organism is that Elaine says digestive tract, which is great. And also this is a single cell. This is one cell that makes up this entire organism, which is also magical to understand that this single cell has figured out how to eat, walk, move, sleep. I don't know if they sleep, but they can rest. Exactly. Rest. But the digestive tract equivalent would be these bigger bubbles inside here, which are the vacuoles, which are filled with all of those waste materials, which is essentially liquid fertilizer for your plant. Because as they get rid of all those excesses in that circle, that's the vacuum. They're putting all of that out, releasing it. But it's all organic. It's not a toxic chemical that they're releasing. They're releasing exactly the forms of nutrients that the plant requires. So that's what you're seeing inside here, this little foot. And I also want to point out that this outer part here is actually a shell. So I like to think of these critters as the single cell snails of the world, where it's like a little soft critter living inside of a protective shell that they make out of either silica or organic glues. Or sometimes they'll pull things from the environment. There's a specific testome even that makes them fully out of diatom. So they're like a glass house made out of other glass houses, which is really cool. So they're a lot of fun. Now look at the fungi. Sorry, we're moving on. We're going to get fungi. We can't. I just wanted to point out that there were fungal hyphae in that other picture we just left. So you can compare the size of that testate amoeba to typical fungal hyphae. Now, this is a nematode. This happens to be a bacterial feeding nematode. So we're going to teach you to identify the different parts of this nematode. So we start from the intestine end. We're going to go from the back of the nematode forward to its mouth. You can see some of the food that it's eaten, it's slowly being chewed on, digested. We have nematode biomes as well. So you can see where the intestine links to the esophagus. And it's kind of a narrow neck right there in that interface. As you go further towards the head, you can see a widening of the esophagus and it actually has a valve, particularized valve in there that it uses to pump sucking in the bacteria. So the nematode is happily filtering out all its favorite bacteria. There is no nematode that eats all bacteria. They all have their favorites. So, well, unless they're starving, then they don't care. So as you keep going forward, you can see that on this guy, we have another swelling in the esophagus. So only bacterial feeding nematodes have the double swelling there. And so going on a little bit further, we'll get up to the mouth and the mouth is just a simple V stoma has a V shaped cylindrical look to it. And then you can see the lips pointing out at you as we focus right there to the edge of that nematode. So we teach you about all the parts and bits and pieces inside these nematodes so that you can identify their functional work. We don't really take things down to genus, species level because we don't need to. It's the function that is important. How much bacteria, how many bacteria being eaten on a daily basis, how many bacteria feeding nematodes do we have? How many fungal feeding nematodes? So can you see the difference in the internal structures inside this nematode? You can see that between the esophagus and the intestine. It's just a simple line. As you come up towards the mouth, you can see it looks like a hard little Crystal, that's kind of elongated Crystal shape. And then the action. I get so excited. The stylist that is attached to muscles that will allow that nematode to go up to a fungus and punch through using its spear, using that stylet and punctures through the cell wall and sucks out the internal contents of the fungus. Because the nutrient concentration in the fungus is so much higher than it is in the predator that's eating it, this fungal feeding nematode will poop out exactly what your plants require. So all those soluble nutrients will be released out into the soil. So here's a whole page of all kinds of different creators in here. And I'm going to just quickly go through and point out what we've got. And so hopefully Adrian can keep up with me. So on the far upper left, we have a naked amoeba. There's no protective coating around it, so it's not a test date amoeba. There's no test. You're just looking at that naked amoeba. You can see the pseudopod that was coming out slowly using out, grabbing up bacteria, pulling them inside of the body. So the next in the middle, we're looking at a tardigrade that is being happily cleaned by another critter. So help the other critter's name Tardigrade. Thank you. I think it's a rotifer. It looks multicellular. So both of these critters are multicellular organisms as well. Whereas the ciliates, like this video down here, the protozoa in general. Yes. Are all single cells. So what Adrian is pointing to right now is a stock salient. And so you can see the stock that that affiliate has put out to hold it right there. And then it sets up a vortex using its cilia on the other side of the body. And you can see where that vortex is spinning round and round. Here comes a bacterium. Sorry. The ciliate decides whether it likes that bacterium or not. If it likes it, it keeps it inside of its body. And you can see lots and lots of bacteria inside its body and bacteria filled with all those good plant nutrient juices. Yes. If it doesn't like the bacterium, it just spits it right back out. Says, no, I don't want this one. So very picky eaters. So in the middle part, what are we looking at there? This is someone's protozone infusion. So one thing we can do to supercharge a compost tea or even just to get some predators out there to consume bacteria, we can do a protozoan infusion and get a high density of flagella, as you see in this video, it's a way to control the bacterial community by getting these predators of the bacteria really high in number. So you can control how much bacteria you've got. So if you have lots and lots and lots of bacteria, but none of the predators, you're in trouble. You're storing all your nutrients inside those bacteria and nothing's being released back for your plant. Moving on to the picture on the far right. What is that little moving thing in the middle there? Well, the little tiny one there's a little flagellate. You can even see the flagellum on them every once in awhile. But that big kind of dischaped object is a baby nematode inside the egg. It's getting really close to bursting that eggshell and becoming a juvenile. So most of the time when you're looking at nematode eggs, you can actually see the nematode inside the egg. So you'll know that you're going to have more little nematodes running around here pretty soon. Well, I think in the interest of time, let's move the Q and A got some good questions that come from the community. So we'll hit that really quick. So actually, there's three questions that I want to just highlight because I think they all have really the same answer. So I'm going to read out the three questions, and then we'll take it as a panelist. But the first question is, please tell us how to apply to tropical soils like Kenya and India. The second question is, I really appreciate your input on how to manage clay, not clay soil. I love some soil, but we only have clay. And the third question is how can you find the microorganisms in arid land like in Kenya and thin mountain soils like in Nepal? So really the base of the question is saying, well, what about these different soil types? Can we have microorganisms in them? Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. We go to the Antarctic or frozen environments in the ends of the Earth, and there are plenty of microorganisms in those soils, in the ice, in fact. And so I still want to go to Iceland and start testing some of their what's the biology around their hot Springs? That way I have to get in the hot Springs. So even though it looks like a desert, why would there be any organisms growing in there? Well, go down in the sand, and quite often the sand will have a certain amount of water in it. And so all of these critters are happily doing all of this nutrient cycling. There's just might not be many plants that they're actually feeding that way. So you'll see that the root systems of plants in desert or arid places, if you have soil, those roots will go very deep. If there's been a lot of disturbance, the sand becomes compacted, then good luck. You're not going to have any plants growing because the plants are obligate aerobes. And as soon as you have compaction, oxygen is going to be excluded, used up by the microorganisms growing in that sand. So you have to look out for many of these conditions. Clays are very similar. The clays, if they get compacted, they compact very easily, and you cannot get oxygen or organisms or roots into that. Well, it's not soil, it's dirt. Right. Any other question? What else did we have? I would just make the comment on clay. I lived in California for so many years and having clients in there, clay is obviously kind of a big thing. I got heavily clay soils. Well, when you look at a soil that it's just clay, it's lacking organic matter. Well, typically, you don't have the microorganisms in that soil because you're not building soil structure. And in fact, when you get the microbiology set correctly, you start building organic matter in the soil, it starts to look and behave like a loan, even though as far as soil particles are concerned, it's predominantly clay. And I think, Elaine, you've had experience in that with Sandy soils, which is Sandy soil. After you apply these practices, they look like a loan, and they are as productive as any loan. So we really can fool people with what's the texture of the soil? Many people think that the texture defines the soil. Not ever. You have to add in two other factors than just the mineral material. You have to add in organic matter, because that's what's going to feed those microorganisms in your soil. When your plants dormant and all of our plants go dormant for a part of the year, typically because wet, dry seasons or when you're in temperate environments, cold, hot summer, winter. So there's always dormant periods. And those microorganisms need a little bit of help. You've got to get organic matter back into the soil at least 3%. If you don't have at least 3% organic matter in your soil, the microorganisms can't work for you year round. How much organic matter is too much? Drives me crazy. When I see chemistry test that say, oh, you've got 5% organic matter. That's way too much. You have to get rid of the excess. What? Yeah. I like to grow the most productive plants I've ever grown have been in 100% organic matter. And so when we're doing a percent, it's whichever way you want weight or volume, you need that high level of organic matter, and most people do it weight based. You dry stuff out, and then you separate or the easiest way to figure out what's your percentage is. Get a large kind of bottle that you can put the screw cap back on, put your soil in there, fill up the container to a little over the height of the soil that you've put in there, close the lid, shake it really well, and then let it settle. And you'll see that on the bottom is the sand, the next layer is the silt, and the next layer is the clay. And you can figure out for yourself very easily, do I have a clay dominated soil? Do I have sand dominated soil? It doesn't really matter. Ultimately, you've got to get at least 3% organic matter back in there. Organic matter will be floating on the top of your water. I can speak a little bit to the transition idea, especially in Africa, because of some of the work that I've done as well as I have friends that are farmers across sub Saharan Africa. And I think about the strategy that in Nigeria employs, which is instead of spreading out compost or other organic matter thinly over an entire landscape, and then you never quite get to that tipping point where it really takes off. He digs small holes and really fills those with those organic inputs so that it concentrates that right there, especially where the new seedlings are coming out. And so those plants get established. And the microbial activity that's concentrated in that small pit, they're traditionally called zy pits. But that small hole that he's dug, it starts to transform the soil around it. Right. And so, like, this is a tough thing when you're talking about transitioning, especially in a harsh landscape, is you have to think of it like starting somewhere and getting some small piece really going right before trying to necessarily think you can transform the whole landscape. I mean, nobody can dump enough compost on 10,000 acres to change it from 0% to 3% organic matter overnight. But you can go in and start making those transformation steps in a more localized way. We worked with growers in South Africa, up in Limpopo Province, and they would put their soil into a bed. And the last thing they would do would be before they put out the string to hold this is tomato. And they would put in a furrow where they would just completely fill it with compost, about 10 CM depth of compost right down the middle. And when we dug up the root systems of those tomato plants, all the roots systems were in the compost. Nothing practically speaking, nothing out in that dirt because it had no organic matter in it. It had just been so harmed and so damaged over the years by the Green Revolution approach to growing plants. So over the years, we've been getting them to spread that organic matter, the compost out a little bit more, start putting on teas and extracts, and their whole bed is now full of the roots and much increased levels. There are areas on their property where we got a 500% increase in yield because we put out that organic matter into the soil. So lots of examples like what Adam is talking about here fun working with people who follow your instructions and they get it right. And it takes just one growing season to get the conversion well underway. Speaking of getting that conversion underway, Brian, do you want to do another question, or should we learn more about where those microbes come from? Yeah, we're going to move on. And we've got a lot of questions in here, and we have a longer Q and A session at the end of the Webinar today. So we'll catch up some of the questions that kind of relate to this topic. But right now, let's go ahead and we're going to move to our second part of the Webinar. But before we get there, let's talk about the current promotion and the offer that we're having for the school. So right now, this is the biggest discount we've offered available through January 25. And we have two tracks of programs that are going to be part of this promotion. One is the farmers and ranchers, the growers training program. And so we have a video that's going to describe all these programs in depth. And then we have the consultants training program, which can be more towards the consultants, not necessarily the growing community. But with both of these, we have really big discounts, which is going to be roughly around 45% off. And in the video, we're going to get to all the different parts of the bundle. So, Adrian, if you want to go ahead and kick that video off, this month, we're presenting our biggest bundle with the biggest savings with the Consultant Kickstarter bundle. You can register for the Soil Food Web Foundation courses with Dr. Elaine Ingham for just 38. 70, saving over $1,100 through October 21. You'll also get stage one of the consultant training program totally free, saving a further 1540 that's 26 hours of mentor time dedicated to helping you make your own biological compost and develop your microscope skills to the standard required to qualify as a certified Soil Food Web Lab Technician. You'll also get two free bonuses with this offer, the Introduction to Permaculture course by Graham Bell and the All New Soil Sponge Regeneration Workshop with DD Purse House, saving a further $500. This is the biggest discount bundle we've offered, with a total value of over $7,000, for which you'll only pay 38 $70, saving you over $3,100. That's 45% off. There are limited places available with the Consultant Kickstarter bundle, so please don't delay. In Foundation Course one, you'll take a deep dive into the science and methodology that underpins the Soil Food Web approach, which was developed by Dr. Elaine Ingham over the last four decades. You'll study the history of soil on planet Earth and how the agricultural practices we've been using in the last 100 years have degraded our soils to the point where we now only have around 60 harvests left, according to the United Nations. You'll learn about the solution to many of the problems that are familiar to farmers all over the world today problems like diminishing soil fertility, pests and disease pressure, low crop yields, drought, flooding, compaction, and soil erosion. Regenerative agriculture can address all of these problems. You'll be introduced to regenerative practices like notill and the use of cover plants. You'll also learn about the four major groups of microorganisms that drive soil regeneration and how the process can be accelerated by restoring the microbial community or soil food web to your client soils. Dr. Elaine will present a number of case studies from around the world that she has worked on personally. Here you'll see some of the amazing results that have been achieved using the Soil Food Web approach. In Foundation Course two, you will learn all about the importance of biological compost and how it's very different to regular compost. When most people look at compost, they only see a means of delivering nutrients to their plants, so they think about how much nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, and other elements are in the compost. When we look at biological compost, we see a means of inoculating the soil with beneficial microorganisms so the soil ecosystem can start to function again, providing plants with a continual supply of nutrients. This is kind of like teaching someone to fish so they can feed themselves for life, as opposed to just giving them a single meal. In this part of the training, you will learn how to make biological compost using various starting materials to create a recipe that will produce results. You'll learn how to monitor and control moisture levels, aeration, and temperature in order to ensure that beneficial microorganisms are multiplied while diseasecausing organisms are destroyed or become dormant. You'll also learn about the various types of equipment that can be used at different scales, and you'll learn about the different ways in which biological compost can be applied to the soil. In Foundation Course three, you'll study Dr. Elaine's methods for making liquid biological soil amendments. Compost extracts are used as a soil drench, delivering microbes deep into the soil profile where they can interact with the plant's root system. Compost teas are applied to the plant's foliage, where they form a protective barrier against foliar diseases. In time, as your soil biome becomes more diverse and vigorous, your plants and trees may be entirely covered with beneficial microbes without having to continually apply them. In Foundation Course four, you'll focus on four major groups of microorganisms in the soil food web bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes. You'll learn how to use a compound microscope to identify and quantify these microbes so that you can really see what's going on in your compost and in the soil. This will give you the ability to assess the quality of your compost and liquid amendments before you invest all the time and effort that is required to apply them to the soil. You will also be able to monitor the progress of the microbial community in your soil over time, so if something is going wrong, you will know about it before the plants start to suffer. This gives you the opportunity to take remedial action early on in the growing season. In Stage One of the Consultant Training Program, you'll be assigned to one of our highly skilled mentors, some of whom are soil food web consultants who run their own businesses supporting farmers to make the transition to the soil food web approach, and others are PhD biologists who have been working closely with Dr. Ingham for several years. You'll work one on one with your mentor to develop your compost making and microscopy skills. When it comes to making great biological compost, there are many variables and every situation is different. Our mentors have worked with dozens of students making compost in many different conditions, so they'll be able to help you address some of these challenges that are unique to your location. They'll also guide you to avoid making common mistakes that can cost you lots of time, money, and effort. Your mentor will support you as you develop your skills to the required standard to pass the Microscopy Proficiency Assessment. Achieving this standard will give you the confidence to really know what's happening in the microbial community in your compost and soil. You'll be able to identify and quantify the four major groups of microbes in the soil in about an hour or less. Once you successfully pass the Microscopy Proficiency Assessment, you can elect to be listed on our website as a certified Soil Food Web Lab Tech, which means that you can assess soil samples for other farmers and growers in your region. You'll have a total of 26 hours of mentor time, so you can arrange Zoom calls and exchange emails with your mentor whenever you feel you need help. Our mentors work together as a team and there's lots of diverse experience and knowledge between them, so you'll have access to a great deal of support. You'll also have access to the two bonus courses. In the Introduction to Permaculture course, you'll learn from internationally respected teacher, author and lecturer and permaculture Graham Bell. This is a series of 18 lectures and quizzes where you will take a deep dive into this amazing design system that can be applied when designing your home, garden, farm, business or community. Permaculture is all about being in balance with the planet and is an ideal tool to have in your bag whenever you're considering making a change. The Soil Sponge Regeneration Workshop is delivered by educator and author DD Persols. This five session course is all about regenerating the soil sponge for flood, drought and wildfire resilience. It builds on the successes of innovative land managers around the world who are saving huge sums in damages from extreme weather events and crop diseases while restoring the dignity and profitability of farming. Dd teaches participatory workshops both in person and online, helping to show the nested relationships between soil health, human health, water cycles and climate resiliency. So just to recap, the Consultant Kickstarter Bundle comprises the Soil Food Web Foundation courses with Dr. Elaine Ingham, where you get to study the theory and application methods behind the Soil Food Web approach. And that all important 26 hours of mentor time in Stage one of the Consultant training program designed to help you develop your compost making and microscopy skills. You'll also get the two free bonuses the Introduction to Permaculture course with Graham Bell and the Soil Sponge Regeneration workshop with DV. Purse House. This bundle is ideal if you want to kickstart your new career as a Soil Food Web Consultant. Once you have completed the foundation courses in Stage One of the consulting training program, you will be well positioned to complete your certification and be listed as a Soil Food Web Consultant on the schools website. With these programs, you'll be on the path to a meaningful and impactful career as the Soil Food Web Consultant or biological compost Producer. All right, thank you Adrian for showing that video. And just again, there are limited places, so if you want to or interested about signing up, please go ahead and email the Sofa Web School [e-mail] for any questions you might have. Okay. And just as a recap about the webinar series we've got going on. So this is the three steps to rapid soil regeneration. We are in Webinar One, which is finding the beneficial microbes in your location. Webinar two was the multiplying the beneficial microbes. It's going to be a deep dive into compost, and then Webinar Three, which is going to be applying the microbes to the soil and crops. And again, we're going to have one of our farmers that are playing these practices as a guest speaker for that webinar. And in Webinar Four, which is going to meet the soil region pro. So we're going to have a number of consultants, people who are actually doing the work out in the field, be part of a panel and talk about our experiences and answer questions from you folks. So it should be a really good Webinar series that we're running through the month of January. Okay. So now we're going to hand this over to Dr. Adam Cobb. So, Adam, this is going to be part two, gathering beneficial microbes from your local area. Take it away, Adam. Excellent. Thank you, Michael. Go buy anything magnificent microbes. We just saw videos about them and learned a lot of what they do for us. And I think that we need to make the next step is to understanding where they are. And the truth of the matter is they're everywhere, and there's a lot of them, and it's pretty exciting. I hope that everybody who attends here today might next time they take a walk, think about how they're just surrounded by microorganisms. In fact, even in our bodies, it's estimated, the most recent estimation I could find says that we might have something like 30 trillion human cells, and we have about 39 trillion microbial cells. Right. Not just in our gut, but all over our body, on our skin. I actually talked to my optometrist once about what I do, and she said microorganisms are so neat. I've had a couple of patients that because of antimicrobial drops they had used in their eyes, they didn't have any natural bacteria living around their eyes. And you can actually hear it when they blinked. Right. Because the slick layer that the bacteria left on their eyes wasn't there. And it sounds really uncomfortable to me, actually. Yeah. We interact with microbes. They're inside of us. They're in our environments. And the neat thing is that it means that we can source them fairly readily from our environment. So if you move to the next slide for me, please, Adrian, just aside on that, I saw this picture or this described this way that if you were to zap all the human cells away from a body, you would still see a three dimensional outline of a human. Pretty much. And a layer of nematodes on your body, too. We are great taxicab to move these organisms around. In fact, I heard that about nematodes specifically, too, that if you took everything but the nematodes away, you could still see a ghost of the trees and us. That's wild. Is that true for every organism group or just the nematode? Just nematodes, yeah. Cool. It's a little creepy, but also pretty neat because that we've been in a long term relationship with these organisms where they're giving us benefits so that we can be there in taxi cabs, maybe. Right. It doesn't have to be just human centric view over here. Maybe they're using us as much as we depend on them. So the truth matter is that just like humans and animals, microorganisms need food, water, shelter. They need an environment that they are tolerant to. If it gets too hot or too cold, you might not find them there. The PH is too acidic or too basic. You might not find them there. When we start to learn the patterns of the world, we see that tolerance to the environment shapes where a lot of things are found, especially when they're mobile, like birds. They just move when they don't like an area. So right out there in your yards, in your local environment, there's all kinds of dead plant materials or living plant materials or other waste products that are already full of microbes. And many of the good guys microbes that we're looking to get back into our system. So what we really advocate here, and I'm teasing towards the composting webinar that will be next, is that we want to get those beneficial microbes. We want to get them multiplied in accomplishing and use them as inoculum to get them back into our farming soil ecosystem. So those starting materials will just define briefly here, but gathering those materials from your local area as much as you can will help you get the locally adapted microorganisms. If you just buy a product off the shelf, you have no way of knowing that that micro belongs in your local environment or that it's going to survive or that it's even alive to begin with. As we sometimes see with these bug and a jug products on the market, sometimes they're dead already, right. If they were shipped on a hot truck or something. So, yeah, if you progress to the next slide for me, please. I think we've covered this concept. So here at Soul Food Web School, we define three basic types of starting materials for a compost pile. And in general, that is because of a range of the carbon nitrogen ratio. And what that means is the amount of carbon in the material relative to the amount of nitrogen. So we express it as a ratio like five to one. There's five parts carbon to one part nitrogen in that example. And those high nitrogen materials that are really important for a compost pile, they typically are about five to 25 carbons for every nitrogen in them. And we'll define this a little bit more as we go on. And then green materials might have a little bit more carbon in them, and then we get into the Brown and Woody materials, and those can be very high carbon. I mean, it actually says 60 to one, as if it's an upper range here, but you can have 500 to one. Right. With really Woody materials. And so the microorganisms in our environment are living on these materials, and we collect together different types of materials so that we get a diversity of microorganisms. I think I'm ready for the next slide. Awesome. So just like humans have different tastes for food, and I have friends that won't touch a vegetable. I don't even know how they're alive sometimes. But microbes have different interests in different types of food, especially as Dr. Elaine mentioned, that bacteria tend to like simpler foods versus fungi that eat more complex compounds. And so this is, again, why we bring together diverse materials to inoculate our compost pile with diverse microorganisms and to give the foods that different microorganisms need to thrive. So the benefits of diversity. This is even true inside of our own bodies. Going back to that metaphor, most of us have some really nasty bacteria living in our bodies at all times. But because we have abundant and diverse microorganisms in there, they compete with them and they keep them in a small area. Maybe just one or 2% of our gut is colonized by these dangerous microorganisms. And when people system gets out of balance, when they lose diversity because of maybe antibiotic use or something, sometimes those bad organisms can start to multiply and really take over, and they can be a huge health problem for people. So we're trying to make sure that there's complex mix of foods and materials and that we've brought in all of these wonderful diverse microorganisms from all over our local environment with this Woody, green, and high nitrogen material. And could you progress to the next slide for me, please? This is just a quick snapshot. Again, we'll go into more detail. But when we say high nitrogen, that might mean materials like fresh manure things like ligamentous, plants, even alfalfa hay have a lot of nitrogen in them. And those are great foods for bacteria and green materials, which can be like fresher things, grass clippings. I really like to use coffee grounds in my like, used coffee grounds in my compost piles. Those can also feed bacteria. And as Dr. Elaine taught us today, the protozoa and the nematodes will come when the bacteria are there in high numbers and we can get them established and they have a food source. When we add the Woody and Brown materials, things like wood chips, straw, even paper or pieces of cardboard, that can really be a great food source for the fungi. So when we get wood chips from, say, a tree that was cut down, it's probably full of fungi already on all of its surfaces. And so we put those wood chips in the pile. We're inoculating our pile with fungi, and we're also giving them the kinds of foods that they need as well. This is always something that surprises my students, Adam, where we put together a pile, and then they look at through the microscope to see all of these microbes. Oftentimes I'll get this question, where did they come from? How did they get there? Did they just float in? Because the air has microorganisms, of course. So, yes, there's some colonization of materials, but these materials are full of these critters, all of the critters that we just talked about as you can see in the list there's a diverse set of materials. When we make compost, we like to use a diversity of materials as well, because there will be organisms that attach themselves to those plant materials that were pulling into the composting piles. Absolutely. Most materials will have a lot of different organisms on them from across the group. So when I say high nitrogen are associated with bacteria, high nitrogen can bring in fungi, they can bring in protozoa and nematodes. It's just that you're really going to bump up your bacterial population when you have those kinds of materials in your compost pile. And, yeah, I won't get too much more into the dynamics of that because we have another webinar coming up. Well, the answer to the key point about this webinar is how to find these microbes in your local area. The key thing is if you're using materials from your local area, those microbes are there. So there's 2 hours to tell you the punchline, right? Absolutely. So we've got one more slide here before we get to our second Q and A session. Just wanted to mention a couple of things to be aware of as we're again thinking about collecting these materials to bring in diverse microorganisms and help them populate in our compost system. There are materials out there in the environment that plants that have evolved very strong antimicrobial compounds. And so some examples I have here are pine needles. There's also kind of tropical grass called Pampas grass and eucalyptus leaves that have all been studied. And some pretty extreme antimicrobial compounds have been found in these leaf materials. So if you were to go grab those from your environment, thinking I'm going to inoculate my pile and get a lot of great microorganisms, might actually slow down the process. Right. Until those compounds are sort of processed or eliminated over time, it might actually kind of put the brakes on the growth and the function of the microorganisms in your compost pile. So that's part of what we do with mentorship at Seoul Food Web School is we talk about your recipe and help guide you through that to avoid those pitfalls. Well, into that point, a lot of these materials can be used, but requires a little bit of pretreatment. Or if a pine tree is freshly cut down, it's going to smell very rich pine. And a lot of those pine properties are also in a lot of our soaps and other things that we have around that are antimicrobial because those terpenoids, but also other volatile organic compounds, phenolics, they have properties that can inhibit microbial growth because that tree didn't want abundant fungi and bacteria decomposing those materials while it was still alive. So if you let those materials volatilize or let all of those smells dissipate, then eventually those materials can be easily composted. Absolutely. Yeah, that's a good point, because sometimes you're stuck with a client that got I can't remember how many tons of eucalyptus, wood chips dropped on the property. It's like, okay, we can use them, but we're going to need to do some pretreatment with this or at least age them out on the property before we use them. Wait a couple of years or put them in your garden path because nothing will grow. Right. Protect your soil surface. Right. So film and water. Right. And eventually they'll break down and all that good stuff indeed. And a lot of our students are interested in using hay or straw in their compost piles as well. And hay and straw can be a great source of not only the foods but the organisms themselves. But if it's coming out of a very conventional agricultural system and there's been an excessive use of pesticides, insecticides or even inorganic fertilizers, it can really reduce the diversity of microorganisms on that material. And it can also actually inhibit the composting process because those compounds can have interactions and harm the organisms that we're talking about. A great example of this from the part of the world I used to live in. In Oklahoma, there's a lot of wheat production sometimes after the wheat is gone dormant or sinister, but before it's harvested, producers will get out in the fields with a boom sprayer and spray like Brown duck glyphosate all over everything to try to kill the green wheats that are still there. Well, then that wheat straw has just been absolutely soaked in glyphosate, and that can have really negative interactions with soil microorganisms. So be cautious about where you're sourcing these materials and whether or not they're bringing something to your pile. That would be a problem. Even manure from chickens. And I have rabbits out here. I had to search for a long time with my rabbits to find a pellet for them that wasn't so full of salts that their manure would then become almost dangerous to use in a composting scenario. Right. Because the amount of salt coming through their manure would be very concentrated. So I had to look for a local product for a long time that wasn't full of all of that extra added salts. That would have been a problem. Likewise, if you're getting, say, horse manure and the horses were recently dewormed, there could be residue in that horse maneuver that could have negative interactions with the microorganisms in your compost pile. We see most often that you can't compost at all if you've got those dewarming medicines in there, because those are sterilized for the most part, yes. I might say, like, if you had that kind of manure, there might be a curing process or leave it out and let the temperature get to it or other things to eventually break it down. But we need more research into that. A lot of times it's not been tracked very well to think about what are those downstream effects of these chemicals when we get this question often because it's a little bit confusing. If one of the benefits of the soil food web is to detoxify all of these things that you just lifted off, why can't we just put them into the compost? But if they're above a certain threshold that the organisms can't live and thrive and survive, then they're not able to do the detoxification work. So there's a certain element where, yes, we can take any toxin in the world, and there's a microbe that has the enzymatic potential to break it up and lock that material into an organic matter structure that keeps it from actively getting into the water supply, getting into the plant. But it's concentration dependent. So everything depends on how much is in that system. So maybe a small amount of each of these pesticides and things can be broken down, but too much can inhibit the microbial growth, which keeps the whole composting process at a halt. So it's a tricky thing to think about. Use compost to detoxify, but don't use toxins in your compost. Right. And there are two different aspects. When we're applying the sulfur practices for crop production and plant growth and those types of things, there's the whole other side that you just exposed, which is can we use these tools to help us detoxify certain highly toxic areas? And we can for sure. So the final point here before we get to some more Q Amp A is I wanted to talk about there's a real value in going out into a thriving local ecosystem in your area and maybe collecting a small amount of material to also inoculate your compost pile, you can bring in some really cool, very diverse organisms with that material. But we implore you not to cause a lot of environmental damage while you're doing this. We're talking about a spoonful. We're talking about pinches of maybe soil or some material that you collect from, say, a forest floor. In my research, I often wanted to have very diverse mycorrhizal fungi. And so I went to a thriving part of the Tallgrass Prairie in Kansas. And with bison roaming and all the plants, it was the most beautiful place on Earth. And I just took a tiny amount of soil from there to use as an inoculum because I don't want to be responsible for tearing up more tall grass Prairie. There's only, like, 2% left in the US. And so we just employ you to think through how you can be responsible, even if you're collecting some natural materials from a grassland or forest in your area. Yeah, but you only need a quarter teaspoon a half teaspoon of each place that you're sampling. Or like, if you want to take some of the spores of the mushrooms back and just tear a little bit of the Gill off, you've got several billion spores in that little tiny bit of the cap of the mushroom. You don't have to be harvesting all everything that you can see. So please take care of our natural areas. We're running out of them. And there are places in the United States where we don't have the Indigenous organisms anymore. They've all been destroyed. And so we're trying to bring in from outside things that aren't already adapted to live there. It makes it tough. So all of us would need to do composting, so we keep the Indigenous organisms alive in your part of the world because they're fast going out the window. Agreed. Okay. I say we moved to Q and A. We got lots of questions in there to get through. So there's a question in here from Anna, and I thought this one was kind of relative to the part one and part two, actually, that we've been talking through and why we actually care about soil microbes and identifying them. So the question for Anna is I would like to analyze the soil of my farm fruit trees and laying hens and ecological production. What parameters to be analyzed would you recommend to include to know better about the health degree of the soil of my farm in order to improve it? Thank you for your answer. So for me, why we want to identify the microbes is because the microbes tell us a lot about the conditions of the soil. Certain microbes will be more anaerobic loving. And if we see those organisms, we know that the soil is most likely anaerobic or been anaerobic. And if we see a lot of aerobic organisms, then we can make some assumptions about the condition of the soil health, that it's more likely has good soil structure and there's aerobicness happening in that soil. It always tells us how much of each of the sets of organisms that should be there are present. So how much compost or how much biology do we need to replace? So it gives us a good idea of the dose that's needed. And so we don't have just a regular you're going to go out and put on ten tons of compost on your property. You may only need one slight spray of compost extract, or we might want you to put out a very light dusting of your compost and cover it, perhaps with some mulch so that you're protecting that inoculum from the drying or getting washed away. We always like to have people down the planting furrow, put the compost tea or compost extract down right where you're going to drop the seeds. And so that seed is getting covered with those really good organisms, and all of that plant material is covered with beneficial organisms. Adam, Adrian, anything you guys want to add? Okay, let's go ahead and move to the next question. This question is from David, and David asked the question, what major shifts in the microbial community have you seen from applications of food web techniques to perennial crops which don't require tilling example, Kiwi, macadamia, avocados, et cetera? So what was the question again? Sure. No, problem. The question was what major shifts in the microbial community from applications of food web techniques to perennial crops which don't eat Kiwi Fruit Macadamia avocados? It's really a successional question. Yeah. And so as you go from very early successional systems where it's almost strictly bacteria or Actinobacteria, as you move through succession, you get more fungi starting to grow because you finally have cellulose in the system and then more cellulose and then lots more cellulose. So bacteria are still there. Usually it'll pretty level level. The fungi are what's really increasing and causing, if you will, that succession to happen. So we see a shift from nitrate dominated forms of nitrogen to ammonia as the only form of soluble nitrogen when we get into Ogoforests and things like that. So balances of these things are really important. With perennial crops, you definitely want things on the fungal dominated side. You still have to have all of the nematodes and the protozoa. The bacteria are still growing, but it's predominantly fungal. So when we're looking at Kiwi fruit, Macadamia avocados, we want somewhere two times more biomass and fungi as compared to bacteria, up to maybe five times more fungi than bacteria. When we're dealing with these early successional deciduous kinds of plants where there's a dormant period and the management strategy. Right. It's very easy to have ground cover that you don't have to see it every year just existing and establishing those long term Michael rival connections between your crop plants and your cover ground cover crop. You have a ground cover plant that gets to be there all year round and you don't have to re manage them. It can establish a more advanced successional community of microbes in the pathways under protecting the soil. We have a list of ground cover plants that are good, typically in most systems. So like in New Zealand, I know that the soft food web lab there used to have a list of perennial crops or plants that you could put in as an understory in the Orchard systems. So if you can't get a hold of them, then look at our website and we should be able to supply you with at least a starting point. You go find a local botanist, go find a local nursery and ask them what are the short, low growing perennial plants? And then you can start trialing them on your own property. And the most important thing is to just keep that soil protected and anywhere you can keep it protected by living roots and keep feeding it. One other thing, too, that I saw in this question that kind of triggered me to think about was the tilling part of it. I think there are tremendous amount of agricultural crops that don't need to be tilled. You don't need to have tilling in the equation. No. Till is a very viable option to use, and we know that when we stop tilling, we will have a much more vibrant fungal community. All the other organisms, nematodes like Earth pods and things like that survive much better when we don't tell. That's a great point. And it's one of the things that I really like about the regenerative style of the Regenerative principles is that at the center of that is going to be the producer's understanding of what's viable for them. And so when we come in and we say, reduce your tillage as much as possible, the producer decides what as much as possible is. And for example, I interacted with the gentleman that had taken a conventional potato growing operation to Regenerative principles, and he still had to do some soil disturbance to harvest those potatoes. Right. With large equipment across a large area. And he found that for a whole year after producing potatoes in an area, he could do a ten species cover crop that he then was paid by a cattle producer to have the cattle come in and eat. And so he found a way to make that system jumpstart the recovery from the soil disturbance that worked for him and his climate and his economic reality. I always tell people, let's minimize our soil disturbance, but sometimes there's going to be some depending on what you're growing and the conditions. And as long as you're keeping track of the biology in your soil, you know when you're starting to stress that soil too much because you see reductions in the fungal community, you lose the predators that do the nutrient cycling, the last step in the nutrient cycling process. You start to see diseases coming back. Mother Nature lets you know when you're stressing things too much. Anybody else want to add in before we move? Next question. Okay, the next question is sorry, let me get right here. The question is, in tropical soils, I'm in Brazil, it's not easy to achieve and maintain a minimum of 3% organic matter because the microbiology activity is very fast to consume the organic matter. How can we manage this condition? You need more fungi, because as soon as you get that fungal biomass in there going and getting those complex food structures, the humic acid, the folic acids, that activity of the bacteria, that when it gets warm in the middle of the summer. But you're watering those bacteria, they'll eat everything in sight, and it'll be gone in two weeks completely. And so you have to go out and put on some more organic matter or more mulch or just crazy. So get those perennial plants into the system, make sure that you're promoting that fungal biomass, because decomposition will go slower. When you have fungi, it's not weeks difference, but you're going to be building more of that organic matter in the soil. It won't take you long to get to 3% organic matter if you've got good fungi. I would also challenge the notion of what is counting as organic matter in this case, because we often associate organic matter with the dead leaves and sticks sitting on the ground. Whereas plant exudates are also organic matter, living organisms themselves are organic matter, which of course they need other organic matter to eat, but sometimes it's the other organisms that serve as that food. So expand what you understand to be organic matter. And then if you plant ground cover, if you protect your soil with living roots, you already buy inherently have more than 3% organic matter present in that soil. So think about how your management practices also contribute to that organic matter percentage. And possibly like Dr. Kante described, incorporate strategies that work for your crop and your management system. Do you have cattle that can come and graze that cover crop that can incorporate in everyone has a different advantage in what they naturally have in their system. Use nature. Use what you have to work with and build up that organic matter in the way that works easiest for you. Is that a nice vague non answer answer? Just make sure they're short enough that they don't shade your crop plants or get out of control and hide the bottom of the trees in your Orchard, because then you get mice, girdling, your Hawks and your predatory birds can't see those obnoxious little rodents. You bring up a great point with the rodents because I was sitting there and thinking I've worked in tropical systems and the organic matter accumulation can be really frustrating. And also the starting soils, especially if there's a long rainy season, they can be very leached out of a lot of important minerals and other things. And what we should be training ourselves to do is to say the soil food web is natural. Organic matter accumulation in soil is natural. Structure in soil is the emergent process that nature does to soils. If it's not there or if it's not accumulating, what is constraining it what's holding it back, what is putting its thumb down and holding the soil from being restored. And we got to remove that. And a lot of times it's us that's holding the soil back because of how we're managing that food system. Very good. I think we're ready to go to the next question. I think, Adrian, you can pop that up on the screen. Once I find my screen share button, I lost it and there it is. Okay, so we have another question here. And this question is I understand it's ideal to use local materials to get local microbial life. Do we harm our compost if we overuse organic food waste that may come from long distances? Assuming organic is not chemical, there's no chemical residue. So banana peels and your worm bin, that sort of thing. Sure. Whatever comes from the grocery store that may have been shipped to microbiomes or biomes away from where you're living today, from Florida to Washington state. As long as you have good diversity in what you are adding, that's Indigenous. So the wood chips are usually from the local area, the green materials. Quite often it's a percentage of the food waste. So just don't overdo it with all organic food waste. A lot of the times that they've been essentially sterilized before they went into a bag or went into the freezer or something that slows down decomposition of that food waste, removal of water, that's a great way to shut all of the microorganisms down so your food doesn't decompose before you eat it, which is actually a really important point. I know this is now a tangent, but one of the lesser infamous benefits that comes from having a healthy soil food web is the biochemical phytochemical complexity that happens within that plant process. And they have access to that diverse nutrient cycling. The bacteria has boron in its cells that gets consumed, that gets into the plant. And the plant has a complex structure that when they make a tomato or a pepper, the shelf life of those materials because of their phytochemical complexity is so much longer. So the amount of food waste you may be generating in general, since it's related here, maybe less goes to waste, which would be amazing. You know, when I look at this question, I think the biggest fear I have is that we end up with some kind of below ground kudzu, some kind of invasive thing that gets through our compost system into our farm, and it wreaks havoc. And I think it's possible. And I'm very skeptical, for example, of commercial mycorrhizal inoculum. I always tell producers to avoid that unless they absolutely know how it was produced and it was produced locally because there's a danger that they're bringing mycorrhiza from Africa to the US or from South America to Europe and then disrupt those local populations. But in all likelihood, the majority of the time we should think of microbes coming in from some other system into our system. More like what would happen if we put a million poodles in the Serengeti. You'd have a lot of poodles for a week and then you'd have no poodles, right? We'd have a lot of organic matter then Tigers. I don't want to get anybody after me because I obviously love dogs. I can't wait to see my dog back there. But I use that to illustrate that in a lot of cases, don't buy a product off the shelf that claims to have bacteria, fungi that you can put in your system because they will probably just die. You'll have wasted your money, or worse. I've heard of stories where folks, by a quote, unquote, complete set of microbes that then they apply to their fields, but because of either what other nutrients that solution has in it or because of those specific microbes that have been brought in from someplace else, can keep the crop in permanent vegetative growth and inhibit reproduction. So I've heard of entire fields producing nothing, even though they were higher growth biomass than they've ever seen. They didn't have that predicated population. Exactly. Because they didn't have the right community, the right balance of fungi to bacteria, the right local critters that know how to deal with those winters caution against the commercialization of just a subset of what we're talking about when the whole big picture here is the entire ecology of a system. So this is something as a challenge quite a bit. In working with clients, the whole commercialization of biological products has gone crazy. I mean, the amount of products that are hitting the markets is just insane. And I get all the time, hey, what about this product? What about this product? About this product? Yeah. I think there's going to be some more forethought to how these products are being created and how they're getting distributed. Are there going to be potential downstream pinfalls with using some of these products? So it is a challenge, I think, that the industry has not figured out yet and either will get figured out for us because some major will happen where we have massive crop damage and it's massive regulation comes down the pipe, or people are going to be buying products that absolutely do nothing for them because of the region that they're in. Whereas what we do does work. And the reason it works is because it's not reliant on any one person producing something that's unique. But anyone has the potential to grow the microbes they need to grow healthy plants, and that is the key. If you learn anything from today, that is the key. You have the potential to gather materials imbued with those microbes that can help you grow healthy plants. We're the epitome of going local. All right. I said we jump to the next question. Okay, here we go. And this question is the standard. It depends. I think it's going to be the answer that we're going to really start with, which is can you have too much fungi in the soil? What do you want to grow comes right after this. So if you're trying to put in trees, you're going to have to have five times more fungi than bacteria in that soil to balance the kinds of nutrients, the form of the nutrients that are coming in, getting structure built in your soil, how deep can the structure go down? Whereas opposed to trying to grow peppers, you need ratio of fungi to bacteria around about zero six. So zero six units of fungal hyphae for every one unit of bacterial biomass. And you want to have some of a fair number of bacteria in there. And then think of weeds. They don't want any fungi growing in that soil if they can possibly manage it. They want all of the nitrogen in the form of nitrates. And that's perfect for growing weeds. Is that what you want to do? So if you're trying to grow weeds and you have any fungi that's too much fungi, if you're trying to grow onions, you want to have the right balance. If you want to be growing grapefinds, you want the right balance. So it depends. This is one of the key one of my favorite things that I've learned from Dr. Angham is this concept exactly. Because it comes directly to the chemical ecology of the system, that the ratio of fungal biomass is directly related to the amount of organic acids that those fungi are producing. Those organic acids are blocking those bacteria that want to take all of the poop that's coming out of those amoeba that we just looked at, all those vacuoles as they release that liquid nutrient solution into the soil, it comes out as ammonia. And so the bacteria that gets inhibited are the ones that would naturally take that ammonium and turn it into nitrate, which is exactly what these weeds right here love. So if we have enough fungal biomass, we block that process enough and maintain a higher amount of ammonia in that soil. And I find this just beautiful. So we can grow exactly the healthiest tomato plant when they have the right balance of nitrate to ammonium, because tomatoes need both. So you need some degree of fungi, some degree of bacteria, but typically, most soils are so just like we've already talked about, so devastated that seeing any fungi in the soil is an exciting thing. Like Brian. Oh, yeah, really? I get so many agricultural fields that come from orchards, which you would expect to see tremendous amounts of fungi. Elaine said, at a minimum, you want to see five times the amount of fungal biomass and bacterial biomass. Well, it's almost always flipped on where you're seeing hundreds of times more bacterial biomass than fungal biomass. And so you know that the microbiome in that soil is not set for the type of plant that's being grown. And that's our job, that's what we're trying to do is make that flip. But then also educate our clients on why it's important to make that flip and what are the management practices that we need to incorporate so that we can make that change in their soil to the right microbiome, which includes a lot of fungi. And this question also, it begs the second question, which is why don't fungi take over the world completely? Something limits fungi, too. And Dr. Elaine taught us today that it's those fungal feeding nematodes and they're killing fungi, they're cycling those nutrients. Again. The cool thing is that a lot of times my understanding is that they're leading behind the vast majority of the carbon from that dead fungal hyphae to become organic matter that's really going to store a lot of carbon in the soil long term. And so even when you go into a forest, there are things that are eating fungi, even though they're fungi are dominant. And so everything has if you get too many rabbits the next year, you'll see a lot of Foxes and then you'll have very few rabbits, and then the next year the Fox population will go down. It's that same dynamic in soil. I like the idea, too, that plants are in control of this, too. As long as we are putting in microorganisms that are going to be a benefit to that plant, that plant is going to be pushing on Exodus, they're going to try to grow those microorganisms. The challenge that we have is that in a lot of agricultural fields, because the management practice we've used the plants putting on Exodus, there's nobody home. You're not seeing the growth. So it's trying to do what it's trying to do. And hey, I've got nobody there to actually do that nutrient cycling for me. And that's where you get all the stresses and diseases. And that's why then the plants become dependent again upon the farmer to say, oh, well, you're short on nitrogen or you're short on phosphorus or potassium or whatever the nutrient is. I got to add pests. Now I got to add these things. So again, our goal is to really flip that script, which is saying let's let the plants be controlled and let's let them take care of their own health, their immune systems, and let's make management practices that are going to foster optimal microbiology in the soil and not the other way around. And it costs the farmer less time, less money has to be spent. I like to say to the grower groups that I talk to you, get everything established, make certain that the microscope is telling you that everything's balanced exactly the way it needs to be, and you walk away and go fishing for the rest of the summer. Exactly. One of the legacy effects of the mentalities that we have lingering from the Green Revolution is that it's our job as humans to know exactly how much of each thing to give a plant so that it grows. Right. But luckily, in this case, the plants know best. We don't have to. The plants are the ones that are able to not only make a huge diversity of different kinds of aggregates to feed exactly the microbes that they need, but also they have surface area. They have the ability to adjust that in different places along that root surface. So we don't have to try to find the solution. We get to just bring the whole suite of what is in the environment and provide it out there and then let the plants do the choosing. So regarding this whole theme of today of finding the right microorganisms, the secret is get the plants there, get the plants that you want to be growing and get a diversity of other plants to help them out and get those plants growing to be the microbe cultivators, the microbe supporters. And the last point I would make on this is what I find I can be really successful with the client is when I get them to think of that. They are now microbe farmers, in some cases almost predominantly. Granted, if you're growing almonds, you need to be an almond farmer because you're going to be able to harvest all the kind of things. But if you also take on the role of I'm a microbe farmer and these are just important to me as my almond trees, that's when you start to really see the changes because the mindset is, oh, I need to protect those microorganisms. Okay. Anything. Last comments before we conclude our webinar, this is always so fun. It is. Adrian, can you throw up the last line, which is going to be again just a reminder of our upcoming webinars? Yes, I can. Thank you. Okay. So just a reminder. I know we showed this slide a couple of times but we are excited about the webinar series here. So we've concluded webinar one. Now we're going to have webinar two on January 19 which is multiplying the beneficial microbes. So again, we're going to be talking a lot about compost and this is our tool that we're going to use to be able to get that biology to the soil kind of what we've been talking about today. And then webinar three is applying the microbes to soil and crops. We probably get into a lot of liquid amendments, compost teas and compost extracts and why we use them and how to apply compost actually to your field as well. And again, exciting, we're going to have a farmer who's doing this kind of work on a large scale and having great successes. So we'll have admin work on that one. And then webinar four, which is Meet the soil Gym pros that's on Saturday, January 29. And that's where you get to talk to more of the people like me, consultants that are out there doing the work. And it's your opportunity to be able to ask us questions about the work that we do. So that concludes our webinar. I like to give thanks that there's a whole team of people who run these webinars behind the scenes and I like to give a big shout out to our team of folks that to help make these webinars sing. It takes a lot of stress off.

Channel: Dr. Elaine's Soil Food Web School

Views: 397,371

Keywords: soil regeneration, rapid soil regeneration, Beneficial Microbes, beneficial soil microbes, soil food web, soil food web school, Dr. Elaine Ingham, Dr. Adrienne Godschalx, Dr. Adam Cobb, rapid soil regeneration webinar, how to regenerate soil, how to rapidly regenerate soil, soil regeneration class, soil regeneration lecture, soil food web dr elaine ingham, soil food web webinar, soil food web explained, brian vagg sprouting soil, brian vagg, finding beneficial microbes

Id: WYXvv2XugMc

Length: 117min 8sec (7028 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 11 2022