Messages from Nature that Life is Lacking in the Soil (2018)

going to be focusing on the the title of my talk that I was asked to address what organic growers need to do to solve the major problems that you have in agriculture so you know kind of canvassing my friends in the world of organic AG I asked what are your major problems and they came up with weeds and the current problem that you've got with those weeds is that you're doing exactly the wrong thing in your management of those weeds right now you couldn't really do much worse in the way you're dealing with that particular problem well you could do worse you could do what the toxic chemical agricultural people do which is to apply toxic chemicals to kill that weed problem and so they're doing something even worse than you are the constant tillage to try to knock those weeds back slice and dice and crush and destroy the very biology that you require to move your systems along in succession so we're going to go through that whole process what you need to do a little bit later in the talk and then the second thing that they brought up was of course diseases and insect pest problems and so how do you deal with those in the world of organic agriculture many people will do things like apply copper or sulfur the various compounds that are applied to try to deal with those insect pests and diseases again is exactly the wrong thing you're killing the very organisms that you need to have to prevent those diseases and insect pests from becoming a problem so how do we turn that around how do we get this biology back into your soil that you will not have either of these problems and then poor fertility where you don't have enough nutrients being produced in your soil to feed your plants all of the nutrients you know and in the world of toxic agricultural see I don't call it conventional AG conventional in any way shape or form it's toxic chemical agriculture and that's what we should call it stop calling it conventional act this is taught the chemical approach to dealing with these problems are killing the very organisms that you need to have in that soil so you know toxic AGG and organic the problems that you have are very similar and we need to solve them in the same way so in the production of the proper sets of nutrients in the soil it is the biology that does that nutrient cycling for you these organisms that do nutrient cycling have been out there doing their jobs for the last three and a half billion years and it's only in the last hundred years or so that we of human being as human beings have come in and absolutely destroyed that system we have to turn that around and that's part of the job of organic agriculture but you need to understand what these organisms in your soil do and which are the ones that you want to enhance and make certain that you get back into your soil so just to give you a little bit of a give myself a little bit of a plug those of you might be interested in more of the and getting hold of me and doing some more work if I could have the slide up thank you so a food web incorporated our website has just been completely redone so so go check out the soil food web com website completely improved we are in the process of refilling all of the online courses the last set of online classes that you could take was filmed six years ago and we've discovered so much since that time that we have taken down the classes re filming to put in all of the current new information and they'll be back up and available for you to sign up for those classes in February so stay tuned we also have mastermind classes where we take small groups of people and concentrate on one particular crop and go through what needs to be done to get to the point where you can improve your yields typically by something around a thousand percent as compared to what you have right now getting the proper biology in the system is going to do that for you so increasing yields as well but I want to concentrate on the this particular topic of how do you deal with weeds diseases and insect pests and poor fertility what do we need to change so this is kind of what Marla was reading to you so I'm gonna go through this pretty fast I'm gonna let you read it because it's boring and dull and what I wanted to bring up was when I first started working on compost and compost extracts and compost tea was when I was doing my master's degree at Texas A&M my major professor came to me and said this it would be a really interesting project if we went out and we got compost from all the different composting sites in the central part of Texas and you looked at all of those compost and you determined what the biology was in those compost so we went out to all these composting yards I don't know if any of you've ever tried this it's probably something you might be interested in doing first compost operation we drove up to the Flies were so thick on the car that when we opened the doors to the car there must have been about a thousand flies that flew in and at that point my major professor said close the doors turn around and drive out of here because this is not compost if you have that mass of a concentration of flies mother nature is trying to send you this message that this is putrified organic matter this is waste it is not compost do not put that on your fields because that's anaerobic is all get-out growing a bunch of fly larvae and gonna be causing you problems ultimately think about your plant the above-ground part of your plant is completely aerobic there should be nothing anaerobic associated with that part of the plant how about below ground in the soil your root system of all your plants are obligate aerobes if you do anything to put anaerobic conditions around that root system you will be harming your plant and probably ultimately killing it so we can't be putting anaerobic disgusting stinky smelly organic matter on your soil or around your root system because you're going to be doing exactly the wrong thing you're gonna be killing the aerobic organisms you're going to be changing that habitat those conditions in your soil into something that's gonna kill your roots anaerobic organisms produce very strong acids they produce some really toxic compounds they blow off most of your nitrogen as a gas your sulfur as a gas your phosphorous as a gas and how can you grow a plant if you don't have any soluble nitrogen soluble phosphorus or soluble sulfur yeah you got a dead plant so we have to understand that we've got to get the conditions in our soil right and so that was kind of what I was starting to learn at Texas A&M we of course decided that we weren't gonna do any research on compost or compost teas because we would have had to gone into the business of producing our own compost that was aerobic so instead I started working on the organisms in the digestive systems of oysters which is kind of a a whole nother topic that we'll hit another time so when we're looking at organic agriculture what we want to think through is what are the conditions that promote the bad things that we don't want and we're going to have to change those conditions so we need to exit the weeds from your system by man Jeane the ratio of fungal biomass to bacterial biomass one of the things we've discovered over the last 15 years is that fungi and bacteria promote very different forms of nitrogen and other nutrients in your soil and if you want to get rid of weeds which require nitrate and no ammonium as soon as you get some ammonium into your soil the weeds are not going to do as well so if you're constantly telling your soil in order to get rid of those weeds you know mix them into the soil but you're bringing up a seed set of seeds that will now be able to germinate and grow and of course those are the weedy species especially when you're constantly tilling because when you till you slice and dice and crush the fungi the protozoa the Nama toads all of those things that you have to have to get away from nitrate as a predominant form of soluble nitrogen in your soil bacteria aerobic bacteria in your soil produce gluey material that they use to glue themselves on to the surfaces of the sands of silts the Clay's the rocks the pebbles the boulders the organic matter present in that soil your root systems so when water moves through that system your bacteria won't be washed out you know removed from the soil those bacteria need those food resources so they glue themselves to them so they don't wash away but that glue that they produce is always alkaline how alkaline is that going to be it depends on the species of bacteria it could have a pH of 7.5 it could have a pH of 8 it could have a pH of 9 it could have a pH of 10 or 11 so what's that balance of bacteria that you have in your soil that blue material that they're making is going to determine the pH of your soil and under alkaline conditions the nitrifying bacteria can make the enzymes to pull the hydrogen off of the ammonium and stick oxygen back on so all of your soluble nitrogen is going to be nitrate well hello weeds we have to stop turning your soil into that condition so how do you start getting those fungi back into the soil we're going to have to make an ocular otherwise known as compost but it has to be compost that you're putting a lot of fungal foods into so we can get these beneficial species of fungi growing very rapidly people often come up to me and say but Elena I thought all fungi were bad that's what the chemical guys would like to have you believe that's what soil scientists would like to have you believe in many instances certainly not as bad an attitude by soils people today as compared to when I started working in this area back in 1978 so we've got to get the fungi back into the soil you need to make compost that has a good amount of woody material why carbon and nitrogen ratio materials are what our fungal foods so let's get as good a mixture of fungi back into that compost so now the last time ever that you're going to go until your weeds till your soil you will mix that compost into the soil so that you can kind of start switching that fungal the bacterial ratio as fungi start to grow fungi produce organic acids and that's they're going to drop the pH of your soil if you get enough fungal biomass in that soil the pH of your soil drops below seven nitrifying bacteria cannot produce enzymes to convert all that soluble nitrogen into nitrate now instead when a bacterium or when fungi are eaten by the Predators bat the protozoa the nematodes and micro arthropods of earthworms the all of those cute guys in the soil when they eat bacteria and fungi the really high concentration of nutrients in that bacterial and fungal biomass will be released into the soil in a plant soluble a plant available form and the nitrogen is released as NH 4 if you're in an alkaline if you're in a slightly acid soil NH 4 stays NH 4 and your weeds cannot use that form of nitrogen so if you really want to get rid of the weedy species in your soils you want to keep enhancing that fungal biomass so we select more and more for the crop you want and we select against the weeds so when you tell you are doing absolutely the wrong thing you are selecting weeds to be able to grow better than your crop plants so we have to start switching that management practice where we get that fungal biomass becoming predominant so when we move to I'm trying to deal with insect pests and problems diseases what we want to do is make certain that all surfaces of your plant are completely covered by beneficial organisms so we will look at the above-ground part of the plant the crown the stem the branches the leaves the flowers the fruit the seed whatever your plant is all of that needs to be completely covered with a nice layer a bacterium fungi protozoa nematodes we're protecting that surface and remember on a leaf it's not just the top side you got to get the bottom side how do you make certain that this biology sticks to the bottom of your leaf you got to have bacteria which will instantly stick to the bottom of your leaf when you apply that compost extract or that compost tea so we're protecting that surface so here's our leaf with really good sets of organisms on that leaf protecting that leaf these organisms are gonna do dates that are coming out of that plant material all parts of the plant produce exudates and so you've got to have the protective organisms using those food resources growing across the leaf covering absolutely everything to protect your plant so when that Spore of that disease-causing fungus blows into your field and lands on the surface of your plant material that plant is going to be protected that disease-causing organism can't get through to the tissues of your plant there is no food to allow that dormant stage that spore of that fungal disease no food for it to germinate and start to grow if there's no food if there's no space if it can't get to the surface of your plant there's no way you're gonna have disease insect pests the same thing we want to make certain that the insect pests don't even know your crop plant is there have them fly keep going to the neighbor's field where the toxic chemical farmer can deal with the problem so how do you deal with those diseases and insect problems insect pest problems that you've got well there's the immediate cure oh I forgot to talk about the reach system down in the soil all of your root system all those root hairs need to be covered by that protective layer of bacteria and fungi protozoa nematodes in the soil so no matter what's going on none of the below ground diseases are going to be able to cause you a problem one of the other things we want to look at with both insect pests and disease organisms is where are those organisms overwintering and we want to figure out where the reservoirs of those diseases and pests are in your agricultural fields or on your farm and we want to be applying those organisms that will inhibit consume and compete with those organisms no matter where they are on your farm so where are the spores overwintering where are the eggs overwintering we want to make certain we get this really good biology into those places because we want to drop that disease insect pest population by over 90% through that winter time period in the springtime when those eggs hatch when the spores start to germinate and grow we want to make certain that we're applying the organisms to your places where these things are coming alive where we're going to have competition consumption and inhibition knock that ooh ten percent of the population down another 90 percent then when those organisms hatch into the adults that are going to be causing your problems or when those spores get ready to be picked up by the wind and blown onto your crop surfaces we want to have those organisms on your crop surfaces that will take care of that last 1% so there is no way at any time that you have a high population of any of the insect pests or disease causing fungi or bacteria present in your agricultural fields we don't want to kill the good guys because you're doing exactly the wrong thing when you do something just to destroy this beneficial biology so make sure they're getting onto your leaf surfaces when you first start doing this conversion and the first growing season in the fall make sure you're getting out these organisms into your soil and on top of all the residues in your field so you're increasing the decomposition rate of all those residues and you're wiping out the bad guys and you're enhancing the good guys all the way through the winter every day during the winter where the temperature gets up high enough that the water thoughts and is now actually liquid these organisms start to grow it may freeze again fine these organisms go back to sleep they're back into their dormant stages but during that time during the day where maybe you had a few hours warm enough this warfare started to happen again and we want to make certain we're wiping out all of the bad guys so it comes springtime we may actually want to go out during that first transition here and we are wanting to put a compost tea and a set of all these really beneficial organisms instantly sticking to your Earth's above-ground surfaces of your plant so at the first true leaf stage let's make sure that we're getting this biology established on the plants we may want to go out and play again about a month later just to make sure that you've got good coverage how do you know that you have these organisms in your soil how do you know that they're present on your leaf surface is doing this protection so you don't have to be annoyed and bothered or have to do anything about these or the bad guys in the system you want to have a microscope you can learn to use that microscope yourself or get somebody on your team to learn how do you use that microscope so they can be going out and taking a core sample of your soil you measure out 1 gram volume into a test tube 4 mils of water shake that for 30 seconds a drop of that goes on your microscope slide coverslip on top of that on the microscope you've got a shadow to see those organisms so we teach you how to do this and one of the online courses and then you look through the microscope and you go there's no beneficial biology in this sample you better get out there and start working again to get that biology in the soil what happened to the organisms that we put out there all this good compost we'll check your compost do you actually have these good organisms in your compost so you take a look at your compost and you go nobody home so why did you waste your time putting that compost out if you turn that compost into a compost extract or a combo see it was a waste of your time how many times have you ever noticed that brown water has done anything to deal with diseases and pests doesn't happen so please be checking and making certain that you actually do have the biology what you want to do is that drop of your material on the slide cover slip look at it through the mic scope and you go look at how those critters running around and having a perfectly wonderful time and I see fungal hypha good guys and I see all those bacteria forming aggregates that's what you want to see and so you don't actually have to quantify things all that often you just want to have some idea on do I have the organisms I require so there is a lab that is starting up in Orion in Alberta which is not that far away so Yama Lee is here today you might want to come and chat with her Jana Lee stand up and let people see you she's starting the lab it's very close to here there's also another laboratory already established in Vancouver and British Columbia so you've got people who will run those samples for you and then sit down with you either you know over the phone or by Skype or whatever program you want to use on the computer and have conversations so we can interpret this information and help you understand how you remediate this program how are we gonna renovate replenish this biology in your soil so the last topic is how does nature do nutrient cycling in your soil and you want to replenish that biology and I want to go through the steps of this particular process so I'm gonna hold off on exactly talking about that one until a little bit later in the talk so you got to stay awake sorry what caused this problem so when we're looking at the great plains of North America so that's here exactly where we are down into the u.s. down into Mexico this is what happened in the early years of the 19th century and why is it that this kind of damaged happened to the soil you can see the USDA agents standing there pointing at the surface of the soil where we actually still have a few plants growing in this picture that's the original level of the soil when Europeans came into this part of the world what happened that all of the rest of that soil blew away here in Canada where does your soil blow to Hudson Bay the Great Lakes the Atlantic Ocean but it ain't here anymore so this same sort of problem happened here because before the mechanical plow was developed you had to go out into your fields and you had to be pushing the ploughshare down into the ground and holding it even and getting your horse or your mule or your oxen to pull that plow and try to keep them in the same in a straight line so your furrows line up nice and straight next to each other and you're holding that how many acres could you plow a day you know maybe if you were lucky a quarter acre half acre something like that so farms weren't very large because that's a lot of work you know as you had kids and you had a couple of boys you know they would help expand the farm but farm sizes were very small with that kind of mechanics when the tractor was developed in Australia Thank You Australia for this wonderful invention then we could hop on that tractor and yeah we can do a whole lot more acreage but because you can till so often if you got weeds in here what do you do you till it right and so dad slices and dices and crushes and destroys this biology that we need to have in our soil because that's what really prevents weeds from being able to grow so we ended up with this because of the mechanical plow we have to stop tilling well what are the steps to make it feasible to stop killing one of the things that we really like to emphasize now is that we want to have short low growing perennial plants so it covered all of your fields there will be no compaction due to rainfall think about rain falling on these surfaces the pounds per square inch of a raindrop falling on your soil is going to compact your soil where's that compaction farm it's not at the surface it's down a couple inches a couple of centimetres so where does that compaction form when your plan puts its roots down into that soil and it hits this compaction layer those roots cannot grow into that compacted layer because this is anaerobic and remember your roots are obligate Lea aerobic the roots cannot grow in there the other thing that's in here you know those anaerobic zones that you've got in your soil what kinds of organisms grow in there the diseases and the pests so your root systems get that anaerobic zone they're going to be attacked by disease-causing organisms that slowly and happily wipe your plant out during the course of the growing season so we have to get rid of those compaction zones so for the last time ever you're going to get in there and till that get that really good biology established in that soil plant cover plants short low growing plant species make it a diversity that's be put in 10 50 25 species of cover plants in that mix so this year you will get establishment in the summertime and that those plants will be protecting your soil surface from that compacting effect of raindrops falling on it the raindrops fall on the leaves the leaves depress spring back no damage to your soil those understory plant species are going to be putting exudates out all year long except when it's frozen those plants are putting out the exudates to feed that biology and your soil and maintain those organism so you don't have to be putting out compost every year you don't have to be putting out extracts all the time you don't have to you have any other applications of anything to your soil well how does that work with nutrients we're gonna have to get there and talk about that when we have this kind of disturbance what you want to think about is where what have you done when you go in until what is it have you done in terms of succession I'm looking for this pointer not there we go so what we're looking at is this successional process with time with that previous picture where did we put ourselves right back here bare soil so you're all the way backwards on that successional process when you're in this condition when we're in that condition the only organism pretty much in that's well it's not really soil is it it's a lot of sand silt and clay rocks and pebbles but we don't have the good processes we don't have the right microorganisms the balances to grow any crop plant in this situation so when it's strictly bacterial so look down here this is that fungal the bacterial bio mass ratio this is strictly bacterial all of your nitrogen is going to be converted into nitrate so setting the stage to grow what weeds and the weeds are only too happy to come along and start giving you problems well but you know nature's got to go through that stage of succession everything on this planet was a weed field at one time nature is going to start moving things along so you have the weeds start growing lots of bacterial food strictly nitrates in your soils very weak species not what we as human beings want but nature has to go through that step in order to get on to the more productive portions of succession so starting to get some get the weeds growing so at least now they're making a little bit of fungal food so in each and every plant you've got cellulose which is a fungal food not a bacterial food so we're starting to get a few food with sources for our fungi so now when you look at that bacterial fungal ratio there are at least some fungi where did those fungi come from you have to have some system that has those good fungi think about your agricultural practices in this part of the world where it's mile on mile or kilometer after kilometer of tilled land where is the inoculum of those good guy funds and fungi coming from when your whole entire landscape has been so disturbed that you're back here you may have to go out to forest systems you may have to take trips to go and collect small amounts you know in just a few pinches of soil from healthy systems that you can bring back grow them out in your compost you can buy various in ocula of fungi but we want more than just one or two species how many species of beneficial fungi occur in soils true soils in this part of the world twenty five thousand so there's a diversity that you have to get we want to get all those different species of beneficial fungi well you're gonna start with you know 10 or 20 or 100 and keep growing keep improving so as you increase that fungal component in that soil then that means other later successional plants can start growing so now you get the brassicas you get the : kale crops you get early successional grass species like Brahmas or bermuda grass will start to grow and they put more fungal foods into that soil so now we're dealing with more fungi more of that nitrogen pool in the soil is ammonium not pure nitrate and now your weeds are starting to struggle so we want to keep moving along this successional gradient so into more productive pastures row crops most of our vegetable crops grow in this area and you can see that we want a much more fungal biomass coming up equal biomass to fungi is where we need for our row crops so let's make sure that you get this biology in your soil because this is the only way to permanently and forever take care of your weed problem if you go into what's going to happen say hello to the weeds because you're going to put yourself back in this condition so let's get that biology back into the soil let's make sure that we're getting the organisms that we need and remember that strictly bacterial dominated soils nitrate is predominant and that's what selects for your weed species as we move through succession more and more ammonium until when you're in old growth systems fungi are just about the only thing you that you find in high concentrations an ammonium is the form of that nitrogen so weeds I'm sure you've all heard the definition of weeds that say weeds are plants out of place really is that a useful definition every plant on this planet can be out of place from a human beings point of view so every plant on this planet is a weed not a useful definition so what's a real definition these this is a definition that chemical salesmen want to convince you that this is what weed is not so what's the proper definition of a weed it's a plant that grows only when that soil has been so disturbed that they're only back to left so we've got to get that fungal component back into that system so we shift away from this lifestyle of the plants growing in your soils here's an example for you this is a toxic chemical field is uh they're growing onions here and when they planted the onions they put in fertilizer the normal amount of fertilizer which of course is urea what does the urea instantly convert into in your soil nitrate so can you see the onions in this picture what's the plant you really seeing most of there's a weed problem in here these fields have been chemical but managed for approximately 70 years and this grower wanted to try I want to try out that compost stuff and see if it actually works to get rid of my weeds because they have applied in this picture they have already applied to applications of herbicide to try to kill the weeds yeah I think he has her beside resistant weeds because it did nothing to reduce the amount of weed in that field now right next door to this field we came in with an application of really good compost first thing when they planted the seedlings the seedlings and then did an application of compost extract onto the soil right next door see any weeds and look at the fact that the onions are growing faster they had a higher yield of onions in this field as compared to their chemical conventional field 50 percent increase in yield make a few more dollars and it doesn't cost you as much you can make your own compost you can make your own extracts or if you want to you could buy but then your need to be testing that source of make sure there you're getting organisms back into the system this doesn't work if you don't have any organisms in your compost or your teas or your extracts I've heard so many people say oh I've tried Campos fees stuff and it didn't do nothing well did you look at your teeth did you know that you have the biology in there but no that's too much work okay I guess you're gonna suffer because you can't do the work so make sure that the biology is in there please that you're getting the organisms that you require so how many of you would be happy with this field how many of you would not be happy with that previous field so there we go I don't know about ya I don't want this field I'm gonna be getting in there with the proper biology as rapidly as possible to convert it into this so ian has been working with us since that time this is the place where these this field is is in Tasmania in Australia and we've been working in Australia for quite a few years so protecting the plant surfaces when I just show you a quick picture of what your plants surface should look like how many of you can find the plant surface in this picture this is a scanning electron microscope shot of the leaf surface you can see all the bacteria all those glues that they make yep that's alcohol and glues in there but look at all the fungal hyphae there's acid being produced so the two of those things together get your leaf surfaces at just about neutral good coverage there is no way a disease-causing organism can actually get to the plant get to the tissues and cause disease no mildew no Fusarium none of those particular problems that you have even in a in organic systems so talk faster because I'm starting to run out of time so let's go over to the soluble nutrients producing all of the soluble nutrients that your plant requires in the proper balance every second of every day how are you going to do that because most time people will tell you well when you grow a crop of plants and you harvest you're removing nutrients from your field and that means your going to have to put back in those nutrients that you removed really rock so what's going on you need to understand what's actually happening in soil when we do tillage when we constantly put things back to that very earliest successional stage we're turning our soil into dirt and what dirt is by definition from one of the fathers of soil science defined dirt is just the mineral component of that soil just the sand that sealed the Clay's where Doosan Co and Clay's come from breakdown of the rocks the pebbles the gravel the big boulders the parent material every second of every day microbiology is breaking down those rock those crystalline structures into sand zone clay so let's thank the microorganisms for giving you your soil the sand silt and clay this would be just what's called engineered soil there's no organic matter there's no organisms in here so this is not soil what is soil actually the mineral component yep there we go this contains all the nutrients what what's the concentration of nutrients in this mineral component well we're gonna go there next we have to have organic matter and organisms organisms have to be fed so that's why you need the organic matter in there that's why we need those root systems constantly producing exudates constantly fluffing organic matter to be able to feed all of our microorganisms that are going to do all the work for us in our soils so understanding that difference between soil and dirt let's look at a table that you find in every introductory soil science textbook every introductory agronomy textbook has this table or a version of it in the first chapter typically along about web page five or six in that textbook and they point out that every single soil the sand silt and clay contains this on average contains this column right here this concentration of all these different nutrients now I've only displayed the top 20 nutrients you can find this table that goes through all of the nutrients on the periodic table so does your plant need all of these nutrients yes in the proper balances you cannot grow a cell without all of these nutrients being present in it so they're all there your plant needs them off we get stuck just looking at nitrogen and sulfur and phosphorus and potassium well you need a mop and how are you making certain that you're going to be getting all of these nutrients in your soil they're already there you don't have to be putting them back take a look at the calcium president on average in general here these soils in Canada very young soils you probably actually have more calcium than this but fifteen thousand parts per million calcium in your soil why are you putting online why are you putting on gypsum you don't need the calcium and if you get the proper balance the bacteria and fungi you are not playing games with low pH the only way to drop your pH below 5.5 in soil is to go anaerobic those nasty toxic acids that are made by the anaerobic organisms that's what drops your pH and of course you've lost your ability to deal with insect pests and diseases and you're setting the stage once again for weeds so we want to get this good biology back in there you've got all the nutrients you need let's find nitrogen keep going down right there on average in general in this part of the world you have more than 2,000 parts per million nitrogen in the sand silt and clay if you got organic matter you just got more so do you any of you need to be putting on manures to enhance the amount of nitrogen you've got more than what you need and these nutrients are replenished every day you're back here and you're fungi are breaking down your rocks you're pebbles so why are you worrying about nutrition in your plants what form are these nutrients they're in the crystalline structure of the sand silt and clay those nutrients are present in your soil if we took one gram of your soil and could release all those nutrients in a soluble form you could be covering 10 acres of your land with adequate nitrogen to supply to your plants so instead you know we're gonna make sure that these amounts of nutrients are pulled from the sandstone clays and who does the pulling how do you get these nutrients released these nutrients which are in your soil how do you get these nutrients released and turned into a plant available form so here's your root or here's your plant above-ground pulling in sunlight energy and photosynthesis translocating those sugars that carbon chain where the sunlight energy is stored those sugars move into the soil into the root system and the plant realizes it's lacking calcium magnesium sodium boron iron whatever the plants lacking and thus it plant says I need somebody that is going to go out there into the soil and collect these nutrients for me in a plant available form so the plant puts out an exudate specifically telling that bacterium that the plant needs boron and tells that bacterium to make the enzyme to pull the boron out of the sand the silt the clay that crystalline structure the bacterium fun to I make those enzymes pull those nutrients into the bacterial or fungal biomass over here the plant is releasing a different cake or cookie and telling this fungus to go out and get some more calcium because doesn't have adequate calcium or boron or zinc or iron or whatever the plant might need the plant is in control of its own life it doesn't need you and me to be telling it oh no no no no you need more nitrogen not more nitrogen you need more nitrogen plants going look silly person I need all these other nutrients to balance the nitrogen so that that plant can grow in a healthy fashion so the bacteria and fungi are holding on to those nutrients this is your plants pantry holding all those nutrients in place right around that root system here come the protozoa nematodes micro arthropods earthworms drawn into that root zone by the high concentration of bacteria and fungi around that root system and because bacteria and fungi are the two organisms on this planet that have the highest concentration of every nutrient in their bodies so when that protozoa nematode micro arthropods and eats those bacteria and fungi the concentration of nutrient is too high in the bacterial and fungal biomass and so those predators have to release those nutrients in a plant available form and where are they dropping off the nutrients right there next to the root so as long as soon as you get the microorganisms back into your soil and you get this nutrient cycling system operating again you don't ever have to worry about your plants not getting enough nutrients so typically yeah and I'll show you I'll show probably this in the second part of today zip through organic matter so I just wanted to do a little bit of what do these organisms look like when you're looking through your microscope but if you're getting these organisms back into the soil the good guys the aerobic ones so we want to teach you who are the Arabic organisms so you can recognize them and things are good in your soil or let's find out what the anaerobic organisms look like so you know Mother Nature is sending you the message this is not soil this is dirt so we want you to be able to recognize those and so come take the microscope class come practice with us a little bit when you start looking through that microscope and you see something you don't have any idea what it is you take a picture of it and you send it to me and I go oh yeah that's an Inca tree and you go a what so we discuss it then watching Kate Reed's do what is their role and function they're just like earthworms they're smaller so when you are looking at what we've done is take that one mil of soil one gram of volume soil added four mils of water shaken drop of that goes on your microscope slide and now we're looking using a four hundred total magnification or a forty x objective magnification and so in this picture there are bacteria can you find them well bacteria the little tiny guys they quite often are round or they are rod shape so looking through here there's a lot of little round eye you can see some of the rod-shaped bacteria building that aggregate trying to build the air passageways and hallways that allow oxygen and water and your roots to grow as deep as possible into the soil when we're looking at soybean how far into the soil can the root system of soybean grow how far down should it be in your soils if you've got a healthy soybean plant how far do you think that root system can grow then go out into your fields and look at how far down the root systems of your soybean are going they're being stopped perhaps by a compaction layer all those bad guys in there killing your plants so go and dig that up how far down can the root system of soybean go in one growing season 25 feet which I say let's divide by three and we get the meters but if you got a good for healthy plant and its root system is down at 25 feet do you have to worry about irrigating do you have to worry about water because its root systems are getting down to that stored water if you've got good structure all of that water is being held in all of that 25 feet and your root systems of your plants will be able to access it so drought is a problem that goes away if you have the biology in the soil to do all these benefits for you so looking at the bacteria a little limited in diversity in this picture okay aggregates so you can see all these nice aggregates why is it dark in color like this that's the humic acid that the fungi and some bacteria are producing for you this is storage of organic material you want to sequester carbon here you go half-life on that you make acid is 500 years you want to keep organic matter in your soil let's get the organisms doing that for you and so you can get that carbon sequestration credit here's the root root should be pretty much uniform diameter all the way along and so as you move along this route oh look at that divot we have a root grabbed we've got some insect pests in the soil that has taken a bite out of the side of that root damaging the ability of that plant now to give you the total yield that you want to get and in that deer vet we've got a disease-causing fungus Fusarium starting to grow we don't want these sorts of things happening why is this disease-causing organism capable of attacking this root system why wasn't the protection there and that's what this organism is telling you about this is a ciliate ciliates only grow rapidly they can only win in competition with the other organisms in your soil when the oxygen concentration in your soil has dropped to less than 6 parts per million this is an aerobic and look at the damage that's happening to your plant so we want you to learn how to interpret these kinds of pictures information that is there in your soil for you to be able to garner very easily so you work what they may work with the amelie work with other people at soil food web incorporated we have labs all over the world fungal hypha are these good guys are they bad guys well I'm gonna leave that one hanging so you have to come and take the classes because I'm running out of time so we started about 10 minutes late so I get another 3 minutes so good white fungal hyphae you can see them with your eyes when you're walking up to soil and it's black in color that's not good you don't have the organisms that you need if the color of that soil is truly black the color of your soil should be that deep rich dark brown color of humic acid that's what we want to see when you're out picking up your compost you want to make certain that it's that rich dark brown color not black color can tell you a lot about what has gone on it does not tell you what is yeah well the biology that's in that material your soil or your compost or your compost teas and our extracts if you're in a place and remember I told you about the Flies yeah if you drive up to a composting operation and there are billions of flies and just turn around and drive away because it is not compost if the Flies aren't there you're walking up to the pile and you're starting to go well what's that smell it smells like rotten eggs it smells like vomit it smells like vinegar turn around and walk away that's not compost you will not have the organisms in that material that you need to be putting back into your soil that is not a source that you will be able to replenish the biology so I think oh I could go on talking darn just don't have time so just remember where we're located come and sign up for the online classes that will be back up and functioning in February thank you very much for your attention

Channel: Organic Connections

Views: 35,947

Rating: 4.9394703 out of 5

Keywords: organic connections, 2018 organic connections, organic growers, Elaine Ingham, organic farming, Soil Foodweb, soil biology, soil food web organisms, soil food organisms, compost tea, vermicomposting, compost, carbon sequestration

Id: RCeOYvnoKog

Length: 55min 39sec (3339 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 05 2019