The science of vermiculture, Nakala Maddock

good afternoon everyone so I have been studying sustainable agriculture at University and it's quite a flexible course so I've been able to base most of my studies on vermiculture so I would like to share some things about permaculture with you basically what we've found is that a worm product can facilitate everything you need in the soil in a regenerative system so it needs to be supported with a regenerative system so what I'm going to take you through today is that a worm liquid it's a bio control agent so it looks like a pesticide and a fungicide it regulates hormone function of plants it can increase microbial diversity and mass in the soil increase frost protection of plants increased photosynthetic rates of plants biodegrade toxic residues in the soil there's a plant available nutrient component to it humic and fulvic substances it also acts as a surfactants it reduces temperature and water stress on plants and it increases organic carbon so wyms don't we should we all know that worms actually excrete a fluid so they have a mucus around them and they consume soil so when we feed the worms we feed them large things like carrots and fish along with seaweed and other minerals and soft rock phosphate and lime and straw and manure but it's actually the microbes the microbes that break down the larger things and then the worms consume those microbes and stay excreted in the castings so what we're actually collecting is the wash of all of that so we're collecting the mucus that comes out and we're collecting the nutrients that come through that are washed out through those castings and also the microbes the diversity of microbes the humic and fulvic substances that antibiotics hormones and enzymes so all of those things into the liquid that we collect in the system so what makes what's important in making a quality worm liquid diversity of food so that's the most important thing like us if we have a diversity of food we have a diversity of microbes in our gut and that's what we want in a worm we could we want diversity of microbes so the more diverse the food source the different microbes will break it down so the more diverse microbes will come out of the worm the timing and the amount of feed is important you need to make sure that you've actually consumed the feed while you're actually collecting liquid because you don't want to be collecting just mineral water you want to actually make sure that they've had that time to consume it and the microbes have broken it down so it's going through the worm good drainage you don't want it to drain too fast but you do need to drip out slowly you need good moisture so the worms need to live in a moist environment but you don't want it too moist because again you don't want it running out too fast clean filling apparatus aeration of worm beds and aeration in the storage as well is really important so in the worm beds you don't want the beds to be getting compacted down lower so at the top you'll see that the worms are actually working through the food sources but down the bottom it can get compacted so we need to keep an eye on that protection from the birds the birds are our biggest enemy we have a a a worm dog who we clap our hands and he he gets the birds away and growth trials as opposed to the tractor analysis of the liquid is important because it's what the worm that could actually does when it is applied to the plan so always we're looking at a worm liquid and with a plant and in a holistic system and also on a seed it works on a seed so this was a study done on the actual liquid after I just said we don't look at the liquid but this is an important one it's in a petri dish in a lab and what they did is they added a pathogenic fungus to the petri dish and you can see that the beneficial bacteria actually covered the fungi and they either out competed it for nutrients although antagonistic towards it they found that the worm liquid produced a surfactant and I Turan a so surfactant is a it's a surfactant and it's an antibiotic and I chew an a it has strong antifungal properties so that's where we're saying it has antibiotics and antifungal properties what they did is they sterilize the worm they could because they wanted to see is it the the chemical factor of the worm liquid or is it the microbes that are out making these products and they found that the unsterilized worm liquid stopped the growth of the pathogenic fungus by a hundred percent but the sterilized worm liquid didn't actually do much at all so we know that the microbes they've been most important thing in a worm liquid we had a fourth year on a research student jenny come from sydney university and did some work experience with us and she did a research trial on nutria soil and what she found was that seeds that grew with fertilizers showed 56% contamination after 14 days but those grown with nutria soil had no signs of contamination so application of you to soil and a plant can increase mycorrhizal fungi by over double and the important thing is that mycorrhizal fungi are a part of the immune system in the soil and they're also part of a social network with filth which is what Phil talked about so with the immune system and the fungi actually release chemicals into the soil that suppress and kill pathogens as well so the bacteria do that and the fungi do that and they did a study in China that confirmed that tomato plants that grew separately from each other and are only connected by mycorrhizal fungi when had early blight disease introduced within a few hours all of the plants started producing elevated levels of disease specific defense enzymes so what that's saying is that they were connected and they were able to let each other know that there was a pathogen coming so this is a difficult one nutritional analysis it doesn't tell the whole story and we're trained to ask for the analysis where we always look at nutrient content and when I first start working with the customer one of their first questions is can I see the analysis do you have an analysis and I'm like yes yes we have an analysis but it doesn't show that my probe your content so sometimes when we get our analysis done of the liquid we have no nitrogen in it and that people would be shocked at that and that would be like well that's not a very good worm liquid it's actually a very good when we put because it has so much microbial diversity in it that the the microbes consume the nitrogen and hold it in their bodies the same as the carbon so in the study that they did in the petri dish what they found is that total nitrogen and carbon decreased over the time and nearly halved and it was lost after 28 days the pH decreased over 28 days due to the production of organic acids so that's again saying that there's high microbial problem life in a worm liquid so adings in a cropping system adding small amounts of nitrogen with a worm liquid actually works very well because that's how it works in the soil you need bacteria to convert urea into and and the nitrogen that you apply into the forms that it needs to be taken up by the plant so whilst there might not be a lot of nitrogen in nutri soil in a holistic system what you'll find is it builds a lot of nitrogen and this goes back to what we were seeing at the Austin's property with the phosphorus but this is the Haggerty soil tests and nitrogen stocks were nearly 30 percent higher in the biologically managed soil compared to the conventionally managed soil and now we're using two to three units of n with the worm liquid and the compost extract this year they actually didn't use any nitrogen because they've got to a point where their tissue tests and their soil tests are saying they don't need any nitrogen so what was also very impressive is that the biologically maing soil had almost 8 percent increase in the nitrogen compared to the permanent pasture so that's pretty impressive because permanent pasture you think that that's where you can hold nitrogen and build it you're losing nitrogen when you're taking a lot from crops and when you're cropping into it but the biological nitrogen was actually building more than permanent pasture we were talking about the organic nitrogen pool so looking back at that nitrogen from the Hagerty soil test that was actually available nitrogen on a soil test what we're not taking into account is the organic nitrogen and the mycorrhizal fungi actually take up organic organic nitrogen in amino acid form so people often thought that they had to have a night trader and ammonium and then that the mycorrhizal fungi would take it up but it actually takes it in the amino acid form there's results that show that so when liquid enhances hormone function so chemicals have been proven to disrupt the hormone function of humans they also disrupt the hormone function of plants so if we can support that hormone function more we can work a lot better with low chemicals low synthetic inputs so these hormones that they're not nutrients but they're chemicals that are in very small amounts they're a bit like trace elements but they influence the growth and development of the plant so they can turn on and off and release it as the plant needs it in it situations so things like abscisic acid auxins cytokinins gibberellins these are some of the type of hormones that that you commonly hear of and they help with the things like formation of flowers stem structure leaf formation fruit grain ripening and even plant death so Neutra sul has done a study where five liters of nutri cell per ton on the seed actually reduces the amount of abscisic acid in that plant and that's because the seed when it's germinated is under less stress because it's coming to a very biologically active environment this is another study it was on a legume and a herb and they compared a very wash it's called different things you'll hear then a caste Fermi wash Fermi liquid worm liquid all of the literature has has different ways of explaining it or or naming it so they compared Fermi wash 5% urea and control with nothing so the plant growth so the root length the root the shoots and the ratio of leaves to plants show the optimum results in a Fermi wash treatment compared to the 5% urea in the control the highest level of chlorophyll was in the fresh leaves within the varnish treatment and that goes to show that a worm liquid increases photosynthetic capacity and we'll talk about that later on farm how that happens as well so you're increasing the bricks in your plant when you use nutria soil the seedlings with the very washed volula splurt spray show the maximum level of protein and soluble sugars and starch in their tissues which is again very exciting because when we think of protein we think of high levels of nitrogen again this is from Jenny our research student and she found that application of a warm bed leachate showed a better route response compared to so the route length compared to nothing the control and a nitrogen and potassium fertilizer she also done a study and sometimes it doesn't come out as you actually think it would but this study I thought I would show you that it actually regulates the women liquid regulates hormone function implants so I I is a hormone that regulates growth and stress implants and what happened if I read this correctly because if it actually reads a bit backwards is that when you applied nutri soil that was unsterilized you had lower levels of iia so when you had sterilized nutrients you had sterilized were in bed leachate there was higher levels of ia compared to that unsterilized suggesting that the higher orcs and levels in the plant root they actually limited the root development so have I said that correctly so yes the Rif the roots work was shorter but the auxins were higher in the sterilized but in the unsterilized the roots were longer but the orcs and there was less of the hormone in there so didn't increase the hormone regulated it to the environment that it needed to be so nutria cell biodegrades glyphosate in the soil so a people familiar with the maximum residue limit that we can have in our food you can look that up on the internet and you can look up any chemical or pesticide and it can tell you how many milligrams per kilogram are acceptable for a farmer to then sell that food so currently for barley it's 10 milligrams per kilogram and for wheat it's 5 milligrams per kilogram now last year we had to donna huber with us and he he talked about glyphosate and he said there's only one thing that we can find at the moment that biodegrades glyphosate in the soil and it's from sauerkraut so sauerkraut it's like a pro probiotic for our gas so it works like a probiotic in the soil and he said that the microbes called a seed adapter and and we're doing Studies on actually in Germany I think it was in Germany and and we're trying to see if broadacre we can apply this acetobacter through sauerkraut and it can biodegrade the roundup in the soil and I said Don acetobacter is in Verma caste it's in Fermi liquid and he said well I didn't know that I don't know he's an American so that was pretty exciting so he's actually taken those papers back now and he's going to be probably getting his students to do Studies on that and we're actually getting ash Martin's lab in South Australia to do those studies for us as well so that would be pretty exciting because we're seeing it in the paddock this is the key thing the haggerty's do use glyphosate as a knockdown at the start when needed this year they didn't need to because it wasn't necessary but at times they do use it and they have no residue of glyphosate in their grain when it's tested so this is barley where they could have had 10 milligrams per kilogram they didn't have any detectable limit yet they still use glyphosate but they don't desiccate and they don't have GMO crops and so all of these buildups of glyphosate in the soil is where we're getting the large amounts of residue in our grain and in our soil I think I probably should mention that bare soil is very biologically active because they use when liquid they use a a compost extract they use animals which is a very big key in their system and they have native grasses grow over summer which hosts a lot of mycorrhizal fungi and also helps with building their nitrogen stocks over summer as well so in a worm liquid the microbes when applied to a plant can nearly double the diversity and types of microbes so we've just got some types of microbes that have been found in nutria soil it's not a complete list microbes switch on an office necessary so what you'll find in summer is different to microbes that you're finding in winter and it's different to microbes you'll find with different plants that you grow but the key thing is here that most of these microbes are doing some type of protective role and I think this is probably one of the biggest keys to nutri soil it really acts as a fungicide and as a pesticide in a natural form so photosynthetic bacteria they're very important because they break down toxic residues such as pesticides in the soil lactic acid such as lactobacillus they're very strong bias suppressive compounds and may help control the harmful microorganisms acti no my CDs produced an antibiotic compound that they suppress pathogenic organisms and is that actually been a study done where a genome iSeries increase a thousandfold when they go through the gut of the worm and fungi Penicillium produce enzymes antibiotics and various growth regulators and trichoderma which break down your organic matter in the soil so these are the types of microbes that are are in neutral oil and working away in the soil as we apply them to the plant again the mycorrhizal fungi will help store water it will help find water it will help store water and it will also help find nutrients and help store nutrients and that will be increased by application of nutri soil so humic and fulvic substances are made naturally by the worm we've had that tested over in America we also add half a percent of humate to nuture soil so the four big substances open up the pores on the leaf of the plant and the humic substances actually hold an assister nutrient exchange for the plant so very important things a plan actually takes up a foliar fertilizer more efficiently than what it does from the soil so that's very much in line with what Andre was saying is that they collect their nutrients from their leaves more so it's easier for them and they have to use more energy to collect it from the soil they do both but they do a lot through their leaves so Nicole masters alerted us to this one and we we had nutria soil tested and Sudirman Pseudomonas Florence is in nutria soil and what this microbe does is it protects plants from frost so a lot of microbes on the leaf of a plant actually cause the plant to freeze and then what a Pseudomonas florins does is it bumps those guys off and then it takes over places on the plant and it allows the plant to then be able to withstand temperatures several degrees lower without harm so you see biologically healthy plants can withstand frost longer it's not a silver bullet but certainly helps with frost protection and this is another test that another study that was done on the seedlings of tomatoes where they exposed seedlings to temperature extremes and to low levels of water availability and in comparison with the control seedlings treated with a very costly qward improved their stem thickness leaf area and just their growth in general at 30 degrees and at this temperature the verma cast treated seedlings again showed more chlorophyll and total sugars so it was increasing more efficiently than the non treated plants and the number of leaves stem thickness and shoot to root length for the lower level verma cast treated tomato seedling seedlings was significant greater than they're kept in the control of those that were in a water stressed environment and not treated with the worm liquid that's too hard to see but that was just the results of that study and I think we're coming up to lunch so I'll just finish with me and my husband did this this was just a child that we did at the Nutri cell front paddock and what we did is we did a holistic system and we did strip grazing we we didn't kill we sprays down heavily we did strip grazing and to multi-species cover crops we use the Verma cast and the Vermeil ecourage and over a two year period we were able to increase the organic carbon from 2% to 3.1 2% so again the water holding capacity about 160,000 liters more and yes it is greener than other paddocks in the street so that was exciting to see so looking back we can see that a worm liquid acts as a bio control agent it regulates hormone function of plants it increases microbial diversity and mass in the soil it increases frost protection of plants it increases photo Finnick rate of plants throughout biodegrades toxic residues in the soil it is a plan available nutrient has humic and fulvic substances it can act as a surfactant and that's again that's the oily substance of a worm liquid so you don't actually have to put out a wet worms make this surfactant which is an oily substance reduces temperature and water stress and increases organic carbon in soil when it's in a holistic system and supported by all regenerative principles so thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: NutriSoil Videos

Views: 9,013

Keywords: Vermiculture, Regenerative Agriculture, Nutrisoil

Id: TN9sTNaUr6w

Length: 23min 21sec (1401 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 01 2019