Whole in the Ground | Documentary (2024)

I began growing food in 2009 based on the information I had available I rummaged through the internet for anything I could find until I encountered something called permaculture people were using words like biodiverse polyculture food forest and so on and then they talked about covering the soil with mulch to suppress weeds stop compaction and use less water which though I had never seen before made sense that's what a forest does but then they said it was feeding the soil which I thought I understood to mean that it was adding nutrients back into the soil it took me a few years before I began to realize that no we feed the soil because it's alive [Music] [Music] [Music] soil it's comprised of minerals organic matter water gas and countless living things it said that in a handful of good garden soil there are more living organisms than people on planet Earth and more in a small suburban Garden than all mammals birds and reptiles combined they include bacteria fungi nematodes and protozoa along with the tiniest of insects to the very large there are innumerable different species and complex interactions taking place in this bustling ecosystem under our feet so much so that new discoveries are being made constantly in this ever expanding field of study someone who is being at the Forefront of this Expedition into the land of little things is soil microbiologist Dr Elaine Ingam none of the soils on this planet are limited in any nutrient required by a plant so why are you putting on in organic fertilizers why are we putting on out rock phosphate why are we putting out what's already in your soil in massive quantities do we need to be doing that because your soil already contains thousands of years worth of phosphorus in order to grow your plants so why is it when we put a fertilizer out there we see a plant response because what you're missing in your soil are the organisms that do that job of making those nutrients available back to your plant what you're missing is life and anytime you see a lack of fertility in your plant the message that should come back to you is uhoh there's something wrong with the life in my soil none of your soils lack the nutrients to grow plants none of them why does sometimes compost do great things for plant production and other times it doesn't do much at all and then other times it actually kills the plant when you're looking at different soils where plants just won't grow um they are just barely eeking out an existence or where the only thing growing here is weeds you know just a field of oh my gosh weeds or you know cheat grass or something like that just really horrific that soil had only bacteria and it was extremely compacted possibly even puddling at some time of the year and you start to finally get a clue that Mother Nature's trying to tell you something here that when you see these conditions that that means only the horrible plants or no plants at all are going to be able to grow okay so now as you start to see fungi coming in what are the conditions now we're seeing much better plant growth well and then if we now get protozoa and nematodes and microarthropods and you really have all this community of activity going on then um you're starting to grow some of the most productive ecosystems in the planet some of the most diverse okay so how do you add biology where do you get all of these organisms where do you grow them where do you grow the ones that exist in this habitat so we made [Music] compost exactly what does it mean no dig I came about it a long time ago 35 years ago it's worked for me ever since and I've varied the methods a bit but the essential thing is to disturb the soil as little as possible in that way you preserve all the soil life the organisms which are in the soil are not knocked around bruised battered killed even by cultivations instead they're just left to get on with their work and build a soil structure air rate and drain and then an very important thing you can do as well to help them is to feed them so that's where mulch is come in putting organic matter on the surface what kind of organic matter is depends a bit on your climate here in Britain it's pretty damp mostly we have a lot of slugs so I find that compost works the best as a mulch because it does not give Habitat to slugs as far as possible this whole garden is kept permanently nowed throughout the a mulching not only helps to build up the fertility of the soil and suppress weeds that it provides ideal conditions for the soil organisms that is conditions that are relatively warm and dry in the winter and relatively cool and moist in the summer du to the conditions which are perished by the living soil organisms such as earth worms and inumerable microa and microfungi which are the main sources of [Music] fertility probably the the biggest thing is the importance of of capturing the sunlight and having a living plant growing on your soil as much as possible and then the interactions with the microbes it's so important for that plant that plant uh actually Farms the microbes it sends out hormones to communicate with them and it attracts certain microbes to that plant these microbes bring in nitrogen they bring in phosphorus they bring in micronutrients they bring in water and they actually protect that plant from other uh harmful microbes so what we need to do if we want to increase the diversity in the soil and get rid of some of these predator or some of these bad I should say the bad microbes in the soil you need to have light plants growing year round and that really improves soil well for example um every plant will have certain uh for example legumes will have uh um uh special bacteria that they put in the soil to make uh nitrogen that's the Ria that's the risia and then you have also the uh micro fungus and and the micro isal fungus go out through the soil like a network and uh so a corn plant by itself will uh be able to absorb uh explore about 1% of the soil but when you have these micro Rizal fungus they can explore up to 20% of the soil and they're about one tenth the size of a of a hair root and so they can get into the smaller cracks and crevices to bring back nutrients to that plant when you have Micro Rizal fun us they form such a network in the soil and they connect a lot of plants together there's a there's a place in Michigan uh that they've studied they have a 30 acre uh Woodland there and they found one major micro risal that attached to all those trees and it was sharing nutrients between the trees okay and between the plants and so 80% of our plants actually use these microa relationships when you till the soil it's a little bit like cutting off my arms and my legs I can't move around very much and the other factor is when we over fertilize then the plant says I don't need you micro risal I can get the nutrients on my own I got you so it shuts those down it shuts them down that's exactly right well you know I like to tell Farmers that I'm a lazy farmer and I just like to let the microbes and the earthworms do the work for me and if you do that uh they will actually recycle the nutrients they will till the soil and they'll do a lot of the work for them the only thing you have to do is you have to feed them now that we can begin to understand the effects living soil has on plants and the benefits of nurturing the health of soils there arises another question how do these plants affect the animals such as us humans who eat them as well as the wider macro ecosystem around us how does food grown in living soil compared to that grown with just nutrient inputs or in hydroponic systems so I think if we just look at the difference between soil and dirt you know soil is alive it has life it has biology um it doesn't just have bacteria there's fungus there's all sorts of organisms living in that soil and then you have also um a lot of additional things that we don't even know yet with different things that they produce um you know the the so um real soil is um it has a biology it has life dirt is pretty much dead I never knew I would get into this area but this is where I'm totally right into right now I'm so glad I'm talking to you because it's a it is the missing link to health um it's comes from the soil cuz most of the food in America is growing either hydroponically or aeroponically or even aquaponically and and um you don't it's not the same and so um what people don't realize is the the majority of nutrition in a plant comes from the plant roots eating the microb with the nutrition it strips it off pulls it in so we're not just eating plants we're eating probiotics by a factor of tens of millions of probiotics in your plant yeah I think there's a direct link there between what again going back to the soil uh where farming has been relying on synthetic fertilizers so that's the classic three of the nitrogen potassium and the phosphorus which are fed to plants as though until recently I think understandings might have moved on a bit but the way I I came across it in the ' 80s when I started as if plants were gobbling up sort of pure uh nutrients one one of those three and that was the three that made the big difference in growth and that ignores the whole biological interaction going on in salt but it also leads to as you've already hinted to hydroponic growing which really disturbs me because it's very much looking at plants as compositions of of individual nutrients and completely bypassing that whole biological networking that goes on in soil and helps plants automatically to balance to find what they need for Healthy Growth yeah yeah it's trying to create like even when you put I think in hydroponic there's there's a total of 15 minerals and you're trying to create Health from 15 minerals it's just it's not enough it's just you're creating something from nothing it's just impossible you know so um unfortunately yeah oh I I I I tried to grow tomatoes hydroponically through the win in my Greenhouse during the winter and uh I'll tell you the taste is nothing compared to these out of the garden just completely like there's nothing there just nothing it took me a while to figure this out but the Simplicity is that uh um you you get you can't get health from things that are are not alive um and so the more life some food has in it the that's where your health comes from so now we're talking about the soil how live is that soil is it or is it dead you know you till it it's now you're kill the microbes and now you're going to try to it's kind of like uh living off with an IV and a little bag of drips you're getting a little deos and minerals and we know the complication of that so um yeah yeah [Music] all of these cherries are from the same stock same kind of edible cherry and what's really cool is when the cherries are in fruit and I have a tour group I take them through to eat from each of these one two three four five six different cherries and I start them here and it's really sweet delicious cherry and they eat that one then I get them to eat this one and I get them to eat this one and the next one all the way to the last one that's up over there and I say I want you to taste the flavor of each of those cherries and some people will say oh yeah that's sweet oh that's delicious delicious delicious I said at the end I say can you taste the difference and they're like No And I said Okay take one of the cherries from that tree and then come down and eat that one and taste the two and then they notice the difference and I say that is the difference in the soil where the tree is growing these cherries are all the same kind of cherry the same breed the same kind to eat but the soil is different so that's where you get the different flavor and that's why hydroponic tomatoes taste so Bland whereas grown in soil a tomato will have a much bigger broader flavor of depth and sweetness or tartness or crispness and it's the soil that makes the difference and it's the soil that makes food healthy compost heaps are organic matter in different stages of decomposition so here we have the current compost he that's taken four weeks to fill up at that stage uh everything from the garden the thermometer there is reading 70 Centigrade that's as hot as you want to go really you can see it's got a foot long Probe on and what's going on here is decomposing the organic matter so that the work of the decomposition has happened before putting on the gun and then the the final product is decomposed enough that it's not in soggy lumps which like slugs can live underneath and slugs in this climate is number one p if you're in a dry climate where slugs are not a problem then maybe you don't need to do this you could put all this matter just straight on the garden as a sheet mulch rather than needing to make compost so this is not a given but I'm explaining that's what we do here and it's a nice kind of way of dealing with waste and keeping it in a tidy area and this one we filled in six weeks and finished a month ago so this is waste mostly from August and already this one actually is quite decomposed it's U sort of half finished compost or quarter even and the thermometer there is reading just over 50 CRA which is about 120 F and then going further on we turn these heaps just once I find that makes a significant difference after which it's a bit low of diminishing returns so turning means moving and mixing them up breaking up the lamps introducing air oxygen to feed the bacteria which means more decomposition and this Heap here was turned actually only one month ago and at that stage it was two months old compost so we're looking here at 3 Monon old compost and you can see it's 3/4 of the way to being usable so here we have compost that is now 8 months old it's started life as Garden waste early in the year and I'm just pushing my hand in it's beautifully soft and fluffy and there it is so you can see a lot of that is nicely decomposed broken down quite Frable quite lumpy and actually two more things I just point out one is sweet smelling and that's partly helped by the roof and if you haven't got a roof and this is in a wet climate you could have you know sheet of polye or anything to keep the rain off cuz otherwise it goes a bit soggy and the color it's not black black it's very dark brown a small point maybe but it's um it's a good sign of healthy compost and moisture levels you can squeeze it and no water comes out if you get more than two drops of water from compost it's a bit too soggy and maybe needs a bit of turning and fluffing up the fragrance of the soil somehow is more tenderness to me than the fancy fragrance of the flower the strength and sensitivity of Life held in the soil lets off waves of passion of a different sort passion not of a person but of my species that is gone insensitive to all that nurtures it and absorbs it at its end as I walk Barefoot I break down with passion so profound that it defies all descriptions oh soil my life [Music] [Music]

Channel: Bosco's Garden

Views: 20,436

Keywords: Soil food web, no dig gardening, living soil, Elaine Ingham, No till gardening, Shane Hatton, Teaming with Microbes, Jeff Lowenfels, Eric Berg Permaculture, Eric Berg Gardening, Jim Hoorman, Composting Soil Food Web, Composting Charles Dowding, Compost Charles Dowding, Compost no dig, Compost Elaine Ingham, garden mulching, no dig gardening how to start, Permaculture Documentary, Charles Dowding, wildlife garden, organic gardening, permaculture film, soil documentary

Id: bIpFApb-JbQ

Length: 19min 48sec (1188 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2024