Fixing the Soil

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by MicheleM, Mar 3, 2010.

  1. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    Eco, the plants and weeds growing in your soil will tell you what you want to know. Find out what they are and the conditions they need to thrive, and that's what's in your soil.

    and although it might seems like a daunting trip through chemistry to try to figure out what ought to be in the soil, the number one thing to remember is biodiversity and compost. The more compost made from the most ingredients will provide just what you need. Just as in human nutrition, soil nutrition needs a stew of ingredients to keep it healthy. We don't just eat one or two foods, we eat as big a variety as we can get. Aside from nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, everything else is needed in small amounts, so don't worry about the 87 trace elements that ought to be there. they probably are there because you've got weeds and plants already growing, right? Even if you added trace elements singly from a bag, every other soil chemistry circumstance would have to be right for them to be available to microscopic hairs on tiny plant roots. And that takes compost. And compost already has trace elements in it, so use it instead because it encourages soil microbial life.

    Find out the geology of where you are, what kind of rock formations, what are the layers of topsoil and bedrock made up of, sandstone? granite? Then plant the deep rooted trees to go get it for you, and compost their leaves. Plant clovers to pull the nitrogen out of the air and fix it in their root nodules. Plant as many herbs and flowers to bring in beneficials and add their chemistry to the mix. Go through neighborhoods with a shovel and big bags and scoop up the dead leaves in the gutter. Then you'll be fine. Feed the soil, not the plants. Feed it every two weeks during the growing season. Heaps, piles, mounds. :)
     
  2. purplepear

    purplepear Junior Member

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    I do love the way you think sweetpea and you express what I feel so well - thank you.
    Mark
     
  3. Grahame

    Grahame Senior Member

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  4. eco4560

    eco4560 New Member

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    Mee three... I have to confess to belonging to the Purple Pear / Sweet Pea - "the answer is organic matter" brigade.
     
  5. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    thanks, guys, how nice of you to say!! :)
     
  6. MicheleM

    MicheleM Junior Member

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    Question



    So I guess that ties into my original question: is there specific organic matter for specific nutrients to be added---I haven't seen Geoff add any rock dust in any of his videos---that could just be that it hasn't been included. I was just wondering if there was a way to increase soil fertility without using "amendments" and if we can get those nutrients by just planting/composting certain plants like comfrey and such? Forgive me, but I am way less experienced than most of you here and would like to learn the permaculture method and not the "traditional" method...
     
  7. MicheleM

    MicheleM Junior Member

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  8. MicheleM

    MicheleM Junior Member

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    THAT is exactly what I was looking for! Is there a good book you can recommend that can itemize which plants put which nutrients in the soil? I would prefer to do it this way instead of adding rock dust.
     
  9. purplepear

    purplepear Junior Member

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    Designing and Maintaining your edible landscape Naturally by Robert Kourik is a great book with charts on weeds as indicators and as dynamic accumilators. Though written in the US of A it is reasonable easily translated to Antopidean circumstance.
     
  10. purplepear

    purplepear Junior Member

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    A bit more info that may be helpful
    Product Details
    Pub. Date: March 2005
    Publisher: Chelsea Green Publications
    Format: Paperback, 376pp
    Sales Rank: 406,150
    ISBN-13: 9781856230261
    ISBN: 1856230260
     
  11. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    Michele, by 'amendments" do you mean chemicals in bags? I have yet to see any soil improve its soil microbiology with things from bags. :) If you grow your own plants to compost, if you've got room, that's a great way to do it. But biodiversity is crucial, and havng at least 5 ingredients in the compost pile gives it that well-rounded ability to provide a wider range of nutrients and food for your soil critters. So the compost should include clovers, herbs, flowers, leaves from tall trees that brought up important minerals, whatever grass and plant cuttings you can get, even from your neighbors or scouting out around neighborhoods and shoveling in fallen leaves from the street. And if it were me, I would pee on it for nitrogen :)
     
  12. Speedy

    Speedy Junior Member

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    A few other titles along the same lines...

    'Weeds and what they tell' Pfeiffer, Ehrenfried

    'Weeds and why they grow' McCaman, Jay L

    'Weeds- control without poisons' Walters, Charles

    All available through Acres USA book shop.
    https://www.acresusa.com/books/books.asp?pcid=2


    and Acres Australia bookshop for folks in Aust.
    https://www.acresaustralia.com.au/bookstore/
     
  13. SueUSA

    SueUSA Junior Member

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    Sorry, but the Soil B…. ah…Witch is back.

    “Your list of chemicals is lovely, but it's the chemical industry's solution to growing plants. We do have to deal with soil chemistry, but permaculture is about getting all those things naturally… I have yet to see any soil improve its soil microbiology with things from bags.”

    Well, la dee effing da! Great. Just wonderful. Here we have the natural elemental minerals that are REQUIRED for plant, human and animal health being lumped together with petroleum-based, man-made, quick-fix, incomplete chemical fertilizers. Don’t you even know the DIFFERENCE??? They’re NOT the SAME!

    “Eco, the plants and weeds growing in your soil will tell you what you want to know. Find out what they are and the conditions they need to thrive, and that's what's in your soil.”

    How about using this line of reasoning: If you have a good book of what plants and weeds indicate your soil deficiencies, all it tells you is what your deficiencies are. “Deficiencies” are what is in short supply or completely absent. So, if there isn’t enough of something there (aka ‘short supply’), or there isn’t ANY there (aka ‘totally absent’), and your whole area is the same (which is likely) where the bloody hell is it going to COME FROM?

    I read Charles Walters’ book Weeds. From it I determined that my soil was quite highly acidic and seriously lacking calcium, magnesium, sulfur and boron from all the rainfall. I can’t WAIT to hear what I should be growing to add enough of those elements (you know, from the Periodic Table of Elements?) to bring them up to the recommended level!

    “Aside from nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, everything else is needed in small amounts, so don't worry about the 87 trace elements that ought to be there. they probably are there because you've got weeds and plants already growing, right?”

    WRONG!

    “And compost already has trace elements in it, so use it instead…”

    So, where did the trace elements suddenly come from? We’re back to wishful thinking again, aren’t we?

    AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!

    “How do we know how much of any one nutrient is actually needed for soil to be "normal" or "healthy"? How do we know that the little patch that you test is an accurate reflection of the bit one foot to the left? Or 2 metres down where the tap roots go? How do we know that you need X amount of boron or whatever to grow a particular food species?”

    Agronomist Neal Kinsey was once collecting a soil sample for testing from the garden of a doctor. Chatting, Kinsey mentioned what percentages of the different minerals were needed for healthy soil. The doctor said something like, “Isn’t that interesting! Those are the same percentages that are found in a healthy human body.” Does anyone see the connection?
     
  14. butchasteve

    butchasteve Junior Member

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    Good post Sue,

    i have found it baffling how apparently (allegedly) planting the right plants can magically create elements in your soil. I was taught that matter (here being chemical elements) cannot be created from nothing. What some have spouted in this thread seems to be the agricultural version of alchemy.

    I understand if say the top 2m of soil is totally deficient of element x, and you plant something thats root system goes beyond that to the substrata of soil (>2m depth) which contains element x. but planting a green manure, or something of the likes cannot create element x unless it is brought there by the seeds itself. therefore compost made of organic material from said land cannot actually "create" element x, because it was never there in the first place..
    UNLESS
    as above, it gets brought there from deep in the soil/the actual seeds planted OR
    somehow (to my knowledge this doesn't happen but you never know) the plants actually take in the element x from the air. but is element x airbourne?
    OR
    it may be in the water, that is either rained or pumped there..

    Thats how i understand it.. Although if anyone has hard evidence of "agricultural alchemy" please notify the relevant authorities, as they will be very keen to hear about it.
     
  15. purplepear

    purplepear Junior Member

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    read some Ehrenfried Pfeiffer Sue - it may make a new person of you.
    Thanks for your input too Steve - it is the search for "hard evidence" that will keep you in touch with Monsanto and may contribute to your missing out on some of the wonderful things in life.
    Thank you both for the continued input into this debate.
     
  16. Grahame

    Grahame Senior Member

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    Sometimes I feel like I am on a roundabout with no exits :)
     
  17. purplepear

    purplepear Junior Member

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    Thats what you get when you miss on the swings - you get it on the round a bout lol
     
  18. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    Sue,

    I'm sorry, I just don't agree with you.

    and I don't understand what you mean by this:


    Butchasteve, Compost doesn't magically put minerals and nutrients into the soil. Large trees and deep rooted perennials pull up minerals and nutrients that aren't reachable by shallow roots of plants, and composting those leaves brings those minerals back up into the root zone of shallower rooted plants. If you bring in manures from herbivores (and those are the only kinds of manures we're supposed to be composting) that have eaten plants from elsewhere, you are bringing in minerals and P & K. Plus, compost is full of microbiology that can make minerals and nutrients that are locked away from plant roots in the soil, available to those roots. there's many levels of activity going on in compost, it's not just laying down nutrients that are already present.
     
  19. permasculptor

    permasculptor Junior Member

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    I got this comment off the main page
    https://permaculture.org.au/2010/03/23/compost-soil-fertility-a-shitty-topic/#more-2776
    I thought it was interesting and relevant.

    You’re right that Dr. Elaine Ingham (and Matt Slaughter Director of the Oregon Soil Foodweb Lab) are not recommending molasses in areated compost tea brewing. I hope its OK to write slightly long post to explain why no molasses in teas. While the results of compost tea around the world are incredible, and the general idea of making tea is accessible, like a lot of things the details, the details, the details…

    One of THE KEY things to understand about the soil food web is its relation/impact to the above/below ground ecology succession pattern. From a microbiological standpoint, there are a wide range of soils and each type of soil supports or favors certain plant groupings. This is so very vital in understanding how to work with soil microbes. The succession pattern is primarily based on the mixture or ratio of bacterial biomass to fungal biomass in any given soil. The succession pattern is visualized as a continuum: on the far left you have disturbed desert like weedy soils and on the far right you have an intact healthy old growth forest. In between these outer edges you have starting from the left side a continual increase in biological complexity and diversity moving from annuals to perennials.

    So, on the far left side of the succession pattern in a dry desert soil you’ll have a hard time finding visible fungi as fruiting mushrooms. These soils will typically have 8:1 bacteria to fungal ratios. Heavily bacterial dominated soils, alkaline (from bacterial secreted alkaline saccharides called slime) and Nitrogen cycled to plants in the form of Nitrate (NO3). “Weeds”, from a biological science perspective of pioneering annuals with mass seed production, love Nitrate. Now Move to the far right into the old growth conifer forest and you have a 1:100-1000 bacteria to fungal ratio. Fungi absolutely dominate in biomass in an old growth forest (think of Fungi guy Paul Stamets and where he lives in the old growth forest of the Pacific Northwet USA). The soil is slightly acid as fungi secrete acids during their externalized metabolic eating processes and the form of Nitrogen cycling in those soils is Ammonium (NH4). Trees like Nitrogen as NH4. Think of the continuum bacteria:fungi ratio looking like: 8:1______1:1________1:100-1000.

    This succession pattern can evolve “forward” from left (degraded soils) to the right (ever increasing plant complexity, annual to perennials). ANything we want to grow exists somewhere along the succession pattern continum: (following the left to right succession pattern) our broccoli and cauliflower Brassicaceae; then our tomatoes, cucumbers, corn and rice; then small herbaceous plants; then vines like grapes; then fruit and nut trees; then conifers. As you move from the broccoli towards the tomotes and so on you get an EVER increasing amount of fungi biomass in the soil. If we walk away from a patch of soil and let nature grow what it wants, whatever the bacteria:fungi ratio is will favor certain groups of plants somewhere along the succession pattern continum. Dr. Ingham’s and the group of Soil Foodweb Labs around the world have amassed a lot of growing data over 20 years where they can pin point the ideal bacteria:fungi ratio of just about any plant we want to grow.

    Disturbances drive the soil “backwards” or from right to left on the succession pattern. You get less fungal biomass, less perennials until it favors annuals, less humus and organic matter, less biological complexity above and below ground. Disturbances are: drought, flooding, fire, deforestation, overgrazing, compaction, inorganic fertilizers, fungicides, pesticides, plowing and tillage, (new research coming out showing) GMO plant and pesticide regimes, etc. I think its safe to say that most conventional industrial (and I would say a lot of ‘conventional organic’) agriculture is one big giant disturbance knocking the fungi out of the soil, pushing it “backwards” along the succession continuum and favoring plants that we might not want to grow.

    Before brewing compost tea, the trick is to know what your current soil state is in terms of bacteria:fungi ratio and its relation to what plant groups you want to grow and then use actively aerated compost tea with either a bacterial dominance or fungal dominance to “nudge” the soil in the right direction. Bacterial or Fungal dominated tea??? Yes, in any biological system when a food for one organism is present that organism tends to do well. Molasses is bacterial food: anything that is a simple sugar like molasses, fruit juice, maple syrup, glucose, fructose bacteria LOVE. Also, high nitrogen content stuff like manure or legumes. Bacteria will thrive. Fungi, on the other hand, are made to digest complex carbon chains like cellulose or lignin (think woody material). Fungi can eat things like humid acid, kelp. Feed the tea these things and fungi generally thrive (depending on a bunch of other conditions but this gives us an idea).

    So in our gardens or agricultural fields, yes even our ‘organic’ gardens (think putting natural non-chemical fungicide sulphur to control a powdery mildew outbreak doesn’t kill the good fungi as well? – all (in)organic fungicides kill both the good and the bad fungi but the bad guys repopulate typically more quickly) we tend to have degraded bacteria soil (not always but mostly). Because almost all cultivated soil that the Soil Foodweb Labs test is bacterial dominted (I’ve had a lot of agricultural soil here in Mexico tested and it confirms typical bacterial dominance) unless you want to grow Nitrate loving weeds you usually have to “nudge” the soil to more Fungal dominance. So you don’t put molasses in your teas because your soil usually already has enough bacteria – you want to focus on getting the fungi #s up.

    Comment by Doug Weatherbee — March 24, 2010 @ 3:42 am
     
  20. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    It just strikes me that this whole thread keeps pulling out specific nutrients, minerals, chemistry into single things, but the soil is a stew. We never really deal with just one of these things when we're working with soil. Everything is all in there, all mixed up. When we read about the soil it's always written in terms of single nutrient, which maybe leads us to believe we should be acting on single ingredients, but we're not scientists, and our soil is not exactly the same everywhere, so we add a stew of organic ingredients and eventually we get a good balance.

    It's the chemical companies that want us to buy fertilizer in a bag that have trained us all to think in terms of only nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, and consider all other chemicals individually. Isn't organic growing about adding as much biodiversity above ground and below with compost and mulch, so that we will let the forces that do what they do balance it out. We're not the mad scientists with bags of calcium and bags of sulfur controlling every single level of every single element in the soil. I don't think that is what permaculture is about. that's why we're using compost, that's why we're using mulches and getting three levels of root zones to bring up what we've got.

    And I've been using the phrase "soil microbiology" to include any kind of activity in soil that is happening that isn't the plant itself. It's a shortcut because it takes too long to type it all out. I meant it to include fungus, humus, humic acid, glomalin, centipedes, worms, beetles, microbes, etc. I think it's commonly used here that way. Maybe that isn't a complete enough phrase. Molasses is also expensive, but I haven't found that adding it in small amounts, like a cup per 33 gallons, which is then diluted by 50% into 66 gallons is going to destroy your soil fungus. It still takes pooping and dying microbiology to create the right environment for fungus. A balance that can be achieved by compost and organic mulches.


    And isn't the best indicator of soil health, worms? If you've got 8-10 in a shovelful of soil, it's telling you that your soil is full of just what they need. And just what they need is just what your plants need. they even make it better by pooping out what your plants needs :)
     

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