Re: [compost_tea] Re: Plum Curculio Response to Elaine

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 02:14:09 -0500

Took me a while to get this written! Look out, another treatise!

Hi Rick! –

I sure would like a wife myself. Support person, general confidant, all around helper, doesn’t need a salary. Anyone want to volunteer? Grin!

Steve D.– does this orchard rank as satisfying the successful organic orchard then? Not if Imidan is used, I suppose.

But Rick, try to work on cutting out the chemical toxin, if you can. And you should be able to IF we get the full food web into the system.

When organic matter doesn’t accumulate as humus, as I think you are describing by saying the clay soil devours the organic matter quickly, you are describing a VERY bacterial situation. I’d like to have actual data, of course, but in general, when you apply OM (organic matter) and it goes “poof!”, that’s bacteria at work. If you had fungal dominated soil, then you’d develop the humus layer, and the organic matter would hang around for about 6 months (half gone in one month, but then that last half takes longer, and develops humus, which helps build soil even better).

You wrote:
I don't have a "residual" problem. At least by "eyesight" methods. Which is obviously a simple minded method!

Yes, and simple is good. Occam’s Razor applies! When the organic matter disappears, it means you have some good biology. Good! Then, we need to figure out what biology. The fast way to figure it is to do the testing with SFI, but you can observe things and come to a pretty good conclusion about what’s going on. So, the decomposition being rapid is good, but now you are describing too fast.

With respect to soil structure being built, if you get a metal pipe, or a solid metal rod, about a quarter to a half inch diameter, and push it into the soil, when do you first notice that it gets harder to push the rod or pipe into the soil? Sounds like it might happen at about 2 feet.

So, how far down into the soil should roots of plum, or peach go?

Please don’t answer that question based on current horticultural thinking, because we have done things to our soils recently that force the roots to stay shallow. Before orchards are put in these days, we compact the soil by the management that we do, and then we think it is normal that tree roots are constrained to the top 6 to 12 inches. Bad, bad news for roots.

How far do roots go down on a plum tree? Way deeper than 2 to 2.5 feet. It sounds like you have taken some really compacted soil, and gotten things started. But in 15 years, we want to build soil that roots can grow into down to 20 feet.

Roots go through the water. They reach below the water table. Water has to have good aeration too, or the anaerobic conditions in the water will kill the plant roots.

You’ve gotten things started in your tough clay soil, but don’t stop now!

You wrote:
I live in Michigan, Zone 5, and have rich clay soil left by the receding glaciers. Problem is, no organic matter to speak of after the builders left us with the classic clay subsoil after grading the lot, etc. It's rich soil but devoid of organic matter as you know.

Your soil is very young, and all the nutrients you want should be in that soil. But you could have lost the calcium you need. That is very common in compacted soil. Nitrates, and those nutrients that move relatively rapidly with water will be lost too. Have to get them back. So when making your lasagna compost, add eggshells. Use your soft rock in the composting too. Not straight onto the soil, because any rock, lime, gypsum, N fertilizer, P fertilizer, whatever, is a salt. And salts kill organisms, pushing you backwards on the holding-nutrients scale of success.

You wrote:
I love adding the organic amendments and it is going to be hard to stop adding so much as you suggest. It's just plain fun for me, it's not work.

I DID NOT SAY TO STOP ADDING ORGANIC MATTER. I said STOP ADDING SO MUCH N!

Big difference.

Add organic matter to your heart’s content. Well, ok, in some soils it can be overdone, but in a clay soil of your description, you will not have to worry about that in your lifetime, most likely.

But please, differentiate between inorganic forms of N, and organic forms of N.

I have to laugh at chemical salespeople, who like to say, “N is N! It doesn’t matter where N comes from, or what form it is.”

Such ignorance revealed when they say that! Think about yourself – is the form of N important? If I handed you a glass of nitrate, what would happen to you if you drank it? Is the source of N important? Just try consuming your N as ammonia…

What is the form of N that people need? Protein. Comes as meat, dairy products, eggs, or plant material, including seeds, grains, nuts, etc. The form of N, and the source of that N are very important.

Plants need N as nitrate or ammonium, perhaps as protein. But nitrate is the most water-mobile form of N, nitrate is second, and ammonium is third. Organic N tied up in the bodies of bacteria and fungi are not leachable to speak of. Well, unless you mess up the soil seriously by adding so much salt…

So, cool it on the excess nitrogen. Keep adding organic matter.

You wrote:
I can't make compost piles on my lot as there is really no room

You can’t manage a pile that is 4 ft high and 6 foot wide in a corner someplace? Or several piles in several places? That you turn twice, maybe three times? OK, takes 4 months to be mature, but if you start with the right mix of organic matter, it almost composts itself.

You wrote:
and I don't want to turn the neighbors off.

Why would compost turn the neighbors off? Are you sure you are talking compost? Or are you are thinking of making putrefying organic matter, not compost?

Real compost DOES NOT STINK, EVER. Real compost does not have leachate coming out of it. Soggy, water-logged organic matter piles are just horrible, and are not compost. Don’t put that material on a plant you care about.

Why do so many people think compost stinks, draws flies, and has dangerous leachates? Because you have never been taught how to make compost, that’s what. Read the information by the Luebkes. Then read my information on compost. The SFI website is finally getting up, and if you go look tomorrow, I think all the stuff on compost will be up!

You wrote:
That's why I use the mulch mower and lasagna compost to decompose organic material. I wish I had a spot to make a compost pile but I don't.

You compost-in-place, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Just DON’T add so much excess N! You have enough already.

You wrote:
Finally, I didn't want to give you the wrong impression about my trees and plants. They are growing extremely well IMHO. The
fruit is delicious, dense and healthy. Same for veggies. Flower beds grow good flowers and I don't appear to have any excessive leaf growth that you would expect with too much N application.

Phew! Good. But you know what? It can be better.

You are still doing something to attract PC. So AACT is working for you, and if you keep working at the AACT, you’ll probably deal with the PC.

You wrote:
2- I buy most of my compost from a store that sells Forest Floor compost that has wood chips and manure as the ingredients. I definitely see fungal strands in that compost. Mushrooms grow from it when applied to the soil occasionally. Is that a good sign?

I want to see a diversity of mushrooms, not just one kind. Every time you are out walking in the forest, and see good fungi growing in the forest humus, take some home with you. Good fungi can be pink, yellow, gold, lemon, brick color, red, mustard, and of course, white.

You wrote:
The dogs have a favorite spot to pee and do leave a brown spot.

Hum, work on getting the food web right in there. Needs help, or the organisms would take care of the excess inorganic N. Add EXTRA tea to that area.

The paths that develop because of the dogs is really a result of running on the soil when it is wet. And not having truly great soil structure. I’ve pounded 500 pounds weights on really good soil, and seen no compaction develop, because the biology was really in good shape, good chemistry was in place. Amazing – the soil squishes, but then springs back. OM level of around 8%, of course. Structural integrity requires the building materials to be in the soil, and the foods to feed the organisms. OM does both jobs.

You wrote:
3- "Exit the bloodmeal" no please don't say that, I love how a
little bloodmeal helps growth. Anyways I'll do what you say and stay away from bloodmeal for now.

Why don’t you try a few experiments? See whether bloodmeal is really needed, if you get the full foodweb in place. Do the bloodmeal, no bloodmeal, and then a full foodweb treatment. Full foodweb - compost in the spring, tea drench of the soil in the spring, core to the bottom of the root zone, drench cores with straight tea, fill cores with sand (70%) and compost (30%), the foliar applications each week, or as needed to deal with diseases and pests.


You wrote:
I'll also try to limit the alfalfa and feeds I put in the yard but that soil of mine devours any organic matter I place on it. That stuff is gone within two weeks in mid-summer applications. Do I really have to reduce those applications? It's just so much fun for me to add these things. I know that sounds weird but I do enjoy it.

Limit the alfalfa meal. You just don’t need it. Put on a bit more carbon, to feed the fungi better. You should see litter decomposition slow down compared to what you have right now. Too bacterial! Use some feathermeal, or corn gluten instead of anything with high N levels.

You wrote:
4- I use bonemeal alot to add calcium. Is that a bad thing. I get very good flowering, etc., with bonemeal. Why do you say I have an iron problem? All plants seem to be deep green, healthy and growing densely. No chlorosis is seen.

I think I was talking to people who have compaction problems, and addressing a possible situation that is common when compaction occurs. Sorry, I stopped concentrating on you, and started doing general teaching. You can take the professor out of the University, but you can’t stop the professor from teaching.

You wrote:
I always grind up the leaves with the mulching mower and never leave them whole to decompose. I don't see fungal strands in the leaves as they are decomposing but they do decompose quickly.

Yep, strongly bacterial decomposition, which is good step one and two, but now, to move beyond that and get humus you need steps 3 through 12. Need to get the fungi going, you want to start seeing those strands. In the lawn, ok, no, it needs to be bacterial, but you want more fungi present so the OM you add doesn’t go “poof!”. But not too great fungal. Yes, you are right, balance is important.

But under the trees, help the fungi to the best you can. The beneficial fungi, right? Don’t want to have the disease fungi, and that’s where creating the habitat is so important. Foods to feed the good guys, homes for them to live in. AIR! Water, food, comfort.

You wrote:
The soil devours the leaves. I mean it Elaine - the soil devours the leaves. In fact, you can't visibly see most of the leaves I mulched last October. I have a lot of worms, so maybe they're mixing up the organic matter and soil?

Exactly! You have a lot of Lumbricus, or night crawler types of worms. These guys like to take litter material and take it into their burrows, and grow herds of bacteria and some fungi. The leaf material is important – I think. Well, pretty sure. We need more work on this but green grass clippings will grow mostly bacteria, while oak, conifer needles, will grow mostly fungi. So, the kind of carbon determines whether the soil where the worms are will be fungal or bacterial. But the presence of the worms is a good indicator you don’t have pesticide residues. I didn’t catch you saying this before, but you did say it. So where you have worms, the soil food web has good bacteria, protozoa and nematodes, but you still lack fungi for your trees.

6- My objecive with adding feeds is to provide organic matter and fertilizer. That's all. I hear you when you say I'm overdoing it. I'll limit those applications. However, it's so much fun for me to add those things. They decompose quickly IMHO, but I'll try to limit those feeds.

Limit just the nitrogen, ok? Keep the organic matter additions.

7- I use molasses to hasten decomposition of the organic material I'm adding to the soil. Didn't that help in getting 2.5 feet of clay loam from clay subsoil in 15 years? I'll limit this to grassy areas mainly in the future.

The molasses helps the bacteria, and so would be ok in the grass areas, and in the veggie garden, BUT NOT the trees. OK?

8- I mainly add cornmeal or oatmeal to the ACT along with kelp, rock powder and 1 Tbl. of molasses. That's about it for the majority of my brews. I generally see some fungal threads in the tea, they're small but they're there. I don't know the percentage however.

So, a test might be a good idea. I expect you could drop the molasses in the tea, you have enough bacteria, you need to let the fungi have their day.

9- I definitely see fungal growth in the ACT dregs. Mushroom growth sometimes happens from the areas I drop the dregs. Not always, just sometimes. Remember though, I've only used ACT for two years now. Is that enough time to expect permanent soil changes?

Yes, that’s enough time. Example: We put one application of fungal compost on a soil that had been at pH 4.5 for as long as anyone knows, and the conventional approach said to add 8 tons of lime per hectare, to fix pH. Every year, pH shifted upwards for a few weeks, and crash! back to 4.5. One application of fungal compost, and the pH rose to 6.8, and has stayed there for the last 12 months. Ah, soil chemistry folks, tell me again that soil biology doesn't control soil pH?

Mushrooms are good signs. But over-apply N in the tree area, and that will set up a stressful situation for the trees.

11- Lasagna compost - I would say about 1/3 manure and 2/3 leaves. Generally, I see that "white" fungus growing on the manure chunks. Is that good?

Yep, good. Add those handfuls of fungi that you collect on walks in the forest to the lasagna compost. Take a handful of your lasagna compost next spring – see all those little critters just barely visible? The little white guys? The little reddish ones?

You don’t see them? Well, I have to admit my eyes are no longer able to focus on them without some help, so get a magnifying glass. If you see them, they are even better indicators that life is fungal in that soil. You should see at least 10 to 20 per handful of the compost. If not, you don’t have enough fungal life, and you know then what you need to work on.

12- Spreading the dregs from my juicing is just to use the organic matter. Much like a lasagna compost. That's all. I sometimes see that "white" fungus growing on the pulp but I usually water the pulp into the soil and don't see much of that fungal growth. I water it in because it attracts too many flies.

What does attracting flies mean? Putrefaction is happening right, but what exactly draws flies? Any kind of alcohol. and the anaeorbic products such as hydrogen sulfide produced only in anaerobic conditions. Which means your S, or N, or P has gone where?

Can you put the juices into the lasagna compost areas instead? You aren’t helping the trees with the juice. In the veggie garden – ok, as long as you do water it in. Bacteria grow so fast in juice material, and if there is poor aeration, you have anaerobic conditiosn no time flat.

13- There you go again Elaine. Telling me to limit the application of the meals, etc. LOL. I'll try Elaine but I just love to apply those meals. It's fun. (I know - I'm wacko.) But you have a great point - the birds are pooping and fertilizing the yard.

You just like to be out enjoying all the great things you have done in your yard. I know the syndrome. I have the same problem (grin!) But, to not attract PC, and so avoid the insecticide you are applying, do just this little bit more. Limit the NITROGEN.

Don’t confuse Nitrogen with organic matter though, ok?

14- Mulch mowing dead veggie material. Just more "lasagna" type composting. I can't make a compost pile where I live. Too
unsightly for the neighbors, etc. I wish I had more room!!! I
helped make huge compost piles when I was young and worked for a landscape company. I know how to do it but just don't have the room here.

Ah, what did those compost piles smell like? Were you really making compost, or just reducing waste?


15- Boiling leaf tea. Just more of my wacko gardening practices. I learned this from my grandfather and he swore by it. He felt it gave a good dose of tannic acids, etc., to the soil where it helped "feed the soil". Mainly maple and oak leaves are what I collect. Of that, most are oak leaves. There are some beech, birch, hickory and other hardwood leaves in the mix because some of the leaves I collect come from a nearby forest where I walk the dogs.

OK, good fungal foods. Keep doing that under the trees.

16- Coffee grinds, just another organic amendment this wacko adds to his yard. Evergreen shrubs get the majority of this stuff.

Dig in what you have put down. See any fungi? Then ok. If no fungi, get some really fungal material (Alaska humus? Check the SFI website for fungal products, fungal compost and get some as an inoculum. Or put your boiling oak and maple leaf tea on the coffee grounds. Keep it fungal under the evergreens.

17- Freshly ground corn and crimped oats. Just adding more organic matter. More wacko behavior - LOL. The materials seem to decompose very quickly.

At the risk of sounding just as “wacko” as you (big grin!), you want to slow that decomposition just a bit, then, by getting fungi in there.


18- Human urine - wacko behavior again. Just adding organic
material. It doesn't "burn" the grass and the grass is mainly where I apply it.

This is different from what you said in the previous post, I think. As long as you aren’t seeing burning, you probably have the biology to deal with this high N addition. And in the grass, no problem. Under the trees – make sure it would go on top of an area with good lasagna compost, or wood chips. It does help the bacteria much more than the fungi.


19- Ok, I get it Elaine LOL. I'm adding too much fertilizer. It's going to be so hard for me to stop doing these things. I love doing it so much!! What advice can you give to limit the habits of an obvious wacko?

I probably should have a some tissue analysis, but my plants grow so well that I never saw the need for one. Isn't it possible that PC is migrating to my area from adjacent forests and neighbors trees?

Yes, but all insects "migrate". We protect plants from white flies, spider mites, scale, and other insects, so why not PC? The insects are attracted to your trees, coming to investigate what looks and even more, smells like a good site, but something is encouraging them to then to stay. Make it less inviting for them, and more inviting for the organisms that would like to make a meal of any PC that come to visit.

So, again, check your microarthropod community. Get the magnifying glass out and go on safari looking for big game.

Well, it’s big game from my point of view. Remember, I’m a microbiologist! Those springtails, mesostigmatids, prostimatids, etc are lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) to the critters I usually look at!

You wrote:
Btw, I don't have any weeds to speak of. When one pops up I just yank it out by hand.

Excellent! That’s as it should be. But consider the fungal cover crop plants under the trees. Maintain the fungi, the mycorrhizal fungi and the higher level predators and shade and block out the weeds at the same time.

I really enjoy getting into the specifics, but you can see that I can't often do this. For folks that want this kind of one-on-one interaction about what to do for problems, please check the SFI website, and contact an SFI adviser, and get them to help you do what I've started to do with Rick.

OK? Hope this helps!

Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
SFI Corvallis, OR
SFI Port Jefferson, NY
SFI Lismore, NSW, Australia
SFI Hilversum, The Netherlands
SFI Cambridge, New Zealand
www.soilfoodweb.com

 

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Received on Fri Jan 09 2004 - 02:34:20 EST

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