[compost_tea] more on soil chemistry facts

From: John Cowan <vivax_at_northlink.com>
Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 23:01:44 -0700

Ted,

Your experience with the park is interesting. Funny how a healthy lawn is
not sufficient evidence for success. Chemical soil testing is generally
dubious in my opinion. To extract nutrients with ammonium acetate, or some
variation there of, does not equate to what is available to a plant root.
The idea is based on strictly chemical notions. You know those charts
showing the solubility of nutrients across the range of pH. It is all based
on chemistry not chemistry modulated by biology. Also, I am surprised that
chemical people acknowledge the value of a plant brix reading.

A couple of comments. No doubt bacteria give up waste products but it was my
understanding the protozoa and nematodes were primarily responsible for the
cycling of nutrients. Of their waste products, a small percentage of this
stream is accessible to plant roots. The rest goings back to lower microbes.
Plus, of course, mycorrhizal fungi pipe in nutrients directly.

I agree with David's comments yesterday questioning that any plant in any
soil can have the ability to thrive if only the biology is sufficient. This
discussion as well as the whole compost tea paradigm has a number of seeming
holes in it. For instance if you have a poor soil and you are wanting
microbes to reproduce and expand their numbers, where is the nitrogen coming
from to build their proteinacious bodies if not from applied materials. I
don't think microbial nitrogen-fixation is going to accomplish that in a
reasonable length of time for a farmer. Is it going to come from the
nitrogen in the assayed "organic matter" of the soil? As you probably know,
each 1% of soil organic matter represents 1000 lbs. of nitrogen in the top 6
inches of soil but it is not something you would want to use up to grow a
crop and increase microbial bodies. Over the years, people have implied that
massive nitrogen fixation can happen in an organic system but the evidence
seems lacking that this is highly significant.

Soil nutrient availability, plant health and soil microbial health are all
related. Improving one helps the others if it is not overtly harmful. Foliar
feed nutrients can improve improve plant health and soil nutrient
availability via exudate feeding of rhizosphere. Just adding active soil
microbes can improve nutrients and plant health. Adding low-salt nutrients
can improve microbes and plants. To what degree and in what ways is the
meaty question, though.

Do the plants control the microbes or do the microbes control the plant? I
have heard it both ways. Of course, it seems in a healthy manner it is
symbiotic or mutualistic. Helping one helps the other. In what ways exactly
and in what multi-layered fashion? I don't think we know.

John Cowan


  -----Original Message-----
  From: Ted Peterson [mailto:ted.peterson_at_tcsn.net]
  Sent: Sunday, September 05, 2004 3:45 PM
  To: compost_tea_at_yahoogroups.com
  Subject: Thomas' response to Re: [compost_tea] soil chemistry facts


  Thomas:

  Try this as a thought experiment:

  1. Active bacteria feed.
  2. They do not have digestive tracts but feed and get rid of wastes
through osmosis and diffusion.
  3. To break down the food they need, they release enzymes or use material
broken down by the enzymatic action of other bacteria/fungi and higher order
living things.
  4. Different bacteria feed on different nutrients (for the bacteria) and
diffuse different waste products.
  5. Plants use the waste products as food. When the plant wants more food
of a specific type, they send out messengers that the bacteria need to feed.
The bacteria feed and release waste that the plant uses.
  6. While a lot is known about the process in general, specific bacteria
that give the plant specific nutrients is still in the discovery stage.

  So while I can make a general statement that I have been running a park
for almost three years without adding any inorganic or organic nutrients and
that the plants are healthy by plant assay, I can't make the same statement
about the soil health. The soil actually shows low in many nutrients,
however, the CEC has remained constant (24 to 28) which means that the
capacity for the bacteria to feed is there. Specific nutrients indicate low
and the tests come back with recommendations to add certain things to get
the amounts in soil up to where traditional plant maintenance practices says
they should be. However, the plant assays don't indicate the same thing.
The brix is up and plants test healthy across the spectrum. I argued this
point the the Park Maintenance personnel until they finall threw up their
hands and agreed to leave the park alone. It was a hard sell though.

  I use A&L Labs. If I followed their indications based on soil tests, I
should be adding all kinds of stuff to the park. I talked with them by
phone and mentioned that the plants they were testing came from the soil
they were testing. They flatly stated that that couldn't be true because
plants coming from the soil they tested should have been way below norms for
brix and other indicators.

  It is important to remember that ACT does not directly feed the plants.
Sure there may be some residue of N in the tea but it is not enough to feed
a plant. So what is going on?

  Bound minerals and nutrients can be made available through bacterial
enzymatic action. Given decay, rain cycles and a soil biology healthy for
your area, plants should be able to self sustain with little input. This
means that you have to have a time table that plants operate on not
necessarily a customer's time table. If you absolutely have to have it
greened up on a couple of weeks, add what you need to but understand that
this added NPK does nothing for your overall soil health and may actually
decrease overall soil health.

  It is a hard shift from plant centered methodologies to bacterial centered
methodologies because all the tests we use are based on practices that
directly feed the plant. There is no test that shows bacterial/fungal
potential in the soil to produce exactly what the plant needs when the plant
needs it. This is a hard sell to maintenance people who are sitting with a
warehouse full of chemicals and a computerized schedule that says: Apply
chemical X during June and Y during September.

  Ted Peterson
  EW/SOE


    ----- Original Message -----
    From: Thomas Giannou
    To: compost_tea_at_yahoogroups.com
    Sent: Saturday, September 04, 2004 5:49 PM
    Subject: Re: [compost_tea] soil chemistry facts


    Elaine,

    I never said you are against compost and I have never entertained the
thought. I am simply saying there are different sources of nutrients ending
up in the plants (nutrients which are released from the soil by the
organisms, nutrients which are in the compost, and nutrients which are in
the various tea applications). There are also other sources of nutrients
being added.

    In your original message you were saying all the nutrients plants need
are already in the soils (but are mostly bound up) and all we need to do is
add compost / food with the organisms to release those bound up nutrients.

    My question was that when we look at what nutrients are in and on a
plant, how can we differentiate between the nutrients that are in the
compost VS nutrients that are in the tea VS the nutrients that are released
from the soils that eventually end up in a plant? You said "We don't need
to differentiate between nutrients in compost, versus the not-soluble set of
nutrients in soil. Often, we don't have enough compost to put down all the
needed-for-growth nutrients that you plants need."

    I read in your original message that you said all the nutrients were
already in agricultural soils that plants need and that none need to be
added. When I consider what people are adding to their compost and to their
teas, and the fact that chelated minerals are in teas, then it's highly
probable that those organic and inorganic nutrients in compost and tea are
ending up in the plants.

    It seems clear to me that data needs to be collected about the nutrients
(organic and inorganic) made available from the compost as well as the
nutrients being made available from various tea applications and the
nutrients that are being solubilized out of the soils by the organisms when
you consider what nutrients end up on or in any given plant. If you don't
collect that data about the organic and inorganic nutrients that are in the
compost, tea and soil, and somehow tie it to what ends up in the plants how
are you going to present any relevant data about the nutrients that are
coming out of the soil that are ending up in the plants? How are you going
to define what nutrients are coming out of the soil when you also have
nutrients coming out of the compost and the tea that are going into the
plants?

    In prior conversations about compost tea, you said compost tea was
loaded with chelated minerals. If compost tea is being applied frequently,
then it seems like there would be a fairly high probability that the
inorganic elements that ended up in a plant have come from the tea. Lot's
of people are putting trace minerals into their tea and into their compost.

    What data can you present in this situation that shows how many
nutrients are being made available out of the soils VS the nutrients that
are being made available out of the compost VS the nutrients that are being
made available out of compost tea applications and how can you tie that data
to what actually ends up in or on a plant? I keep coming back to this
question because it seems reasonable to know which source the nutrients are
coming from that end up on and in a plant before claiming that the soil
contains all the nutrients that plants need.

    --Thomas Giannou
    http://www.tandjenterprises.com

    ----- Original Message -----
      From: soilfoodweb_at_aol.com
      To: compost_tea_at_yahoogroups.com
      Sent: Saturday, September 04, 2004 2:39 PM
      Subject: Re: [compost_tea] soil chemistry facts


      Thomas -

      Parent material is the mineral fraction of the soil. This is a
standard soil term.

      I did not say that there is an inconsequential amount of nutrients in
1 to 3 tons of compost. Please re-rread my e-mail.

      When you consider soil that has less than 0.5% organic matter in it,
and you need to have the total set of nutrients or even the exchangeable
nutrients turned into available nutrients for the plants, you either have to
add compost, with all of the great sets of available nutrients in it, or (!)
you have to add compost so the great set of diverse organisms in it begin
the job of solubilizing the massive set of nutrients locked up in the soil
parent matterial.

      You are trying to make it sound as if I was arguing against compost,
when my message was nothing of the kind.

      I don't like when someone tries to get argumentative, and tries to
tell me I am saying something that I never said! Please stop doing that.

      The organisms - whether from compost, or compost tea, will solubilize
the massive set of total nutrients tied up in plant-not-available forms in
the soil.

      The point of my message was that INORGANIC FERTILIZER is absolutely a
waste of people's money, except for that short period of time when you are
trying to get the organisms established, and have to have soluble nutrients
present for your plants don't die of lack of available nutrients.

      Elaine R. Ingham
      Soil Foodweb Inc., Corvallis, Oregon
      Soil Foodweb Inc., Port Jefferson, New York
      Soil Foodweb Institute, Lismore Australia
      Soil Foodweb Institue Cambridge, New Zealand
      Soil Foodweb Inc., Hilversum, The Netherlands
      Laboratorios de Soil Foodweb, Culiacan, Mexico
      Soil Foodweb Inc., Jerome, Idaho





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Received on Mon Sep 06 2004 - 03:49:02 EDT

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