Re: [compost_tea] more on soil chemistry facts

From: <soilfoodweb_at_aol.com>
Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2004 18:19:54 EDT

Hold on - when did I say what I think John is thinking that I said?

The "quote" as I take it from me was,

vivax_at_northlink.com writes:
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.
Have I ever said that?

Nope. My most recent thing is finding that soil in fact has all the
nutrients needed to support the growth of any plant. Nothing is in fact missing, at
least in all the soils that I'm had the honor to see the data.

How does that fact somehow get interpreted into the quote above?

We have to have the chemicals in soil in order to have healthy biology. We
have to have the set of organisms that can solubilize the plant-not-available
nutrients into plant-available nutrients.

Do they just somehow magically do that without air, water, food or housing?
Of course not. Those things have to right as well.

It is a boot-strapping process to build soil. If you dunp in the chemicals,
and the biology, will soil get built? Probably not. Water, soil structure,
combination of the organisms in the soil next to the roots has to happen too.

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.
Natural processes would build the nitrogen content in soil slowly, through
time, and dependent on water and organisms. But all the chemicals are probably
in the soil. The process that has to occur is to build up the biology so the
nutrients will be processed correctly for the plant you want to grow.

Succession moves through weeds, to early grasses and brassica, into
mid-successional grasses and vegetable crops, to late successional grasses and row
crops, to shrubs, to trees, and then to conifer at the climax community in any
system. The biology has to build, build, build through all these stages, and it
is the fungal biomass that best indicates what stage you are at.

So, poor soil? It isn't the chemicals, not the nutrients, that are missing.
The biology is not yet correct. Building has to occur. Build slow, the way
natural processes do, or can't we increase the speed, by getting the foods to
feed the organisms, and adding in the organisms themselves, to jump-start the
system?

John wrote:
I don't think microbial nitrogen-fixation is going to accomplish that in a
reasonable length of time for a farmer.

why not? You get the right N-fixers in the system, and you can fix 1000
pounds per acre in a summer. Ah, but you have to feed them right, and make sure
the N-fixers that can do this can live in that soil.

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.

There is evidence. Please check through the microbiological literature. I
know I've read some of these papers - they would be in Applied and
Environmental Microbiology. The last one I recall reading would have been in 2002 or
so......


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




Received on Wed Sep 08 2004 - 00:02:36 EDT

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