Teaming With Microbes

We now know that we can team with microbes in our soil to provide a growing medium for all plants that is superior to petrochemicals in disease resistance, drought tolerance, water requirements, productivity, yield, produce shelf life, plant nutrition levels and insect repellency.  And this is a only short list of  benefits!  We do this by cultivating large numbers and diversity of microbes that are the basis of the breakdown of organic residues into usable plant nutrients.  In our last newsletter, we listed the first 5 Soil Food Web Gardening Rules mentioned and recommended  in Teaming with Microbes, A Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web by Jeff Lownfels and Wayne Lewis.  Here are the next 7:

6. Aged, brown organic materials support fungi; fresh, green organic materials support bacteria.
7. Mulch laid on the surface tends to support fungi; mulch worked into the soil tends to support bacteria.
8. If you wet and grind mulch thoroughly, it speeds up bacterial colonization.
9. Coarse, dryer mulches support fungal activity.
10. Sugars help bacteria multiply and grow; kelp, humic and fulvic acids, and phosphate rock dusts help fungi grow.
11. By choosing the compost you begin with and what nutrients you add to it, you can make teas that are heavily fungal, bacterially dominated, or balanced.
12. Compost teas are very sensitive to chlorine and preservatives in the brewing water and ingredients.

By employing these simple guidelines (and more that will be presented in future newsletters) you can join with the microbe team which is ready and willing to create an ecosystem in your soil which will provide an extraordinary growth medium for anything you want to grow.  This team has been playing together for millions of years (they have their playbook down!) cycling dead plants into reusable material.  These guidelines allow you to set up your own “factory” of nutrient cycling in your yard and garden to achieve similar spectacular results in a child, pet, wildlife and earth friendly manner.

Used with Permission from Yelm Worm Farm.

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