Is There a Quick Way to Increase Your Soil Microbe Population?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.พ. 2025
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Love how you guys approach gardening as pragmatically/efficiently as possible. Built three 5ft by 5ft compost bays under the trees on my property recently (using discarded pallets, and t-posts I had). Leaves are going to fall right in them lol.
We bought a new house in January a few years ago and the soil was poor. The first spring I did fertilize the lawn and started building our compost piles. Since then we have only top-dressed the lawn and the gardens that we put in. We get a delivery of wood chips yearly, sometimes 2 loads to mulch areas and build our compost. Every other week when I cut the lawn I bag it and mix it into the newest piles while screening the oldest piles so I can spread out the compost. The lawn is looking greener, the areas that do not get sun all day long grow the best and the areas where there is sun all day long will turn brown in the summer, but those areas are getting smaller.
Did the professor just call me some sorta bacteria...well good. Rock on fermenting... I can't wait to hear his thoughts on composting. Great conversation 👌.
This is excellent information to share. We need more content like this, people need to learn how to enhance soil quality and performance!
Glad it was helpful!
Send me a adress and i send you some spesial water.
That dobbels your microbs every 24 houers. I did not Belice befor i try ..
Wood chips in a tarp. Wet the chips and cover. Each week open it and wet. After a year, you will have black gold full of worms n everything ready
This is exactly what I started doing about a month ago. I added coffee grounds from Starbucks and aged horse manure. I'm doing this for my sandy back yard here in Fl.
Like most gardening experts, some of what you say is great advice, and some of it is incorrect. I will say you're getting more right than most of the channels out there. Interesting material. Thank you.
Great info! I've started to put all my vegy leftover in blender and then put in my gardens. Thanks
Love hearing the knowledge flow between these 2
TLDR: If you build it, they will come!
Great conversation, wish I heard it sooner!
Thanks
Built our new gardens on rock and sand. Purchased soil for raised beds and made compost at the same time. The soil we purchased was fairly decent but I still needed to boost most plants with a compost tea. At the same time I mulched the plants with half finished compost. The gardens did great and we continue to build soil health with compost and mulching (mostly leaves and straw). You can’t go wrong if you’re willing to put a little elbow grease in!
If I was doing my garden again I would perform a once off subsoil to loosen the compacted subsoil and then let the plants, particularly deep rooted ones, do the work. Areas around the house where the excavators loosened soils are full of worms and life ahead of non tilled areas. Briars/brambles and dock plants are the best soil improvers ever - their roots smash through hard soil and make the bed for tree seedlings. And the next step is leaf fall.... a natural application of organic material every year. Nature will fix any problems no commercial products needed.
I would compost in place and the worms will come......I steal my neighbors leaves and add coffee grounds, and banana peels from the kids lunches at school (where I work). I ask the kids for them...lol, and they are happy to give them.
I can already think of at least one exception to the rule that inoculants don’t work, which makes me suspect there are other instances where this principle does not hold true: legumes that are inoculated with nitrogen fixing bacteria. If the soil does not have the nitrogen fixing bacteria to begin with, legumes that are inoculated with the symbiotic bacteria produce demonstrably greater yields than legumes that aren’t inoculated, because they aren’t limited by the N in the soil-evidence that the nitrogen-fixing bacteria survive along with them and are present in greater numbers than those without the inoculant.
Even “disease” organisms are interesting exceptions to this rule. What is is about these organisms that allows them to outcompete existing microbial life and shift ecosystem balance?
There are so many instances where I can think of things that can shift ecosystem balance: our changing climate springs to mind. The addition of pesticides. Also, land management practices like controlled charring/burning that Native Americans practiced in the midwest that permanently changed soil fertility to this day. Even something as simple as soil that is saturated after a rain-this will shift the balance of aerobic/anaerobic bacteria.
The ecosystem is always in flux, and we as gardeners are a part of shaping that ecosystem. I’m sure many inoculants don’t work, but I’m sure some do. Food for thought…
Rhizobium bacteria are a big genus, but they're commonly found naturally in soils that are especially rich in organic matter with adequate moisture and temperature range. Even the species that form relationships with legumes will spend life as free living organisms consuming organic material, and only begin to fix nitrogen once signaled by nearby legumes via isoflavonoid molecules excreted by the host plant's exudates and begin infection. I've grown both peas and beans in new gardens that have developed many nodules without inoculation.
That's not to say that inoculants don't help in specific situations, particularly in arid areas where irrigation and legumes are suddenly introduced and the hope is to have optimal nodule formation in the very first year. In the commercial world, money has no patience after all ;)
I've been known to steal some of my neighbors leaves on rake out day 🤣
excess of compost or nutrients = called eutrophic soil conditions
"Some of them are even smarter than some people I know" 😂
I collect our kitchen waste and make bokashi. To me the bokashi is a way to use the kitchen waste. In my area we aren’t really allowed to compost it. I have bought the EM1 bran. But I think the lactobacillus is the most important part just to ferment and keep the odors tolerable. And it speeds up the decomposition once the food waste is buried. Want to make my own inoculate in the future, cheap and easy.
Happy to get the fertility from the kitchen scraps into the kitchen garden 🪴.
Micros added to compost,horse poop & straw,kept wet and composted ,the micros break down the nutrients and make it easier for plants to absorb it . Healthier plants.
Microorganisms are everywhere. Adding them is a waste of money - that was the point of the conversation. If you have a pile pf compost, manure or straw, you have a pile of microorganisms .
@@maritimegardening4887 We have had amazing results with the micro infused compost.You need to think outside the box.Proof is in the results.
I love my microbes, they make me happy!
Build it and they will come
What’s the impact of using chlorinated city water on the soil?
Couldn’t disagree more about being able to significantly add microbial life to soil, especially depleted soils, directly through the use of inputs. And I don’t mean inputs that you go buy at a store or online, but ones that you can , and should, collect and culture yourself. Things like KNF’s use of Indigenous Microorganisms (IMO) collections from your local forests and inoculating your soils with it. Or JADAM and its microbial solution (JMS), which is similar to IMO, but just proliferated through different techniques. Or even the basic use of LABS or EM1, or incorporating activated biochar into your soils.
Yes, he is correct that a lot of microbial life is already in the soil/environment and just need to be given the proper conditions to thrive, but most soil in gardens and lawns and the average urban backyards are pretty limited in their diversity (and particularly bacterial dominated. It’s not just about the overall population of microbes that you need, but it’s also necessary to have a wide diversity of microbial life which can be significantly increased by using the above mentioned techniques of collecting and inoculating your soils with wild microbes.
There are a ton of soil biologists and expert practitioners that I think would greatly disagree with his perspective and have the data and anecdotal evidence to prove otherwise…Elaine Ingham, Matt Powers (Regenerative Soil), Chris Trump (KNF), Youngsang Cho (JADAM), Hankyu Cho (KNF), and on and on.
And not that it matters to anyone other than myself, but I’ve been able to significantly improve the quality of soil on my property (food forest and annual gardens) by directly incorporating the inputs from KNF and JADAM, without needing to add a 1-2” layer of compost on a year basis. Yes, I also use some compost that I make myself from the biomass and debris of my own land, and I also practice a lot of chop and drop mulching, but I could never begin to make enough to cover my 2+ acres of growing space with that much compost every year.
And from reading the other comments, it seems like I’m far from being the only one that disagrees with this.
Enjoy spending money on their courses and products I guess.
@@maritimegardening4887 Lol…clearly didn’t read my comment. I said inputs that you don’t buy, but make yourself. The only money I’ve spent was for the JADAM book (and really didn’t even need to), and some rice & brown sugar for making/storing IMO. Only thing you need to make JMS is water, leaf mold, a few potatoes (that you grow yourself), and a 5 gallon or larger bucket. Everything else can be easily learned on YT or from websites for free, just like someone watching your videos. I’ve never bought a single microbe inoculant product from anywhere, made it all myself. People can buy EM1, but you can also just learn to make it yourself…make my own LABS, my own Bokashi grain, my own JMS, my own IMO, and on and on.
@@tcoxor52 Apologies - I get a lot of comments and can't always respond thoughtfully to an essay. Short answer - I don't do any of that stuff and my garden is great. Robert doesn't do any of that stuff and his garden is great. I just keep it mulched and maybe once every 4 years add an inch of manure. Roberts main point is that your soil can only support the soil life it is able to support - so adding more soil life will not do much unless the soil has the organic matter to support it. Robert is drawing his information from a preponderance of information from soil scientists - so I'm not sure where that leaves us. Here is a podcast I recorded with a soil scientist on "improving your soil" pretty sure we touched on this topic as well. Maybe listen to that and get back to me. th-cam.com/video/GKrckiR1IZc/w-d-xo.html
What you’re missing is the game multiplier that happens when you include bacteria inoculated biochar. Supposedly a piece of biochar the size of a quarter holds the surface area of four tennis courts.
What about worm tea add worm castings what is that add
They add nutrients
JADAM is a way to introduce microbes to soil
Does this conflict with the thinking of Dr Elaine Ingham and Drs Johnson and Su?
What thinking of theirs in particular are you referring to?
@@maritimegardening4887 Firstly, I love your site and method of gardening. I am an avid vicarious gardener who lives via a very few growers I like. I intend to get my finger out and begin my own journey and have loaded up with truck loads of arborist woodchips, manure and bagged leaves. I also find Ingham and Johnson Su's thinking very interesting. Regenerative growing and cutting out additives that are killing the soil. The idea of adding fungal dominated compost to lacklustre soil to significantly aide the biology and Ingham's work on using a microscope to see what biology you have in your compost and soil and how to make sure you have the micro organisms that will benefir the crops that you are trying to grow. She doesn't say that they are naturally present. She talks about how to add them. Along with the Johnson Su bioreacter type methods, farmers are getting hugely improved harvests with ever decreasing inputs necessary. So I'm asking is there not a lot more that gardeners can do, especially if starting with poor soil, than just throwing your hands up and adding plant matter?
Yes it's in conflict, in the same way that scientific advice from experts like Dr. Linda Chalker-scott and the majority of published scientific research conflict. But if a person's anecdotal experience with Inghams and Su's techniques are helpful in any way, then I say go for it and have fun. The main thing in the end is to have fun, unless we're growing food to keep our families alive which isn't the case for most living in developed countries.
I have the best garden raised off~ground beds like Solomon they are parabolicaly sterilized Full of worms microbiologically infested with life especially minerals from the fish
Apparently this guy never heard of JMS.
If you want instant your better forget its not natural. There's seed~Time~harvest. If you want instant Better Just go to store you've missed the boat.
#SaveSoil
just started to make LAB,,,am i wasting my time ????
Reading this comment was a waste of time...
if it use it for bokashi it works! i dont think it is a waste of time
@@maritimegardening4887I’m curious as to why you might answer this way,? seems bizarre.
Just to be clear this is very very wrong. There are over 3,500 scientific studies to prove him wrong.
He said many things - so what, specifically, is very wrong; and since (according to you) there's 3,500 studies that prove him wrong about that thing - how about providing references, to just five studies in peer reviewed scientific journals, with page references so that I can easily confirm. Once I have confirmed those, I'll wait for the other 3,495...
@@maritimegardening4887 are you so closed minded that you can’t use google to prove that introducing microbes is beneficial? This guy says you can’t do that, if so then why does every soil scientist disagree? I’m not going to link case studies because it is easy to use google and I promise you can do it all by yourself.
This guy is confusing me, he said to add compost and then said not too.
Add compost (1-2” per year). Don’t add any microbes because they will just die in poor soil. Good luck.
@@bestill6635 ok that makes sense now
Funny how much of what he says is the opposite of what's taught at Rutgers as well as the opposite of many other soil scientists. Many times microbes die off because of lack of moisture. Adding them back in is helpful especially if you will be fixing the moisture issue that killed them... This whole video is a joke of an interview and definitely lost my subscription
somehow we'll find a way to move on...