|
|
Post by jondear on Mar 12, 2015 10:10:36 GMT -5
I don't know how to provide the link, but, I find soil minerals.com interesting. I've been thinking of ordering the book.
|
|
|
|
Post by mskrieger on Mar 27, 2015 15:00:49 GMT -5
So, I'm coming in with another plug for Solomon. I actually wrote to him for advice once, and he emailed me back and did a free soil analysis for me. This was before "The Intelligent Gardener" came out. So I bought it when it did. If you ignore all the personal details and grouchiness, it's really quite helpful. The major points:
1. Gardening is soil mining
2. Knowing your geology is helpful.
3. Specific food traditions evolve for specific reasons--people who follow them survive and thrive, those who don't, don't.
So for example, there are parts of New England that are lacking in certain trace minerals that humans and their livestock need to survive. Native Americans living here remedied that by eating lots of seafood (inland tribes traded for it, or harvested salmon and shad and cod from the enormous spawning runs that used to happen inland before we dammed up all our rivers.) Modern farmers deal with it by importing selenium and feeding their livestock mineral supplements.
As a gardener in the current era, I count myself lucky to be able to get soil tests and amendments at low cost. Over the long term, I'm interested in capturing and recycling as much of those nutrients as possible through humanure composting. (And I'll track the effect on my land through soil testing! Yay! OMG that's geeky. ANyway.) I read Solomon, take the good stuff and ignore all the bah humbug and weird personal details (like I can't believe how many times he's been married. Nor that I can actually tell how many wives he's had just from reading his gardening books. Dude, get an editor.)
PS I also find his advice about unirrigated gardening to be excellent. I don't garden that way entirely, but his careful advice and experiments gave me options that allowed me to do my trials more effectively.
|
|
|
|
Post by mskrieger on Mar 27, 2015 15:03:50 GMT -5
oh and forgot to mention--other gardeners in my neighborhood are always amazed at how big and healthy my plants are, and how good the vegetables taste. Indeed, it's worked exactly as he promised. That's why I continue to consult Solomon's methods, they work for my garden.
|
|
|
|
Post by MikeH on Mar 28, 2015 15:49:18 GMT -5
There is one massive omission in The Intelligent Gardener. If you have an electronic copy, scan for microbiology and myco. The book never mentions microbiology or mycorrhiza. Fungi is only mention twice. He does mention soil biology but in a critical way when he talks about Rodale. For this kind of book published in 2013, this is completely unacceptable. In the acknowledgements, he mentions people posting at the soilandhealth forum including Steve Diver and Hugh Lovel. Both make strong references to the role of mycorrhizal fungi. He makes special mention of Michael Astera and his The Ideal Soil - A Handbook for the New Agriculture. Astera talks about mycorrhizal fungi often in the book. Did Solomon not read Astera or does he reject the role of mycorrhizal fungi?
He says things like:
Is he saying the a highly mineralized balanced soil is all you need? Solomon's a bright boy but he's pig-headed stubborn. And that doesn't help his credibility.
|
|
|
|
Post by mskrieger on Mar 29, 2015 12:54:27 GMT -5
Mike,
It doesn't seem as if Solomon is denying the role of mycorrhizal fungi in the food web. It's merely outside of his purview. He's talking about basic, reductionist chemistry and geology. If the mineral isn't there in enough quantity, no amount of soil biology is going to fix that. Indeed, what he's saying (at least as I read it) is that if your soil is mineral-balanced, the soil biology blooms into full glory.
FWIW, It's also worth noting that Solomon is a fan of tillage, and tillage encourages a bacterially-dominated soil ecology. However, his recommendations work for those who practice no-till as well.
|
|
|
|
Post by MikeH on Mar 31, 2015 16:18:40 GMT -5
Mycorrhizal fungi should be part of his purview. Solomon uses soil testing to determine mineral deficiency in the soil. [M]ost soil tests only tell us what is soluble in the soil. They do not tell us what is actually there in the soil. Not surprisingly, [t]here has been less interest in the total levels of nutrients in the soil from an agronomic viewpoint, as they are often poorly correlated with plant availability. However, mycorrhizal fungi make insoluble soil minerals available to the plant in a form that they can use. Phosphorous is a good example. Routine soil tests for P do not analyze for the total P content because the amount of soil P in plant-available forms is always much less than the total P. But [o]ne of the major effects of mycorrhizal fungi inoculation in plants is the increase of phosphorus absorption ability, by the direct activity of the extramatricial mycelium that allows the exploration of the soil volume. In this way, the mycorrhizal arbuscular fungi make up another chance in the process of getting nutrients for the plants, particularly phosphorus. BTW, tillage kills mycorrhizal fungi. Mycorrhizal fungi need soil organic matter (SOM) and carbohydrates which they get from plants in exchange for nutrients in a form that the plant can use and water. Soil mineralization doesn't produce mycorrhizal fungi. I'm not saying that mineralization isn't necessary. Depending on how depleted one's soils are, it's the only way to quickly restore the soil. Building SOM and waiting for soil life to fix things is probably a long process. I've not been able to find any information on how long a natural process might take. Even after you mineralize, is it necessary to do it continuously or will the mycorrhizal fungi replace what has been extracted? Who knows? I suppose it depends on how long the cycles are between a food-growing extractive years and soil-growing green manure SOM years. Again, I've not been able to find any information. What did we do before soil tests? Before mineralization? Did we always move on when we depleted the soil? Did we always deplete the soil? |
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Mar 31, 2015 17:36:54 GMT -5
BTW, tillage kills mycorrhizal fungi. I wonder by how much? And if it matters? Roots of many garden vegetables penetrate 8 to 12 feet deep. I suppose that the fungi are growing right along with the roots. So if I till super deep, say 6", then that's still only 4% of the soil volume that the fungi and roots are using. And if I do routine cultivation of weeds, at 1" deep, then that's disturbing less than 1% of the space used by the roots/fungi. And it seems to me from watching them grow, that fungi are self-grafting, and self-regenerating. Any part of the fungi can re-grow itself and can graft itself to any of it's kin with which it is compatible. |
|
|
|
Post by steev on Mar 31, 2015 19:07:36 GMT -5
I confine my tillage to 8-10' lanes separated by never-tilled 5-6' tree-lanes, in which I leave branches and many weeds to rot; I figure that leaves plenty of un-tilled reserve for fungi, even if I do scalp a few inches off it when/where I till.
|
|
|
|
Post by MikeH on Mar 31, 2015 19:12:42 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Mar 31, 2015 19:51:07 GMT -5
To me, it seems like the marketing of mycorrhizal fungi is akin to selling snow to an Eskimo. First thing to do is to sell people sterile potting mixes... Then since the soil has been sterilized, you can sell them some fungi that associate with plants. So you get to sell sterile potting mixes and also the fungi to unsterilize the potting mix. That's like selling snow to an Eskimo, and then selling them snow-removal services. The fungi is already abundant in the ecosystem, so I have a hard time believing that inoculating non-sterilized soil would have a beneficial impact. I think it's similar to the rhizobia nitrogen fixing bacteria. They are already widespread in the ecosystem, and the only place they make a difference is when starting legume seeds in sterilized potting media.
I have been making my own potting mix this year from garden soil and leaf-mold compost. I'm loving it!!! I might never use a sterile potting mix again. It's a lot heavier than commercial potting mixes, but that seems to be a good thing, because it doesn't dry out so quick.
|
|
|
|
Post by reed on Mar 31, 2015 20:15:20 GMT -5
I have been making my own potting mix this year from garden soil and leaf-mold compost. I'm loving it!!! I might never use a sterile potting mix again. It's a lot heavier than commercial potting mixes, but that seems to be a good thing, because it doesn't dry out so quick. I like that aspect of what I make too and it packs down a little so roots have something to grab into. I have never had much issue with the disease problem that is always billed as the reason to use sterile mix. Besides if something is so susceptible to disease it can't survive the seedling stage I'll just plant the ones that do. |
|
|
|
Post by steev on Mar 31, 2015 21:27:49 GMT -5
I regard many of these spendy amendments the same way I regard my landlady's use of vitamins and diet supplements: more expensive than a balanced diet/diversified ecosystem; not necessarily more beneficial. Kind of like wanting a pure-bred canine that must be carefully monitored and ministered to; frankly, I prefer a mutt.
|
|
|
|
Post by mskrieger on Apr 1, 2015 9:09:28 GMT -5
I, too, make my own seedling starter mix the way Joseph and Reed describe. I never have problems with disease either, and I don't purchase fungal inoculants for my garden and don't think much about it there.
However, the orchard is another matter. Because trees are large and permanent and have well-documented relationships with fungi, I try to encourage a "fungal duff". Trees are also harder to supplement with minerals--still trying to figure out whether the Bordeaux mixture (lime-sulfur) I used to use helped my stone fruits because it was killing off pathogenic fungi in the canopy, or because the trees desperately need calcium and sulfur. I don't have a big enough orchard to do controlled trials. And over the longterm, will the added minerals help/hurt the beneficial fungi?
MikeH, have you done any controlled trials in orchards? Would love to hear about it if you have!
|
|
|
|
Post by MikeH on Apr 1, 2015 10:33:46 GMT -5
MikeH, have you done any controlled trials in orchards? Would love to hear about it if you have! Doing controlled trial in an uncontrollable environment isn't possible. All that I can do is observe situations such as that in the pictures up thread. Was in the mycorrhizal fungi that did that or something else? Without using a microscope, who knows? Have I seen other similar behavior? Yes. Is it conclusive? No. Do I believe that what I'm seeing is not coincidental? Yes. But that's just my belief. It's tough to confirm what I'm seeing even with a microscope. Lab trials, in this case, are so controlled and removed from reality that I wonder how much value they really have. |
|
|
|
Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Apr 1, 2015 11:15:51 GMT -5
One of my neighbors puts a layer of wood bark on his orchard every few years and then keeps it mowed. It sure looks a lot better to me than the orchards that are tilled. I don't have a clue about the bacteria or fungi in the orchard. But it pleases my inner animal.
|
|
