The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e.42: Molly Haviland on the Soil Food Web, part 1 of 2

Episode Date: March 26, 2015

This episode, we hear from Youssef Darwich about cool ways to plan your farm using GIS and other tools. Then: my conversation with Molly Haviland, a soil biology consultant who aims to convince you to take your soil's microorganisms more seriously. Molly argues that the complex relationships that develop between many different types of microorganisms in our soil are the key to unlocking the soil's true potential to produce healthy food. We abuse and ignore the soil biome at our peril, in fact.   Improving the soil biome starts with reducing tillage, reducing or eliminating the addition of soil amendments, and making great compost, and then, if necessary, applying compost teas and extracts to fine tune microbe populations. I've broken our conversation into two parts, which will be released concurrently. 

And that has to do with lack of soil structure, and that has to do with a lack of understanding of how to be micro-herders. Understanding what these organisms need in order to be present, in order to be working for us. The beauty behind having these critters is that they work 24-7, for free. 24-7 for free. That's Molly Haviland, a soil food web consultant who really wants you to pay more attention to the microorganisms in your soil. Coming up, she's going to tell us why. But first, a little bit of advice from my friend Yusuf. It's the Ruminant Podcast.

The Ruminant is a website and podcast that wonders what good farming looks like and tries to create a space for farmers and other experts in related fields to share good ideas for farming and gardening. You can find it all at theruminant.ca. I'm on Twitter at ruminantblog and you can email me editor at theruminant.ca. I'm Jordan Marr. All right, let's do a show. Hey folks, so today's main interview is with Molly Haviland and Molly is, well, I'll let her tell you. I'm Molly Haviland and I'm a soil life consultant. I have been running a composting laboratory out of Fairfield, Iowa for the last five years. And currently I'm based out of California. I have a laboratory where I do qualitative soil analyses,

looking at soil organism presence in the soil, looking at soil organism presence in the soil, assessing the nutrient availability and capacity based on the soil organism presence. I teach the basics of the soil food web, so the interaction of the organisms with one another and in plants. I also teach how a farmer or a grower or composters can make great material out of waste materials. So we make a black gold essentially that is a product that can be put into the soil and create abundance and re-establish the soil food web that helps for nutrient cycling and nutrient retention. But before we get to that, I have another short form piece of advice coming to you from a colleague of mine. This one did not come as a call into the Skype number. I'll remind you all that I have set up a Skype number that any of you can call and leave a

message for other listeners if you have a good idea you want to share with them for their farm or garden. Instead, I recorded this one at the Permaculture Voices 2 conference. One of the cool people I met there is called Yusuf. And he was in San Diego for a couple days before the conference started, just like I was. And we bumped into each other at a hostel and ended up doing a bit of sightseeing together. And I hung out with him through the conference and he graciously agreed to come on the recorder to share a couple ideas with you. Here's one of them. So my name is Yusuf Darwitch and I'm from Michigan. Right now I'm farming at the GVSU Sustainable Agriculture Project, which is a student farm near Grand

Rapids. Cool. So Yusuf, do you have any advice for other permaculturalists or farmers? Sure. I think it all starts with the planning. So obviously you need to know the context of what you're doing, but once you know that context, you're going to need the spatial arrangement of everything mapped out. And there's a lot of resources for that. everything mapped out. And there's a lot of resources for that. Google Earth is a great starting point for people. And there's also, depending on your region,

you can get data from the USGS, the US Geological Survey. It's called the Earth Explorer. And you can get a bunch of different kinds of data sets, including LIDAR, potentially potentially if your area has it but lidar is this surveying system using lasers to get accurate topography down to a few centimeters and with that it allows you to plan for infrastructure and water management and the layout of whatever system you're doing. And you can correlate that with like soil data, for example. So you know where your best areas are for growing vegetables or where you should do more forestry and those kinds of things. So that sounds intimidating to the person who's never tried that before. Like, I mean,

I know you've mentioned a couple of places to start, but how do you recommend what you know what what's the first thing you do if you want to try and use that kind of those kind of tools to really the there's a lot of online applications like the like the ones i mentioned google earth is probably one of the best um there's now the pro version is free and with that you can do a lot of drawing of your infrastructure. You can get terrain. So you can get your topography. It's not super accurate, but it's accurate enough to get a general idea. So I would say Google Earth is probably your best starting point. And then as you get more advanced, if you want some more powerful software,

there's an open source GIS software, Geographic Information System software called QGIS. And then there's more advanced stuff from that too. And then with tools like that, I mean, you can do everything from simply getting topography to determining nutrients in your soil to determining how water flows on your property. Yeah. So, for example, with nutrients, this gets a bit technical, So, for example, with nutrients, this gets a bit technical, but there's imagery that uses multispectral bands,

so basically different wavelength frequencies. So we see a short frequency range, but there are cameras that can see beyond that. And using something like QGIS, you can play around with how they're displayed and the color it shows up. So for example, you can make it so infrared shows up as red on your map. And using stuff like that, you can tell where chlorophyll content is higher in leaves. You can tell stuff about soil moisture. You can tell thermal data. So like you can tell uh thermal uh data so like you can tell uh how hot it is using um all these different spectral bands and uh then there's soil data too but that's separate there's a lot of ways to get this data right um and it all depends on what you're trying to plan for um and i would be happy to answer any questions that people have if they want to contact me.

Oh, great. How do they contact you? The best way is probably via email. So it's my last name, Darwich, D-A-R-W-I-C-H, Y, at gmail.com. DarwichY at gmail.com. Correct. Great. That was awesome, Yusuf thanks so would you like to share something

with some of the listeners on this podcast then call the skype number 310-734-8426 you can leave a message there which i'll i'll edit so if you make mistakes you can just repeat yourself and i'll edit it and make it sound good afterwards or if you don't want do that, you could just leave me a message and ask me to get a hold of you. And then I can maybe call you sometime and ask you about what you want to share. Okay, so today's main interview concerns the soil food web, which is the phrase we use to represent the complex relationships among various microorganisms within the soil that convey all kinds of great benefits on our agricultural production. The person probably most associated with the Soil Food Web currently is

Dr. Elaine Ingham, who has a website, soilfoodweb.com, and she recently spoke at both the Moses Conference that I attended and Permaculture Voices too. One of the people who was at PV2 with Elaine was Molly, who you just heard introduce herself, and I quickly realized that she's very knowledgeable and very articulated on this subject, and so I was thrilled when she agreed to come on the podcast and talk to me about the Soil Food Web. Now, it was a long conversation that I had with Molly and so I split it in two in this part of our conversation Molly talks about the damage that we can potentially do to our soil when we use amendments different kinds of fertilizers whether organic or synthetic as well as the damage we can do by tilling she then talks about the importance of not just compost,

but really, really high quality compost. So we cover those main topics in this section. And then in the other part of our conversation that I will release today that you can find in your podcast feed if you're subscribing to The Ruminant, Molly focuses specifically on the use of compost extracts and compost teas to improve the diversity of the microorganisms in our soil and on our plants. So I hope you enjoy this conversation and if you do then I recommend you check out the second part which I'll be releasing just a few minutes after this first part and both sections of our conversation will be in the same blog post at theruminant.ca. Here we go. Molly Havland, thanks a lot for joining me on the Ruminant podcast. Thank you for having me here. Molly, I thought we'd start with the basics. Could you define

the soil food web? Sure. The soil food web is a diverse group of organisms, microscopic and macroscopic. And it's through their predator-prey relationship, basically through one organism eating another, that nutrients are released in a plant-available form, which also means in a soluble form. So when these organisms are interacting in the soil together, all of this action is taking place at the plant root because of the plant root releasing exudates, which are basically the dinner bell for the soil food web organisms. And so we start from our most microscopic single cell bacterium and we can go to complex organisms such as earthworms and arthropods and really I mean the soil food web can go all the

way up to anything that moves because essentially as the organisms get bigger they become taxicabs for the smaller organisms. Okay so first of, what you just described in defining the soil food web, a lot of that is baked right into organic farming principles. I mean, I don't think it's going to be... I think most people doing organic farming are well aware of the notion that the soil biology is really important and that one way to maintain soil biology is to make great compost and apply it to the soil. But the Soil Food Web as taught by you and by Elaine Ingham goes a lot further than that.

So what I thought I'd do is I would kind of summarize a few concepts and ask you to confirm that I've got it more or less right. Does that sound okay to you? Yeah, that sounds great. Anyway, let me just start with this statement. We ignore the role of soil biology at our peril when it comes to agriculture. Is that fair enough to say? Yes.

when it comes to agriculture. Is that fair enough to say? Yes. Okay. And also in the last 50 to 75 years, agricultural science has focused almost exclusively on soil chemistry and very, very little on the important role that soil biology plays. Is that fair to say? Yes, it is. Okay. So here's where we get into a little more interesting in terms of what you and Elaine are arguing. I heard Elaine say that essentially all soils being used for agriculture have all the nutrients, macro and micro, that they need to produce healthy crops. It's just a matter of fine-tuning the soil biology in order to use them to help us access those nutrients. In other words, adding amendments to the soil is largely unnecessary. Do I have that about right? She does say that. It's a very bold statement, and it's always exciting to be witness to that statement being made in a room, especially a room full of fertilizer salesmen. Well, not just fertilizer salesmen. I mean, one thing I want to talk about, I really want to kind of zero in on this in this conversation, because, I mean, as I'm an organic farmer, I totally understand.

I'm an organic farmer. I totally understand. You don't need to sell me on the notion that soil biology is crucial or at the very least very, very important. But I also, I'm fairly hooked on my amendments and I'm fairly, I've embraced the notion that I should be taking regular soil tests to get analysis of the nutrients in my soil and then amending appropriately to try and get the right balance of of of those nutrients um so this even for me this is this is um you know when i saw elaine speak and she she emphatically said you do not need to be adding amendments it's all there you just need to get soil biology in the right proportions in order to to ensure that the plants are getting those nutrients. It's true. She does say that. And when she says that, she brings up a slide from a soil biology textbook that was published in 2003. The slide is titled Minerals in Soil.

And it shows you the median and the range of the elements that are found in soils for milligrams per kilogram. And it's pretty astounding what is found in the soils, what's available, right? So why do we need to keep adding it? If it's there, why isn't it being taken up into our plants? You know, most of us, the idea, the ideal of closed system farming, which is essentially what you're talking about, this notion that, you know, this ideal where we don't have to bring in outside amendments because we've got everything we need within the system. And then it's just a matter of figuring out the way to cycle those nutrients through the system. You know, that's been my ideal all along.

But just to a more basic question to start, just to clarify, do you agree with Elaine that every soil has everything we need? Like surely there's soils that can grow plants that are deficient in one or two anyway of the micronutrients, like completely. Like aren't there soils where there's just missing boron or missing copper? Or am I wrong about that? Do all soils have it, you know, like I've heard Elaine argue, you know, all those nutrients that plants need? Well, it's so in my personal experience, because I'm new to the growing, I have been in it in five years for teaching, but I haven't been working on a piece of land long enough to say the same thing that Elaine says through experience.

She has decades of experience under her belt where she's working with growers that, oh, actually, they don't end up having to apply these things anymore. So in her experience and in these farmers experience, yes, once you get the soil food lip imbalance, those minerals become available. And that's because bacteria and fungi make the enzymes to break down the parent material of soil, to break down the sand, the silt, the clay, and to make all of these elements available for plant uptake. Practically speaking then, I mean, are you and Elaine and your group um opposed to to in the early stages of creating that perfect soil um amending with with nutrients that your your soil analyses are showing you're deficient in and then

and then setting out to to properly maintain those in the soil i.e not lose them by by then focusing on soil biology that That's a great question. You know, I think it comes, for the way that I'm going to speak about it, it comes down to what's our goal. We want to feed people nourishing food, food that has a medicinal quality that contains all the minerals and nutrients that we need in order to be happy, healthy people, yeah? And so let's use the tools that we have today

that we understand as a way of getting that mineral and nutrient balance in the soil and compound that and start working that with the information that is, has newly been discovered or rediscovered, as I should say. I mean, this information has been around since the late 1800s. So it really isn't new. But to utilize all of our resources so that we can accelerate succession more quickly, I think, is the way that I would suggest going about it. And Elaine does as well. She says, you know what, don't quit cold turkey. You know,

you can sandwich the chemistry aspect and the biological aspect together for success. Just going back to what you said earlier about Elaine having seen many of the growers she's worked with, she's kind of seen this bear out that once they get their biology all working really well for them, that they really don't need amendments anymore. That sounds like it's based on anecdotal experience, which I don't want to discount completely, but I am wondering if you're aware of much hard research that has been published on this notion? Any research pointing to evidence that you can create ideal growing conditions purely based on the soil biology? You know, there is on Elaine's website, the Soil Food Web, you can go to www.soilfoodweb.com, and she has a lot of research papers up there about soil biology in action, where it's working, how it's

working, and also in instances where it hasn't been working. But as far as the information of the parent material in soil. Really, this is basic. I mean, you go to geology textbooks, soil biology textbooks, and you will to this day still find this information of the elements found in soils throughout the earth. Right. I don't have my book with me right now to give you the information, but I could certainly email that to you if you want to post that onto the podcast.

Yeah, no, I would be happy to post some links pointing to some of this evidence and other stuff with the show notes of the show. So I had a colleague submit a related question, and I think this will be my last follow-up question on this, on this, uh, around this topic of whether the soil has ever all the nutrients plants need. Um, my colleague wanted to know, you know, okay, even if we can all accept that the nutrients are there, um, and that, that all soils therefore are, you know, can grow plants, um, agricultural crops, uh, does she assert that all soils have enough balanced nutrients in them to therefore can grow plants, agricultural crops.

Does she assert that all soils have enough balanced nutrients in them to grow nutrient-rich and balanced food for human consumption? Okay, that's a really great question. So when a soil is growing nothing, then no. There isn't the, there aren't the balance, enough of a balance to grow anything at all, right? But as soil begins to grow weeds, then we at least have enough of that balance, the minimum requirement to grow at least that weed. Yeah?

Yeah. So it takes time to bring the balance so that it targets the plant that you want to grow. If I want to grow the brassica family, I can quickly establish that soil biology depending on where in the world I am. If I want to grow brassicas and I'm in the woods, well, I'm in a fungal-dominated environment. And so I have to set back succession. I have to create disturbance. I have to create a bacterial-dominated environment so that I can grow those early succession plants. But if I purchase some land in Iowa that's been under corn cultivation for the last 30 years, and now I want to grow blueberries, well, I'm going to have to start setting the stage of succession more towards a fungal-dominated environment.

Now, that's because it's the enzymes from the bacteria and the fungi that create the availability that's in that mineral component. Does that answer your question? the outset, it's a very bold assertion by, by, um, by your colleague and teacher, Elaine, about this notion that, that, that it's all there, that we just need to get the biology right. So I think it was worth spending some time on for, let's, let's move on to some practical applications of these ideas. So, so Molly, from this point in the conversation, I'd, I'd, I think an underlying assumption is that a lot of people, even if they, feel compelled by yours and Elaine Ingham's kind of assertions about soil biology, are probably going to be relying to some extent on combining these two concepts of really focusing on soil biology, also doing some amending to try and bring nutrients to something approaching a balance before they embark on focusing on the soil biology, which leads me to my next question. So another assertion that Elaine made in the talk that I saw is that one big problem with

amendments is that they're really hard on soil biology. So could you explain that a little bit? Yeah, absolutely. So in order for these amendments to be applied, right, we talk about blood meal, bone meal, gypsum, solubor, any of these additions into the soil, they are typically going to be in their salt form. They're in a dried down form, which means that they have salts. And in order for them to become soluble, basically for anything to become soluble, it has to be attached to a salt. Does that make sense? Yeah, although I'll just get you to qualify. So when I put, I've used blood meal before, when I put it in the soil, doesn't salt imply that it's readily soluble as soon as I apply it? It can't, yes, there is that component

to it, but then there's also the way that the salt behaves with the biology in the soil. So in this regard, you've got to think about it, if what we're doing is we're trying to move towards a more biologically balanced soil, we're taking two steps forward and one step back. So when, for example, let's say we're adding bone meal or blood meal, these things have the salts in them. And so what ends up happening is we put this out into the soil and in order for it to become soluble, it requires water.

So it takes water from the soil. Uh, the organisms that we are depending on are microscopic and they depend on a water film layer in order to be able to move around and to be able to create the enzymes that they need to digest the materials that they consume. So now we're taking away some water from that environment. But we are getting the nutrients available for plant uptake, right? So we're growing our plants. That's really great. But with the addition of that protein, that blood meal, that bone meal, we're also creating an environment where we are adding a protein into the soil. And if we have already compacted anaerobic soils, now what we're doing is we're actually creating a bacterial

slushing. So you're adding in this very strong, rich food and the bacteria go crazy and they reproduce very quickly and they actually make the environment go more anaerobic. And so the important thing to remember is that for many of these additions into the soil, them being attached to salt, we are salting our soils, which is not the best thing to do. Consider the effects of, let's say, boron. Boron, what is it used for? Well, it's an antimicrobial, and it's very hard on the arthropods in the soil. So we can use this as a way to get what we need into the plant, but we're creating an environment where we're still dependent on solubility.

We're depending on it to rain. Or what if it's raining too much? Well, then we're losing it. Now, if we take a look at copper, copper, it's bacteriostatic. It takes care of bacteria in terms of reducing populations, reducing diversity. It's a fungicide. It's a wood preservative. So what we end up doing is we end up creating a growing environment that's just

dependent on these inputs. And so we're not creating a closed-loop system where we are accelerating succession and at least getting ourselves off of the dependence of these things because we keep knocking back the diversity of the biology. And the other thing that they can do, especially if we're looking at gypsum or lime, is we create fluctuations in pH. And a weed seed, by definition, actually is not a plant out of place. It's actually a plant that requires disturbance. It requires alterations in pH in order to germinate. It requires a bacterial-dominated environment. It requires nitrogen in the form of nitrate to grow. So when we are fluctuating the pHs in our soils,

we're actually creating more of a weed problem in our growing environment. Right. Okay. So I'm going to back up again just a little bit. When you first described the issue with when you gave example of adding bone or blood meal and the salts involved, that makes sense to me, but less about organic amendments. And I don't think I'm the only organic farmer who thinks there's a big difference between adding.

Like I've always seen in very, I'm generalizing, but I've always seen the big difference between synthetic forms of, let's say, just NPK fertilizer and organic forms is that the synthetic forms are generally soluble right away. So I've always assumed that when I add a blood meal or a feather meal or a bone meal to the soil, the nutrients in those amendments are not readily available to plants but need to be further broken down to be broken down into a soluble form that the plants can take in. Am I incorrect about that? No, they do need to be broken down, but there's also an element at which just through their decomposition, then the nutrients will become more soluble,

more available for that uptake. But they do require a breaking down from the organism. I think of using blood meal and bone meals and feather meals in compost piles, for example, as a way to increase the temperature in a compost pile. And so we are, it's like what we mentioned before, we are feeding a certain set of organisms, bacteria are the organisms that we're feeding really in large part by adding these kinds of soil amendments. So that being said, you've got to consider what you're starting with. And most of the agricultural soils that we're working with are bacterial-dominated environments. So if we could take a look at bacteria as a fertilizer bag,

right? They hold the highest amount of nitrogen out of any organism that we know of on the planet. Have a C to N ratio of five to one. That is a mini fertilizer bag. And there's billions of them in a teaspoon of soil, which is very exciting, right? I mean, that's like free fertilizer all over the place. Bacteria are everywhere. But we don't get access to that nitrogen unless we have the fertilizer bag opener, right? Unless we have the predator. And so in many of the soils that we're looking at, Jordan, the predators are missing. And that has to do with lack of soil structure, and that has to do with a lack of understanding of how to be microherders,

understanding what these organisms need in order to be present, in order to be working for us. The beauty behind having these critters is that they work 24-7 for free, kind of. You have to give them a little recognition. That was really well put and that will be a nice segue into the next part of the conversation. So one other destructive practice that we should really briefly touch on is tillage and cultivation. Can you briefly talk, I don't think this will surprise many listeners, but can you briefly talk about some of the undesirable consequences of tilling or other forms of soil cultivation? Sure, I can talk on that. Sure, I can talk on that.

First, I'd like to start with saying that I'm not for or against tilling because there's moments at which it's a technique that we use to set back succession. Okay, so when I'm talking about succession, for example, let's consider what happens when you bulldoze an area. What are the first plants to come up? They are weeds. And the role of a weed is to cover the soil and to start adding organic matter and to start building structure. And over time, that area that was bulldozed, now it's growing perennial reeds.

And then it's growing some shrubs. And eventually, you'll see some trees coming in yeah so we're moving through succession and as we're moving through succession with that plant matter that's growing we're adding back more organic matter into the growing environment so we go from a bacterial dominated environment towards a more fungal-dominated environment. So one of the things that we have happening with farmers that are going no-till and that have been no-till for quite some time, let's say I'm thinking of one farmer in particular up in Wisconsin,

his cornfield is surrounded by forest. Well, his corn productivity has been declining in the last few years. Why? Well, we take a look at the soil and it's becoming fungal dominated. The organism, the fungus organism that lives and thrives in that forest system, now it has an undisturbed environment. So it's growing into that cornfield, and it's starting to change the succession. So corn is a grass. It needs a little bit of bacteria and a little bit of fungi, an equal amount of each,

but we're starting to tilt this environment to a more fungal dominated one. So we're losing productivity. So what does he need to do? Well, he could add some copper. He could disturb the soil a little bit. He could till it to open up those fertilizer bags of fungi and to create a little bit of disturbance to set back the succession. So what we have going on with this over tillage, if we look at soil after it's been tilled, it's great, it's beautiful, it's fluffy, it's like cotton candy. And then it rains. What happens to cotton candy when it's wet?

It completely collapses. Of course, yeah. And it does that because there's no more structure. And so the bacteria and the fungi, they're creating the microaggregates and the macroaggregates, the structure, the house of the soil. And we go in there and we break it all up. And in the first couple of years, if you're taking virgin land, for example, you're going to have excellent productivity. Why do you think that is? have excellent productivity. Why do you think that is? Just because you've, I guess you've introduced a lot of oxygen and you've opened those fertilizer bags, as you've said.

Yes, yes. So you've opened up the fertilizer bags. And so now you have all of these nutrients available for plant uptake and you keep tilling and you keep tilling and now your productivity is starting to go down and why is it going down because fungi they don't like disturbance they're the slow slow and steady growers of the soil and so we have to think about okay what is it that i want to grow where does it lie in plant succession? And how much disturbance do I need? And I'll interject there and say, because we haven't even covered this yet, which is like a major tenet that we haven't covered yet of yours and Elaine's approach to the soil food web is that it's not just, it's not enough just to ensure we have great soil

biology, but that we have it in the right balance for the production we're doing. So some types of production really require a greater ratio of fungi to bacteria in the soil versus other types that favor bacteria over fungi. We're always going to need, and then that's simplifying a bit, there's many other organisms, but the point being that we need to shoot for the right balance of all these organisms for the production we're doing. Do I have that about right? Yes. Right. You're a great student.

Okay, so, right. And again, I don't think this notion that tillage, as you've pointed out, it plays an important role. And I mean, the other issue is just that it's certain, almost in most systems, certainly in my market gardening system, it's a necessary evil. And it's not that I want to ever eliminate tilling, but that I'm striving to limit it as much as possible. We've covered the main tenets, certainly. The reason that amendments are hard on... The reason that we don't want to be too reliant on amendments. The effects that tillage has. The notion that we want to achieve a really good balance of soil organisms.

One last question. I guess I just thought of this on amendments, Molly. If we have to add them, is there a better time to add them you know is there is there an ideal time to add them during during the course of a year or does it is it going to be hard on soil organisms at all times a year that's a great question jordan my recommendation would be to add it in with a good quality compost if you have that available so that the organisms can take that material and hold it in their bodies and then do the cycling for you at the plant root. So fall with adding this material in the fall depending on where you are in the world

with a good compost so that when your plants start growing again in the spring, all of those minerals and nutrients are there, are held in the bodies of the organisms and are going to be cycled as soon as those plants start putting out their exudates. Right. Okay. Good. Thank you. So let's finally get to some like actually working on our soil biology. to some like actually actually working on our soil biology uh is it fair to say that in terms of in terms of trying to improve our soil biology um you and elaine advocate basically adding really good compost really good compost tea and really good compost extracts is that is that correct that is what yes that's uh one of the ways at least now, how we can re-inoculate dirt to turn it into soil. Ideal situation would be composting in place, that we end up having the biology in the soil

and that we're utilizing our plant residues in a way that the composting is happening in place. So that's an ultimate goal that we're working towards. But for now, the tools that we have to use are the biological tools, the compost, aerobic composting, compost extract. Okay. And then of course, I guess one other tenet of this is that we're doing, ideally we're testing, we're testing the soil to figure out the balance of the microbiology in the soil, which is something that you and Elaine do as consultants, right? You help people figure out, you know, not just the overall amount of microbiology in the soil, but the various proportions of protozoa, fungi, bacteria, etc. Yes. if you can just stick to adding compost, but most of us do not have enough compost, um, to, to, to add to our soils, to really, to really get, get our microbiology, um, into, into, you know, to, to adequate levels, at least at the, at the, at the rapidity that we might desire. So, um,

that's where, that's where compost teas and extracts come in, I gather. So, so can you, can you, can you explain then, can you just talk about the compost tea teas and extracts come in, I gather. So, so can you, can you, can you explain then, can you just talk about the compost tea and compost extracts, the difference between them and how they're used to improve soil microbiology? Absolutely. So, um, I'll start with compost extract because making a good compost extract depends largely on the quality of compost that you have available to you. And so I would recommend actually just taking a step back and starting with the conversation about the importance of the good compost, the issue right now that there isn't enough to supply the farms with. right now that there isn't enough to supply the farms with. But there's tons of waste materials out there. I mean, we're having so many issues with way too much manure and leaching of these

manures and nitrates and phosphates into waterways. We have the resources available to be making fantastic compost that has so many beneficial results that you could actually put onto your body and it would be okay you could your if your child fell into it they wouldn't be injured right so we we have the potentials to do this and and with so many of the farmers that I'm working with, they're sending me compost from local composting organizations that they would be buying from. And it's just, it takes a few basic principles to start making a good compost. And so I would call that for farmers that are interested in getting their hands on good biologically diverse compost is to start establishing a relationship with your

local composting organization and involve them in this conversation of biology and see if they'll start to make a custom pile for you or for a local group of farmers because the resources are available. So it's just a matter of making the right materials. Really quickly, you mentioned that your compost, if it's been made well, looks like 70% dark chocolate, which is not black. It's a little bit brown. I think that goes against what a lot of people think.

A lot of people think the blacker the compost, the better. Can you explain that real quick? Yeah, absolutely. Black compost typically has gotten so hot that it just baked out the majority of soil organism life other than save a few bacteria. And I've seen, actually I was just looking at some compost the other day that was black as black could be. And so you're basically getting into a pre-form of biochar.

So you're adding organic matter, you're adding carbon, that's great. But are you adding the nutrients that you need? Not particularly. So when we look at the 70% cocoa color compost, if you don't know what that looks like, go to the grocery store, buy a chocolate bar, bring it out to your compost or your soil and take a look and compare. What we're looking for is the humic acid presence.

Humic acid is all the rage right now, right? Adding in humics and adding in fulvics. Well, the majority of the fulvic and humic acids that are on the market are mined. Organisms, through consuming one another and through consuming organic matter, create fulvic and humic acids. How interesting. So when you have a good biologically diverse compost, you have humic acid presence. acid presence. And this means that you have the ability to hold on to all kinds of minerals and nutrients in the soil because humic acid is so complex. It has lots of positive and negative receptor sites on it. It also has the ability to be a chemical straitjacket. It binds chlorine and chloramine and toxins to itself. It doesn't make them inert, but it basically

just holds on to it and it keeps those kinds of things from being reactive in the soil. So eventually a fungi will come along and break apart those carbon components. But that 70% cocoa color that we're looking for, that's an indicator of humic acid presence. And really it's not until we put this compost underneath the microscope and we're taking a look at it that we can really see if what we're looking at is the humic acids. Because you can see it in the aggregates that the organisms are forming, the bricks and the mortar that make the house of the soil. Okay. Do you have a separate website you maintain or how can people get in touch with you?

Yeah, you can get in touch with me right now. I refer people to www.thermalcomposting.wordpress.com. you can contact me through email at molly.lfcl for living soil compost lab at gmail.com okay so that's part one if you want to hear part two of our conversation in which molly tells me all about using compost extracts and compost teas to improve the microbiome in your soil and on your plants, then look for it in your podcast directory. It's being released in just a few minutes after this one. And you can also, if you're listening from the website, theruminant.ca, you can get it there. You'll see it there. You probably already did. I hope you enjoyed that. And well, I will talk to you in the next part but also next week take care

and live life like it was meant to be guitar solo