The Ruminant: Audio Candy for Farmers, Gardeners and Food Lovers - e.43: Molly Haviland on the Soil Food Web, pt. 2 of 2

Episode Date: March 26, 2015

This episode: part two of 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. In this one, we talk about compost extracts and teas, and their role in improving soil health.

Hi folks, this is the Ruminant Podcast and this is part two of my conversation with Molly Haviland. It is being released concurrently, that is in the same week as part one, and as such this is going to be a pretty bare-bones intro and the outro will be pretty bare as well. I really recommend that if you haven't listened to part one, you do that first. It's listed as episode 42. This will be episode 43. And that's about all I want to say. We're going to jump right back to my conversation with Molly. She's about to talk to me about compost extracts and compost teas and how they can be used to improve your soil's microbiome. Here we go. So, okay, before we move on to tea then, can I just get some clarification on the extract so we start with a good aerobic thermally done compost it smells good it's the color 70 cocoa

it has a full soil food web which means the bacteria the fungi the protozoa the nematodes the micro arthropods the macro arthropods and the earthworms And so we have this really great product. And so, but I only have five tons of it. And I have a 200 acre farm. Okay. So if my rate of application for good biologically diverse compost is one ton per acre, that's not going to work for me, right? So now I'm going to take that high quality compost and I'm going to make a compost extract, which is basically the soluble nutrients and organisms taken off of that compost and now it's suspended in water. Compost extract is for soil application. It's excellent in pasture systems. It's great for root injections if you're in an orchard or a perennial system. It's great for using in key lining. You can use

it as your seeding, dripping the extract down onto the seeds as you're planting. You can add in things like mycorrhizal fungi or your nitrogen-fixing bacteria, free-living or symbiotic into this extract. The thing about extract is that it's not so far away from compost. You haven't changed the environment so much that you're creating an environment where one particular bacteria or organism would dominate. So you have more diversity in extract, you just don't have as high numbers of population. Does that make sense? I just want to make sure I understand. You mentioned the example

of a 200 acre farm with only five tons of compost to add. How does extract, like it sounds like extract you were using the population metaphor. It doesn't really vastly increase the amount of microbiology you're adding. Can I get get away with that let's say i have five tons of perfect compost how does the extract allow me um to to to get like to spread that over 200 acres is it just that by by making an extract out of that compost a soluble form is just easier to spread over that much land versus it would be impossible to evenly spread five tons over 200 acres. So is that what it is? It's just you're dissolving the microbiology in water so that it can be evenly sprayed over such a large area? That's a great question. So I'm going to take a step back and answer compost extract and tea at a very basic level and then get in a little bit more deeply.

So extract is typically for soil application. Aerobic compost tea is best suited for foliar application. Okay? So, and that's if you have both of these things available. So what I was talking about before, the making of the tea, that comes in if you don't have the good quality compost to make the extract. So extract is going to be best used, as I said, on the soil application, but really in the fall on plant residues so that you're inoculating the

plant residues with the organisms. You're basically giving the organisms food to break down, to turn into organic matter, to turn into soil carbon, to turn into food for your plants that are going to be growing next season. Those plant residues will break down very quickly when they're inoculated with the soil biology. And they break down in a way where the nutrients are not oxidizing into the air, but it's being retained. The nutrients are being retained in the soil. So rate of application for compost extract would be, to create a change in soil biology would be 20 gallons per acre. I see. Okay. And to make those 20 gallons

per acre, how much compost do you need? It's a great question. And I'm going to answer you with Elaine's favorite response. It depends. Because it really depends on the compost. So the compost that we've been making at the living soil compost lab right now for a five gallon bucket we're using two pounds okay so but but okay what that suggests is that that that five tons for the 200 acre farm that you mentioned if it's good compost it's more than enough to make enough compost extract to to be to be spraying over the 200 acres and over time build up really good soil biology fair enough to say yeah right yeah okay okay molly can we move on then to to compost tea then so so so you've you've drawn this distinction between extract and tea the the tea requires a brewing period

um which which you're and the goal with the tea is to actually enhance the population of of micro microorganisms that you're in the compost you're starting out with to make the tea by by adding certain things to the tea and in this case it's not going to be sprayed on the soil, but on our growing plants themselves. You can't, so yes, but you can use it on the soil, right? Because if you don't have the compost to make the good extract, then we make a tea. And we can, excuse me, we can use teas for root injections, for soil drenches, We can use teas for root injections, for soil drenches, but really their main purpose is for the foliar protection because in the tea brewing environment, we're adding foods and we start to create a lot of activity. growing and eating and creating these sticky glues, biofilms, so that when you spray the aerobic compost tea onto your plant foliage, those sticky glues allow the organisms to stick to the plant surfaces

and create a protective coating. So this is the purpose right these organisms are going to consume pathogens that might already be on plant surfaces mildews molds they work better as a preventative more than as a way to treat the mildews and the molds but that that has been done in some cases. So it's important to know what kind of organisms are going to eat what kind of food. So Molly, one question I have about applying compost tea to the plants, like doing foliar feeding, is so the idea is that you're spraying the plants and this this this adds all these wonderful

um micro these all these microorganisms to the to the surface of the plants i don't understand how the organisms can survive on the leaves once the water has evaporated or or maybe you can also explain how they benefit the plant yeah it's a great question. So when you're spraying the plant, you want to make sure that the top and the underside of the plant get coated with the tea. And in the plant, there's the pores, right? There's the... The stoma? Stoma. Thank you. There's a stoma, and that is, it can be considered an infection site. It's a place at which a disease-causing organism can invade the plant. So if you have the benefit of the beneficial organisms coating the plant,

then that stoma or infection site is protected. And so exactly how the biology changes once it's on the foliar of the plant, that takes a whole other level of microscopy, electron scanning microscopy, in fact, a much higher powered ability to look at these organisms. So something changes along the way, but it's still a bacterial and fungal castle wall of protection. And so the organisms settle into the stoma and protect and then also create this shield around the plant. So disease-causing organisms that would settle on to now have some competition. Right. And I guess that's another major tenet of this whole approach is that in more conventional forms of agriculture

where there's not a lot of emphasis on maintaining the microbiology in the soil and on the plants, you just get plants that are bereft of much of these microorganisms which leaves plenty of room for predatory microorganisms to colonize the surface of the plants. Yes, yeah, absolutely. So if we don't have diversity, then we don't have robustness. We don't have the ability to withstand extremes, right? So in diversity, then we're going to have a greater potential for

immunity. Really, it's the same as what happens in our belly. For a low gut diversity, our immune systems tend to be weaker. You can get sick more quickly quickly it's the same in the plant world and then the other part of my my original question there was just like um how how the i mean i think for some people it's it's it's hard to believe that those organisms truly do just live and stay on the plants like i i think the assumption is that that there's not enough moisture going on for like can can all those microorganisms thrive on the surface of of plants so there's many different communities of the organisms with every two to three degree change in temperature change in environment you're going to have a new set of organisms that are waking so there's constantly this flush of organisms going dormant,

organisms waking up. So some organisms will be going to sleep. Some won't be able to handle the UV rays. But with those bacterial glues, for the organisms that are able to survive and stick and stay, they're going to be waking and doing their work. What types of species of these organisms, I can't speak to that right now. Hopefully more data will be coming out on that.

There's so much work to be done to find out this realm of biology and its roles, really. We're just kind of tapping into the surface of it because of all of the variables that are there. And speaking of data, Molly, Elaine, in her talk that I saw, she did share some information about some trials she did at a vineyard that was really compelling. Is that information either part of a research paper or otherwise available online?

Was the vineyard that she was discussing in Australia? I believe so. I don't think that that is part of a research paper, but on the soilfoodweb.com site, there are many research papers there regarding to perennial systems. And so I would recommend checking those out. But to that particular story in her presentation, I don't, that there wasn't a research paper that came out of it. It was a client that she was working with. Right. Okay. So where can people learn how to make good compost tea? Well, you can contact the Soil Life Consultants and you can work one-on-one

with us to develop recipes for you. Elaine also has compost tea brewing manuals out, Elaine also has compost tea brewing manuals out, one and two, and I believe that she'll be publishing another one here in short order as a baseline of a recipe. But Jordan, tea brewing, it's so variable. It depends on the water. It depends on the compost. It depends on the size of the brewer the size of your pump the temperature of the water what time of day you're brewing so ultimately what it comes down to is if you have the skills to use your microscope to see what type of biology are present then you know if it's worth putting it out or not.

Or then you know if it's worth purchasing or not. A lot of the biologicals that are being sold nowadays, when I look at them through the microscope, the benefits are coming from solubility, not so much from the predator-prey interaction that's happening with the organisms, right? Because these soil organisms, they're aerobic, which means they're just like you and me. How would you feel if I put you into a plastic bottle and I put a lid on it? You wouldn't be so active. You would probably fall asleep and then you would die. So these organisms,

they go dormant or they die. And so the beauty behind having the skill to use the microscope is that now whatever it is that you're putting onto your land, you can see how the soil biology is responding. And you can see whether it's worth your time or not to put it out. And so this is a crucial thing if you're going to be making aerobic compost tea. Is the monitoring. Is having the skills to assess the biology. Yes, absolutely. Because you can do damage.

You can create an if-side. It's bacteria. You know, eventually, after a brew has been going for 36 hours, there's a population of bacteria that are going to be taking over. They create enzymes that keep other bacterial populations from being present

and from being able to regenerate. So they create their own iside, essentially. So one doesn't want to take this approach lightly, because like you say, it's very easy to create a tea that is actually ultimately bad for your soil and your plants. Yes, absolutely. And so when you meet people that have horror stories about tea, I have to ask, did you look at the material before you put it out? And so, yeah, I mean, I got the sense from Elaine's talk that I saw that it look at the material before you put it out and so yeah i mean i got the sense from from elaine's talk that i saw that it's at the very least there's got to be i assume there's

some videos of elaine talking about this online but it is really it's very it's very worth watching a video or reading up on it to to understand um that you need a very very clean vessel because you can quickly create what elaine calls biofilms that are just become a source of some of those bad microorganisms. You need to make sure you're getting your aeration right and you're aerating your compost tea as it's brewing properly. You don't want to brew too long. As you're saying, all these factors that need consideration. But I have to say then, it starts to become very overwhelming to someone like me who wants to do this, but doesn't know where to start and would be, I guess, worried that I would screw it up. Yeah, fair enough. So it's better to start with making, start with the

compost, make good compost, and then start going into making small batches of tea and assessing the biology and trying it out in small areas and building on successes. It is an approach that's important because you will be needing to understand what resources that you have available and what types of organisms those resources are going to grow and then what you can make from it and so now we understand why purchasing fertilizers and purchasing minerals and the whole infrastructure of the of what's going on in our agricultural paradigm, why that's there. It's easy.

It's easy. It absolutely is a lot easier, just like tillage. Yes. Yes, it's easy for now. It's easy for now. But what about seven generations? Is that mine still going to be in Turkey? Right?

We don't know. So if we can start to, as we have the time now, develop our skills and incorporate the soil biology, then we can use less and less inputs. But also now we become interdependent in our community. You don't have to, you personally, Jordan, you don't have to be the one that has the microscope skills. But somebody in your county, maybe, oh, I don't know,

the NRCS office or a local high school, they have the ability to do these simple soil analyses. I mean, really, it's not rocket science. Many people get so afraid of using the microscope, but one of the ways that I encourage my students to start using it is to start looking at ferments. Start looking at sauerkraut. Look at beer.

Look at yogurt. Look at standing water. Look at these environments that are typically anaerobic so that then when you start looking at your soil and you start looking at your teas, you can say, wait a minute, I saw that in my beer brew. That's yeast. That's budding yeast. That's an anaerobic organism. No, I don't want this in my tea. Right? So you just start to be curious about it. But so, you know, if you're excited about having the skill, that's cool. You can do it. But looking to our communities to be interdependent with one another. And how can people, what about you? You're a consultant. So how, 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. It's molly.lscl, for Living Soil Compost Lab, at gmail.com. And if you go to my blog, you'll see I have sample analyses that talks about the qualitative soil analysis, how to send it, what it is, what it means. And then also there's a tab of sample workshops that I offer. So the basics in the soil food web, composting, tea making, extract, and the microscope work. Awesome. Well, Molly Haviland, thanks a lot for joining me on the Ruminant Podcast. Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Harry.

It's been a pleasure. Okay, so that's the end of part two. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you're having a great week, and I will talk to you next week. Happy farming and gardening, everybody. The ruminant.ca is where you can find, you know, stuff on the ruminant.ca. Bye. Bye. clothes so we never have laundry We'll owe nothing to this world of thieves

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