THE SOIL FOOD WEB (AN UNDERGROUND ECOSYSTEM) IS VITAL TO PLANT HEALTH
Bacteria, protozoa, fungi, nematodes and microarthropods (little insect-like things) all play a vital role in delivering nutrients and water to the plant, making it strong, healthy and resilient.
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A conversation with Jeff Lowenfels, author of four books about the living soil: Teaming with Microbes, Teaming with Nutrients, Teaming with Fungi and Teaming with Bacteria. For the entire conversation, please click on the link to the YouTube video.
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HART HAGAN: Does the soil food web deliver nutrients to the plant?
JEFF LOWENFELS: Yes, definitely. These bacteria, protozoa and nematodes, when they get eaten and pooped out, they and provide the nutrients that plants use. These bacteria that go into the plant, these “rhizophagy” bacteria produce nitrogen that the plant uses. There is a fungi called mycorrhizal fungi that is attracted by the plant just as these bacteria are--the rhizophagous bacteria--and they go in and they in return to those exudates. They bring the plant water and nitrogen and phosphorus and all the metallic nutrients.
So these are all the ways the plants operate. In the end of all of my lectures, I always say, who fertilizes the redwoods with Miracle-Gro? Nobody. It doesn't need it because it uses these tiny little microbes it has teamed with them to feed the plant. That's what we should be doing as gardeners.
HART HAGAN: It is my understanding that this mycelial (fungal) network which exists--if you don't tear it up with tillage and chemical fertilizers--is a kind of a broker for nutrients and water and distress signals.
JEFF LOWENFELS: And other things as well. Yes, it does all of those things. It also supports a system of bacterial life that can hop off the fungi and help fix phosphorus, so that it’s usable. It produces--as do the fungi themselves--metabolites that act as antibiotics or attractants.
There are all sorts of things that these guys can do. They may host bacteria that chelate minerals in the soil that either the plant wants or the plant wants to keep out.
The bacteria and the fungi operate together. There is this network of fungal hyphae. That's what partly gives the soil structure.
HART HAGAN: One thing I think I learned from your book, Teaming with Microbes is that bacteria have a certain amount of nitrogen in them and then the bacteria, get consumed by the protozoa. The bacteria have a high ratio of nitrogen, so the protozoa has to excrete the excess nitrogen. That’s how plants get some of their nitrogen. Right?
JEFF LOWENFELS: Right, exactly. What happens is that organisms only eat what they need. It’s freeing up that nitrogen and it’s springing up in a way that puts an electrical charge on it. If you read Teaming with Nutrients--which is the second book I wrote. It should be the last one you should read. I would start with Teaming with Microbes, then Teaming with Bacteria, then Teaming with Fungi. But the concept of Teaming with Nutrients is that there are these little tunnels in each cell through which nutrients go and each tunnel only handles one nutrient. Nitrogen only goes through one kind of tunnel. There may be many of them but there's only one kind of tunnel, and it's got to have an electrical charge in order to get through that tunnel. So that's what happens when it gets eaten and pooped out.
HART HAGAN: So if you Team with Microbes, does that make your work easier as a gardener, or a farmer?
JEFF LOWENFELS: Yeah, absolutely. Imagine if you were able to grow a redwood in your backyard, never having to feed it anything, maybe putting down a little mulch. Actually, you don't even have to do that because the redwood grows based upon a concept which is something we also need to follow, which is the Law of Return.
What falls down from a plant is supposed to decay, go back into the soil and feed the plant. So what do we do as gardeners? We take the melon. We get the corn. We strip off the fruits and they are not returned back into the soil. So there's something missing. We either have to replace that with chemical fertilizers or we can create microbe foods where the microbes can break it down and eat it and create this wonderful system that we've been talking about.
So that's what organic gardeners do. They put back when they break the law of return, they pay the fine and they pay the fine using organic material.
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Please click on the link to watch the entire interview.