Too much soil life?
 

I have seen where many growers are inoculating their seeds and soil and using aerated compost tea in order to increase their soil life. I am wondering if there is such a thing as too much soil life? Could excessive soil life upset the balance in the soil relative to the plants being grown? Is it possible to release too many nutrients via soil life?

If you look at the lecture by soil scientist Elaine Ingham, different soil system promote growth for different type of plants. The ratio of fungi and bacteria is important in determining the type of plants that will benefit more in that soil. Leafy vegetables seems to prefer higher bacteria where trees benefit from more fungi.

As for aerated compost tea, I can't say if too much soil life is bad, but I don't think compost tea will make the biggest difference in number. I'm very skeptical of how helpful it is for already healthy soil, seems like the benefit is more from the fertilizer in the tea than the amount of microbes. Physical composts will have much more active life than the tea. It seem more effective and less work just to mulch and add compost. Where compost tea might be useful though is when you can't make enough physical compost and have poor soil, or maybe for use indoor, or for a specific grow system.
This study makes the comparison between compost, compost tea, and other amendments: [url]http://joa.isa-arbor.com/request.asp?JournalID=1&ArticleID=3337&Type=2[/url]

I was a sucker who spent a fortune on compost tea, rockdust, biochar, sea minerals, etc to grow in South Florida sandy root knot nematode soil. There is a very popular youtube growing channel that promote these stuff, which I will not name. None of that stuff helped, it only became better once I started using compost and mulching.

[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=4]Yes.


[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=georgia][SIZE=4][FONT=Times New Roman]A huge increase in soil microbes, such as adding fertilizers, will increase the short lived microbe activity to a point where the organic matter breaks down much quicker thus reducing the soil's ability to store organic nitrogen.[/FONT]
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Good question! Another maybe related question: Can the organic material level in the soil be too high? Somewhere, sometime this went through my head but I have never seen the answer.

Things do grow in pure compost.
[QUOTE=PaulF;726628]Good question! Another maybe related question: Can the organic material level in the soil be too high? Somewhere, sometime this went through my head but I have never seen the answer.[/QUOTE]

I do think you can spend a lot of needless money for inoculum, which may be no different than the healthy community in your own backyard compost pile. Or adding a special inoculum may not change the community overall because there is a balance in that soil community which depends on structure, composition etc etc the properties of the soil itself will dictate how the community balances out.

My answer would be that you can't have too much life, but it's possible to have too much of the wrong kinds of life. The point of innoculating the soil is that bacteria are a naturally occurring element in healthy soil. So a healthy root system is adapted to function best in an environment with bacteria. I've found that bacteria seems to control fungus in the soil too. Basically, it gives the plant time to develop its defences before coming under attack.

When starting seed I wet my growing mix with water removed from an aquarium during a water change. That gives me a reasonable amount of healthy, beneficial bacteria, some nitrates and/or nitrites, and very safe water. But I wouldn't stir spoonfuls of cultured bacteria into the mix or even culture my own from topsoil dug up in the garden. Moderation and balance will work in your favor no matter what you're amending your soil with.

As for too much organic matter, that can inhibit drainage and deny the plant the stability it needs to grow a strong root systems. There are plants that will sprout in pure organic matter, but they need inorganic components in the soil to do well. Think about what role rockwool or mesh pots play in hydroponics systems and root development. You'll undrrstand why soil needs sand, perlite, or gravel, not just peat or compost, for plants to grow well.

There is a good book on the subject from Timber Press call Teaming with Microorganisms.

I am surprised to so quickly get so many responses. Thank you one and all. I grow mostly giant tomatoes and every year I am trying to get bigger tomatoes. I will be trying soil inoculation and aerated compost tea this year but with lower expectations than I started with. My soil is unusual as it is 100% silt with lots of organic matter. I wish I had some sand and clay but I don't. I thought about adding some perlite or sand to my soil in the hope that that would increase the aeration and increase the aerobic organisms.

From what I have consulted I have never read anything about too much organic matter, but it is a good question. There might be an issue with too much of the same material. My experience is that more organic matter the better, especially compost. There is a great short book on soil health by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis, Teaming With Microbes, that I would recommend for all organic gardeners.

Alex

That's the one I meant. Apologies for being too lazy to Google the details.

[QUOTE=lubadub;726698]I am surprised to so quickly get so many responses. Thank you one and all. I grow mostly giant tomatoes and every year I am trying to get bigger tomatoes. I will be trying soil inoculation and aerated compost tea this year but with lower expectations than I started with. My soil is unusual as it is 100% silt with lots of organic matter. I wish I had some sand and clay but I don't. I thought about adding some perlite or sand to my soil in the hope that that would increase the aeration and increase the aerobic organisms.[/QUOTE]


What you need to improve that soil texture and aeration is some coarse organic matter. I use coarsely chopped or crushed kelp in my containers but it does break down completely in one season. There is really nothing better that I've found, than my own garden compost which although 'finished' still contains some material that breaks down more slowly - bits of herb straw mostly - and this I believe is the reason it manages to be superior to the (also wonderful) bagged compost which we can buy here.


Maybe for your climate there is a type of wood chips that would help. I've heard good things about deciduous wood chips from people in warmer areas. (Our wood chips are conifers our soil acid clay and our climate too cold for them to break down in a year or even two).

[QUOTE=lubadub;726698]I am surprised to so quickly get so many responses. Thank you one and all. I grow mostly giant tomatoes and every year I am trying to get bigger tomatoes. I will be trying soil inoculation and aerated compost tea this year but with lower expectations than I started with. My soil is unusual as it is 100% silt with lots of organic matter. I wish I had some sand and clay but I don't. I thought about adding some perlite or sand to my soil in the hope that that would increase the aeration and increase the aerobic organisms.[/QUOTE]


I'm not entirely sure what silt is like, but mineral balance in soil is incredibly important to taste at least, as I found trying to grow in peat mostly organically. And not all varieties have same mineral requirements, some seem to love Mg rich soil while others can't live without high Ca for example. One can usually tell when something is amiss however.

My soil started out being 100% silt, essentially rock dust, obtained from soil along a stream. It was trucked in by the builder of the house I now live in. As I read about silt the only thing I could see to do was add organic matter and so now I am at 23% organic matter as per my most recent soil test. I have decided to grow as organically as I could this year and have read and now follow the suggestions mostly from a book titled" The Ideal Soil." I also have read Solomon's book "The Intelligent Gardener" and McKibbin's book " The Art of Balancing Soil Nutrients." Now I am working on understanding soil life. I will be using aerated compost tea and soil inoculants this year and will be buying brew mixes and soil inoculants. I may be wasting time and money but "nothing ventured, nothing gained,"

Maybe I meant optimum organic levels in the soil. I came across this when I lost my lazy and checked for myself.

Ideal Organic Matter Percentage
The University of Missouri Extension suggests that organic matter make up at least 2 percent to 3 percent of the soil for growing lawns. For gardens, growing flowers and in landscapes, a slightly greater proportion of organic matter, or about 4 percent to 6 percent of the soil, is preferable. The percentage of organic matter that occurs naturally in soil varies greatly, according to the University of Florida, from 1 percent to more than 90 percent in muck soils. Organic matter itself is composed of living biomass like microorganisms, dead tissue or partly decomposed materials and stable, fully decomposed humus.

Average levels of organic material in soils in my area are 3-4% according to Penn State University. My organic garden usually tests at about 10% which I think is ideal.

My soil holds water well and is fluffy. Too much organic material can tie up nitrogen so that it is not available to plant roots.

I believe my organic matter level is too high but I know quite a few people who are at this level. For the next few years I will be cutting back on the amount of organic matter I add. I am aiming for 15% for no really good reason. My cation exchange content is around 18.

Hugelkultur has you planting in almost pure organics.

With our clay soil here (never farmed) you can't ever add enough/ too much! :lol:
Here's a link: How Much Organic Matter is Enough?
[url]https://www.sare.org/Learning-Center/Books/Building-Soils-for-Better-Crops-3rd-Edition/Text-Version/Amount-of-Organic-Matter-in-Soils/How-Much-Organic-Matter-Is-Enough[/url]


Clay soils need more than sandy soils, apparently.

"....continuously adding a variety of residues results in plentiful supplies of “dead” organic matter—the relatively fresh particulate organic matter— that helps maintain soil health by providing food for soil organisms and promoting the formation of soil aggregates."
So adding something every year is going to be a good thing, regardless of how much organic matter is present by percent, I reckon.8-)

[FONT=Arial Narrow][SIZE=4]I think its human nature to think more is better.[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial Narrow][SIZE=4]


A good soil will hold water and air.
Soil is as we all know a combination of sand, silt and clay.
I wont go into the ups and downs of sandy soil, clay soil, because we all know the pitfalls of each.

Everyone knows that crops need water, crops need air in the soil too.

A compacted soil will lack oxygen, roots will not be able to take up oxygen, like a heavy clay soil that is over watered, you folks know who you are!

[B]
Building soil tilth.[/B]
Adding compost and organic matter also helps build soil tilth, why do we need soil tilth? read above.

You can't increase the soil particle size (sand, silt and clay), but you can get the soil particles to form aggregates, by amending the soil. Aggregation of soil particles = soil structure. We constantly amend our soils for more than one reason, but it is different for each gardener and how they have their garden setup.

For instance I have very heavy clay soil and love it, why? Because I built raised hugelkultur beds and used the clay soil in layers with a lot of organic matter, so far so good.

Organic matter is no good to plants until it is broken down by Decomposers, we all know these guys, earthworms, pill bugs, and some are microscopic guys, such as fungi and bacteria.
Organic matter is there to feed these guys which in turn feed the plants (hence feed the soil).


[B]Humus [/B]
Humus is not a decomposing organic matter (compost)
I really don't know how to explain it other than it is inorganic leftovers from compost that is needed for mineralization.


[B]Here let Wiki explain it,[/B][I]
Microorganisms decompose a large portion of the soil organic matter into inorganic minerals that the roots of plants can absorb as nutrients. This process is termed "mineralization". In this process, nitrogen (nitrogen cycle) and the other nutrients (nutrient cycle) in the decomposed organic matter are recycled. Depending on the conditions in which the decomposition occurs, a fraction of the organic matter does not mineralize, and instead is transformed by a process called "humification" into concatenations of organic polymers. Because these organic polymers are resistant to the action of microorganisms, they are stable, and constitute humus. This stability implies that humus integrates into the permanent structure of the soil, thereby improving it.
Humification can occur naturally in soil or artificially in the production of compost. Organic matter is humified by a combination of saprotrophic fungi, bacteria, microbes and animals such as earthworms, nematodes, protozoa, and arthropods.[/I]


[B]Adding fertilizer[/B]
As I said before adding too much fertilizer can increase soil microbes to a point where it can do more harm to the soil than good by breaking down the soil structure too quickly, this works well for short term but is not good practice for long term (building a soil).

Adding too much organic matter, hmm that ones tough, although I feel that this would be difficult, it seem that a few on line sources say otherwise.

My hugel beds are about 10-20 percent Clay soil and everything else is organic matter in the form of logs, sticks, leaves, hay, wood chips, grass clippings, hedge trimmings, cardboard, bio-char, coffee grounds, household garbage, rabbit manure and bedding, plants, compost to mention a few.

I personally don't thing teas and that kind of stuff is needed if you are using compost already, maybe if you were making a tea for houseplants but other than that I feel it's not worth the extra effort.

[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=Arial Narrow][SIZE=4] I think it would be pretty hard to add too much compost or increase microbe activity to a point of diminishing returns without extreme interventions such as chemical fertilizers. As far as too much organic matter, thats a toughie because it's a bit vague and probably a little different for each person, however, I do know this, if you were adding organic matter that is not broken down it will have a (short term) negative affect on the plant life.[/SIZE][/FONT]
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[FONT=Arial Narrow][SIZE=4]Well, that's my 2 cents anyway.
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About 91 of the 118 elements listed on the periodic table are metals.
How they came about and what they do for us is an amazing story that dates back to the beginning of the universe.
With a very open mind you can see how this post relates to this thread.
Look up the three main elements in fertilizer and you will see.
They can be brought to the table easily and one potassium is a metal.

[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen[/url]

[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorus[/url]

[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium[/url]

Bactria, fungus, life such as worms and other critters and so on and in that order make the elements available for the plants.
So in my opinion you can have too much soil life for a short period but it will get back to normal soon maybe not this year but it will.
As for the perfect soil look no farther than the soil where the wild relatives of the plant grows best.


Keep in mind peat bogs turn into coal.

How about adding perlite to your garden soil. How might that affect soil life? I read that it would improve drainage and oxygen levels in the soil. This should help the growth of aerobic organisms, the ones said to be most valuable.

SQWIBB has written an excellent summary of the main points.

I think that much money is wasted on microbial formulas which are added to soil. Soil is not sterile and it already contains billions of microbes and other soil life. If you do not kill it with excess fertilizers, solarizing or tilling, then there is no reason that it will not keep reproducing and remain active in your soil.

Healthy and happy microbes make more microbes until they run out of food and then they will die off so it is important to have enough organic material for them to eat and decompose.

If you are adding compost then you will already have plenty of microbes in your soil.

I do use an innoculant for growing peas because it contains a bacterium specific for peas and it does increase the yield. If I grew lots of peas in the same area every year then I would not add the innoculant because the bacterium would already be there. However I only grow 2 rows of peas and I rotate their location every year so I add the innoculant as insurance.

Nice post Squibb. My interest is in growing giant vegetables. Every year I make some changes in what I do. There are so many opinions about what is best to do. Hearing from a variety of growers about what they believe is helpful. Sometimes opinions are conflicting and then you just have to choose which way to go. All I can do is try to improve the soil I have. I have several raised beds though they are small. I have often thought about taking one area of my garden and throwing all of the soil there away and bringing in my own. So much sand, so much clay, so much silt, so much organic matter and then after a soil test, balancing up the nutrients to get "The Ideal Soil," whatever that is. I know I will never do it and so I continue to try improving what I already have. All of your thoughts help.

I have heard that people who want to grow giant vegetables limit the number of fruits on each plant so that all of plants energy goes into developing those few fruits. That is how they get those really giant pumpkins. I think they grow one fruit per vine.

This thread makes me consider what my garden space is. Fifteen years ago we moved from central Iowa to southeast Nebraska. There was no garden space so I cleared off a place and began to try and grow what I always grew. Near disaster. The space was virgin; brush, scrub, trees and weeds and the soil had never been turned.

While natives grew rampantly, the non-natives did poorly. Every species planted by me in the garden was a non-native. Weeds, brush and trees continued to do well in what we call around here sugar clay or more commonly loess (pronounced luss).

I began immediately an organics program to amend the soil so that my non-natives (tomatoes, peppers, green beans, etc.) would do something. Besides all that, the pH was at about 8.5 and an addition of sulphur was needed every other year to get into the 7.8 range. After three years of diminished harvests (compared to the overly rich growing conditions of Iowa farmland) the tons of organics began to show promise. This struggle to have perfect soil conditions will be ongoing for the rest of my gardening life. After I am gone the whole space will revert to its original state very quickly.

The struggle is all part of the fun involved with gardening and growing tomatoes...and other plants.

PaulF I can really relate to your story of virgin soil. Here where I live it was never farmed, but there is some clay topsoil. This is just the scanty topsoil formed in the last 10,000 years since the last glaciers scraped it bare. The pH of the clay when I started to garden here was 4.0! And the native vegetation conifers and lichens.

In my first garden I dug as much organic matter as I could get, year after year, still fairly marginal results for vegs. One year I made a raised bed with just organic materials, and it did so much better. Although my garden compost is really the best, where a small amount of the clay has gotten into it on plant roots, SWAG no more than 5% of the clay and in that amount it's magic. So when I hear of soil with 5% organic matter I can only imagine how good that soil was to begin with!


My mom's place, it was one of the first farmlands in this area. 400 years of plowing in the organic matter every year. (there were no chemical ferts here before 1949, so totally organic). The "clay" in her best garden area is brown, not orange, and it's a much better place to start. The color change tells the story, just how much organic was dug in there.



My friend's farm, was intensively farmed by organic farmers for 40 years. Besides organic matter added to the beds, the paths between them were layered in peat every year, and all tilled in at the end of season. It is a really mature farm soil that has great yields (and Lubadub, her tomatoes are huge!). You can still find orangey clay in the thinnest place at the top of the field, when deep trenching the potatoes 2 ft down. Otherwise dig as deep as you like it is a beautiful dark brown.


So my perspective on organic matter may be skewed, but we really can't get too much here.


When it comes to soil structure, things like inoculum and compost tea don't add a thing. Great if you're using promix in containers for example, which is all structure no ferts. This is why I don't have much motivation to the liquid approach, because we need structure first and... yes, it may take 40 or 400 years. :surprised:;)

Brownrexx, you are right that giant tomato growers limit the number of tomatoes per plant to one. They also do severe pruning. Some grow organically and some fertigate with a constant flow of low dose water-soluble nutrients based on soil tests, paste tests, plant tissue analysis, brix readings and soil conductivity tests. Big time competition as giant tomato growers try for a 10 pound tomato. They also use aerated compost tea and foliar feeding, anything that might increase the weight of the tomato, no holds barred.

In our 94 percent sand soil, it will takes tons and tons of organic matter to exceed the optimum.
But if you have a good established farmland soil then you have to watch.

Opinions?? I have been having my soil test done at Clemson U. in South Carolina, our Ag. school for the state.Is there any need to spend extra $$$$ on more detailed test??I have only used the C. U. test.
Are there valid reasons to get more detailed test??

Depends on how much money you want to spend and how curious you are.

I get the basic soil test done at Penn State for $9 and pay $5 extra for the organic material level.

I have no need to look for contaminants like lead and I will not be adjusting micronutrients anyway so basic is good enough for me.