Using Microbial Innoculants in the soil & garden

I am in line with Mibus2 when 'm out there eating raspberries, et, without washing. Have 'we' missed out on too many of those low-level exposures to the probiotics, and to low doses of molds ,etc, that would make us less sensitive?


This message was edited Jan 10, 2008 6:24 PM

I am not questioning the safety of EM use directly but as a too much of a good thing possibility.

When we contaminate water or soil, we throw the natural balance of organisms way out of whack. When we apply products such as EM, even though it is natural and cleans things up again, are we in danger of swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction and thus causing another imbalance in nature. When we create this imbalance, are we causing those natural elements to mutate, both the "good" and the "bad" ?

I like the idea that we can clean up our mess. So of course I like the idea of EM. But do we know when to stop? Do we know when we have restored the balance and to let nature alone before we go too far? I believe every thing in nature has a purpose, even "bad" microbes. We just do not always understand that purpose so we rush ahead on the basis of our limited understandings and later discover we made things worse.

HI Mibus2,
That is a fair assumption without sticking too much jargon in there.

Funny you should talk about kids getting sick. I recently read an article talking about how the cleaners and disinfectant abuse in our psycho-clean society is actually leading to autism, asthma, and various digestive disorders. We need microbes or we would die. Microbes, many of the same that are in EM1, are part of our immune system.

When antibiotics are used, ALL the microbes in our bodies are attacked. There are some microbes that we are born with that are killed off when we use these drugs. The only way we are going to replace them is to take a probiotic. Now, if you have a sterile environment, what is going to grow there first? Whatever is there, right? You obviously want the good bacteria, not the bad ones to be there.

Why is MRSA hospital-borne when they use disinfectants? Because there are new sick people coming in all the time. MRSA and passed through the air and from skin to skin contact. Staph can grow if the conditions are right and if it doesn't have to "fight" against another organism to get ahead...and a suppressed immune system will not be able to fend the pathogens off. Read the Center for Disease Control's website about MRSA. They recommend using soap, not antibacterial soap, just soap. Simply washing your hands will prevent so much spreading of pathogenic organisms. Clean does not have to mean sterile.

I imagine people who garden avidly tend to have a stronger immune system because of their exposure to so many "bugs". Also, home grown veggies tend to have more nutrition than commercially available ones....even the organic ones. This is because of depleted nutrients. Passionate gardeners tend to add lost of compost, minerals (rock dusts), and other nutrients to ensure their plants look great. After all, who wants to grow plants with yellow leaves, powdery mildew, and black spots all over them???

Hi Zanymuse,
I may have misread, or read too much into the question....
Yes, too much of a good thing is bad and in some places completely unnecessary. A perfect example is in the body. If you take in too many antioxidants, you actually start to produce more free radicals, therefore reversing the entire benefits.

If we are talking about a bioremediation project, the residual materials are sampled and tested for and applications cease when project goals are reached.

In agriculture/gardening, the most amount of EM1 is used at the beginning. This is usually to get things back in balance. Since beneficials die off easily, things like acid rain and/or chlorinated water kill off many of them. We highly suggest people use as much as 40 gallons AEM1 per acre in their first year. This is an average amount. However, people that have been growing organically and use lots of organic matter, could see results with as little as 5 gallons per acre. As real soil builds, the amounts can go as low as 1 gallon per acre per year for shrubs and things that don't suck too many nutrients out of the soil. Veggies and fruits, which are heavy feeders, will tend to use more and applications are mixed between foliar sprays and composting.

Water is another place we find out if we used too much and we find out pretty fast. The general application is 1 part AEM1 to 10,000 parts water (1 gallon for every 10,000 gallons). In a pond, not one where you are intensively raising fish, the applications are done only once a month. As the muck on the pond is digested, you decrease the frequency of applications down to two-three times per year, or as needed.

So we don't go too crazy with the applications as it could be bad in some situations. For the past 27+ years (and over 100 countries) there has not been one case that has caused any major issues. Usually people don't use enough at first or they don't keep their containers clean, or they keep the product open and it spoils.

EMEric, are you suggesting that the chemical companies are always working to make tougher and meaner synthetic disinfectants because they are patentable and therefore more profitable? Several natural health writers claim that pharmaceutical companies do the same thing. And that our legal system and medical establishment favor synthetic medicines over natural cures.

But most people don't trust nature and continue to buy anti-bacterial soap, despite what the CDC says. So who's going to educate them about the benefits of ordinary soap and probiotics? Oprah? Maybe. Nature certainly doesn't have any way to advertise her products.

Yes, I know that EM is patented as a "recipe" of naturally-occuring microorganisms. That's a fair way of rewarding the inventor. But I doubt that there's any research comparing EM-type solutions to synthetic chemicals--like disinfectants that result in resistant strains of Staph and other diseases. Or like simple household cleaners that work effectively without making you gasp for breath.

Hi Maypop,

There is actually quite a bit of testing that has been done on using EM1 to suppress the growth of various pathogens. However, EM1 can not be called a disinfectant because by definition a disinfectant has to kill 99.99% of bacteria within a certain time frame, say under 1 hour. This type of "pressure" to kill in such an intense way causes mutation pressure over time. The way EM1 works is through natural defense mechanisms and various environmental stressors or "encouragers". This is called competitive exclusion. Disinfectants have been on the market for decades. Until recently, people have not looked at the compounded effects and reactions. The microbes in EM1 have been around for billions of years and have not caused mutation on the planet that we know of.

I know antibiotics and antibacterial things have their place, but they should not be used all the time. Having triclosan (an active ingredient in agent orange) in most household soaps, toothpaste, and mouthwash does not make me think this is a wise use of a powerful technology. Industry and government do show preference for things that are patentable and not naturally-occurring. I too have a patent on an organic cleaner.

We have to remember that before World War II everyone farmed organically. The stockpiles of chemical agents (nerve gases and defoliants) were not brought to the mainstream markets until after the war. Anhydrous ammonia was used to increase compaction in the soil in order to quickly build landing strips. I also happens to be a great fertilizer because it is loaded with nitrogen. However, it causes soils to lose their ability to hold water and leads to erosion. Is it any wonder we have so many billion tons of topsoil eroding across the country?

I think I covered everything. This is getting to be a pretty involved discussion topic!

Actually, DDT was invented in 1874, so its use preceded WWII, but I will agree that most of the chemicals used in health and agriculture showed up after WWII.

Many people believe polio to be the result of chemical poisoning of the central nervous system (CNS) from the use of DDT and organochlorines. The polio myelitis virus was completely absent in many of the cases, but exposure to DDT was always present.
More info on that topic here:

http://www.geocities.com/harpub/pol_all.htm
http://www.geocities.com/harpub/overview.htm

The other problem with triclosan use in all the antibacterial products now on the market is that the formaldehyde component of triclosan mixes with the chlorine in tap water to release choroform gas. There were a number of cases locally were people passed out while doing dishes as a result of inhaling these fumes.

Thank you for your response to my concerns. We need to do everything we can to restore health to our soils and clean up our waterways. This solution , appears to be the safest way to do that that I have heard about to date. I still wonder though how these products will be viewed 10 to 100 years down the road as we learn more and other scientific discoveries are made.

Zanymuse, your concerns are definitely shared.

It would certainly be easier if there was just *one* thing that we could all do to restore the earth, but that is wishful thinking. The damage was caused in a variety of ways, so we will need to repair it in a variety of ways.

EM is only one tool in our toolkit (albeit a powerful one). For me, the guiding principle is "are we working WITH nature or against her?" in our daily lives. Using EM and Bokashi has helped me reduce the amount of garbage we create and reduce the amount of other substances used in drains, cleaning and for garden problems. My plants and pets seem to be doing well with it. My worms are happy, fat and *creative*.
If the SFPUD gets rid of or cuts back on the chloramine in our water, maybe I won't need so much innoculant in the garden. Until then, I'm "fermenting" as much of my world as I can.

I tried to make it on the simpler side with the way the topic was going.
I'm not big into scientific terms but know enough to understand what was being said but I thought making it simple would help break it down a bit more to understand the concept so to speak.

I am amazed how this topic has grown and expanded so much ...aren't ya glad you came to DG *smile*

Boy, oh boy, have we opened a can of worms! or are we seeing more of the proverbial iceburg?

I've always wondered where polio came from--it just seemed to pop up out of nowhere--and it put my best friend in braces and casts for years. I've even heard some defense of DDT lately, that while it harms birds and wildlife, it is perfectly safe for humans. A little poison won't kill you, they say. But what about a lifetime of absorbing a little chlorine here and there, pesticides in our food, and all the other toxins that embed themselves in our very tissue? What is the accumulated effect? Autism, cancer, food allergies?

When I was a kid in the good ol' days, we used to spray DDT all over our house. I still remember the smell. At least our food was real. Not too much processed, refined, fast food or beef injected with hormones. I'm so glad I blundered into this forum. Thanks to all for letting us hear about another alternative.

I just had a meeting with someone from Gardening How To Magazine. We met at a coffee shop here in town and I started rattling on about this forum and the topics discussed here and all the projects with EM1 in the past. There are over 340,000 members in Dave's and over 675,000 subscribers to Gardening How To! Gardening How To is only available to subscribers and is the largest gardening magazine in the US. I am not sure how many people in DG are subscriber to them, but that is a lot of people! I am sure this isn't the only gardening forum on the net either. Wow!

So, it appears all of us in this forum are going or have gone organic. What do most of you grow? Food or flowers? What kinds of fertilizers do you use? Do you grow indoor plants (I can't for the life of me).

Does any use or have a compost toilet? You know bokashi can be used in those...

Since I moved into town I have only enough room for a small flower garden but I still don't want to use chemicals especially with a stream just a few feet beyond my fence!

I don't have a composting toilet but several friends use them in their mountain cabins and spread the compost around their wind break trees. I know they use something like EM in them but I don't know if it is the EM brand or somethig else. I'll have to ask when they come up again.

It's hard not to rattle on about these forums ;~)

HI Zanymuse,
I will have to scan in some of the photos of my gardens when I lived back East. They were beautiful. I used to work nights, so I had all day to garden. I started with 3 hydrangea and kept splitting and doing cuttings. 4 years later, I had over 27 that I made a hedge out of, each was about 5 feet high with a base of about 2 feet in diameter. I miss those, the black eyed susans, the lilacs, and the cone flowers...not to mention the hostas and day lilies. I have about 35 varieties of day lilies. I used to line every bed with them to define the bed. My property there was about 1/2 acre, mostly back year.

In Tucson, I only have 0.17 acre (standard lot size...). The oleander kills everything on one side. The sun cooks everything on the other. I built a 30x12 section of shade cloth canopy and now have my vegetable garden there. I can say that this is a great place to grow melons and citrus!

The stuff they are using could likely be supplied by the manufacturer. I have heard that many of those companies supply inoculated sawdust.

We're currently in a urban condo (hopefully this will be the last year for this) and gardening in two community gardens. DH had to sell his farm to pay off FIL's medical bills a while ago. We're watching land prices and hoping to move back to a rural area again in another year or so. Most of the community gardens in this area are organic or in process of changing to organic (lower liability for the city).
We grow vegetables, herbs and flowers in our plots. I'm also caretaker of the common area medicinal herb garden. I've gardened in hot, humid, buggy South Florida, foggy San Franciso & BC, 6500 feet in the Sierras, high desert plateaus and central CA coast.

We used a microbial innoculant in the holding tank when I used to sail. My mom uses an innoculant in her AirStream. My aunt in Europe brews biodymanic herbal elixirs and sprays those on her crops, so in a way, that is probably somewhat of a microbial innoculant.

Eric, have you seen the "greening of the desert" video on the permaculture thread?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sohI6vnWZmk
Perhaps you can apply some of these concepts to current garden.

I saw the "greening" video at my sister's house. G_M, aren't those the Aussies who created the permaculture system? I have Mollison's Designer's Manual. It's HUGE, in size and in concept. Every time I read a page I want to go outside and incorporate some of his ideas. EMEric, you may have similar conditions to what Mollison and his permaculture designers had=constant sun, depleted, droughty soil. Have you tried any of their pioneering methods?

Is this topic only in the Soil & Composting forum? Not in Sustainable Alternatives?

There is a Permaculture thread in the Sustainable Alternatives forum.
Perhaps there should be an EM/microbial innoculant usage thread in that forum as well.
This is a HUGE topic that covers many areas.

Hi Maypop,
I have a very small yard, the front is all xeroscaped with desert plants (cactus, ironwood, mesquite). The sides and back are about 10x40 and the back is 15x60. One side was lined with oleander and had been paved with cinder blocks. The back has established bermuda grass in 3/4 of it. I have planted a pyrocanthus and an apricot in the lawn. There is one deciduous tree I don't know the name of and a queen palm.
On the garden side, I have planted a pink grapefruit, a dwarf peach, a navel orange, a pommegranate, and a fig. My evaporative cooler drains into this side, which I used for watering in the summer months. My plan is that someday the trees will provide shade and organic materials for the vegetables grown below. For now, the majority of this area is covered with the shade cloth to protect the plants below.

Because of the small lot size and the established plantings (the house was built in 1989. I moved in late 2003), I am not able to practice things like "growing every day food close to the home and orchard foods farther out" We are also not allowed to have animals like chickens in the home owners' association. There is not need to build gabions, etc.

I have not done anything like setting up a formal rainwater harvesting system. Our house does not have a gutter system on it. However, during rain storms, we do collect as much water as possible with a line of 5-gallon buckets, when full, I transfer to a 55-gallon drum to use for either activating EM1 and/or for water plants on the property. I am not sure if the home owners' association will allow me to put up gutters.

This topic is only in the composting forum. Perhaps some mention to people in that forum to go over here is in order....
Eric

What exciting threads (even or especially the compost toilet) --thanks to garden_mermaid, for initiating this one AND the bokashi thread. So interesting. . . I do think that the green-movement is really starting to roll, and that more and more gardeners are going to sign up (like me) because of the momentum.
I started out gardening in 2006, not that long ago, and the arguments for organic-gardening were impossible to ignore. I garden on 1/2 acre of fairly level ground--not developed as a garden till we moved in--and it's totally sandy, hence my interest in composting. Last summer I grew tomatoes, cukes, peppers, eggplants, flowers, and perennials that do well here on the Cape (hydrangeas, rhododendrons, daylilies, etc.) which I'm adding to as time goes on. I've got four rain barrels set up. I use fish fertilizer and compost tea. Also Soil Soup, which I spray on the foliage.
I look forwad to using Em1.

this is going to be my first full year in Texas and using the bokashi so I am going to TRY and see how a veggie garden goes for me. Back in Illinois I grew a typical veggie garden I guess you would cal lit. Green beans, radishes, peas, spinach, cukes, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes..have done okra, sweet corn, squash, melons, lima beans are what comes to my memory right now plus I had apples, pears, grapes, raspberries and Flowers in several places.

I hope to try alot of the list above and alot more flowers.
and I told my folks who are down in Mission Texas( they spend the month of January there then go back ti Illinois) to bring me back a grapefruit tree and anything else they might find citrus wise for me to plant here ..LOL

garden_mermaid…back in the 70’s I worked at a wastewater treatment facility that had a toxic reaction occur which shut down all methane production in the seven anaerobic digesters in a mater of thee days. It took nearly a month to determine the cause. The chemical culprit was phenolic sterate at $35 an ounce. The concentration it took to knock out millions of gallons of digesting sludge was prohibitive so we had to figure out the source. Conclusion… the phenol came from paint. A local paint manufacturer had sold a large airplane manufacture a bad batch of paint, and when returned it was dumped into the sewer. Large globs of silver gray paint had been coming up on the bar screen rakes and a good deal of it ended in the anaerobic digesters after combining synergistically with stearic acid in common hose-hold detergents. Peholic sterate normally soluble had become a solid, and when placed in the primary digesters was instantly toxic to the methane formers. Even with as little as ten percent transfers, the secondary digesters also ceased methane production.

For weeks I had been deluged with enzyme and microbe salespeople offering products to solve the problem. Nothing we tried worked including reseeding from digesters at our secondary treatment facility several miles away. The final solution was a test digester which I chose, where I stopped circulation and allowed the solids to settle before removing about six feet of settled solids off the bottom. Then gradually the feed of raw sludge was increased to this digester. In about a month there was ‘seed’ for the other digesters. When all digesters were back on line the gas production exceeded anything we had ever seen before, and upsets were a thing of the past.

Conclusion is…bacteria occur naturally in our environment and in many cases adding other substances may be of little benefit.

However, a few years back I had lunch with a retired Bacteriology professor, and she told me a story about saving a well know oil refinery millions by turning their cooling towers into bacteria culturing vats for a remediation project. This was a most fascinating lady, and her philosophy was that anything, including radio-active waste could be broken down using the right bacteria cultures and nutrients. She was also instrumental in explaining why the Jaun Valdez cleanup project was not successful to other companies which later experienced similar problems…the solution…they forgot to add nitrogen to their cleanup bacteria culture!

So in final conclusion … as long as you know what your doing EM cultures can be of benefit, but you should way the cost against the benefits. And once you have established a working culture, ALWAYS save some for the next batch.

m

mraider, to date most of the microbial innoculants have been of tremedous value and produced noticeable results for us. Although I agree that bacteria exist naturally in the environment, the ones still present in a given location can be grossly out of balance due to human intereference.

Hi All,
In 2006 I was in Alaska and was handed a proposal for the Valdez cleanup...surprised it was still going on 17 years after the accident. I met with some people the Alaskan NOAA office and spoke with them about the cleanup and what had gone on. What I had learned was that some yeast products were tried (which are known to start the breakdown of petroleum). The biggest factor that would hurt bioremediation of this project is the temperature of the water.

The project objectives are to turn the collection system in to a treatment system and the treatment plant into a polishing plant. Equipment, retention time in the sewer lines, and capacity at the plant greatly affect the ability to make this happen. The benefits of direct inoculation far out-weight the cost of replacing equipment such as pumps or the environmental impact of a ruptured sewer main cause from excessively high levels of sulfuric acid in the collection system.

I love this thread! Thank you for all the information.

ZZsBabiez,
Tell people as many people as you know about it.

I really like Dave's Garden and the way it is managed, designed, etc. It is a great portal for people.
Eric

There is a thread in the healthy living forum about natural seratonin in the soil. Would EM increase seratonin?

katiebear

I just sent an email to EMRO USA, the place that makes EM1 for North America...and who I used to work for. I have not run into this question before.

I really can't wait for the database of research reports to come back online. The target date is March 1st. It will be linked to the EM Research Organization (EMRO) new English website. EMRO is the owner of the technology. They are based in Okinawa, Japan.
Eric

katiebear,
Could you please put a link to where this is discussed? Serotonin is a neurotransmitter,
involved in the transmission of nerve impulses. It is manufactured in human brain.
So, why would seratonin in soils?

I have a question (or two) LOL!

I want to spray some EM-1 in my garden. Should I wait until the ground warms up? Can I spray it on bare ground?

I think my soil is dead! I never see any worms. It has been tended with chemicals for years. Nothing grows well. I have a real struggle just to get plants to live!

I am starting this year to "go organic" . I have a compost pile I started last year that I think will be ready by spring. I have been going to Starbucks and getting bags of coffee ground and spreading them around in my garden, and then putting chopped up leaves from last fall over the top.

I also want to make compost tea and manure tea, but don't know if any of this is beneficial in cold weather.

I am so excited about the prospects of having healthy living plants that it is hard for me to wait another two months. But, I don't want to waste my resources if the time is not right.

Any advice would be appreciated. Am I in the right thread for this topic? There are so many!

Thanks,
Pat

Eric, I too have a question, just got the bokashi bucket and goodies. In reading the directions I see one needs to chop up the wastes. If we ran this stuff thru a food processor or blender would that be too fine or does it matter? I happen to have a "spare" cheap blender, that is earmarked for doing things for spraying the garden, ie, garlic water for repelling various critters and pests. Since I garden organically this was the easier way to do that. Found the blender at a yard sale for $3.00. Couldn't beat the price.......LOL

I live in the subtropics so I'll let Eric handled Pat's question about EM. You can spread the coffee grounds and leaves any time. You could put them into a lasagna-type bed. You are lucky to get coffee grounds - they are a great amendment. Most everybody here uses instant coffee.

Doc, I missed the part about chopping up the wastes. I've just been using stuff as is including some really big fish remains. I buried the fish remains after a month or six week with bokashi and they were pretty well broken up. It would probably break down a lot faster if chopped up.

katie

Thanks, katie. I had a feeling that was what the chopping was all about. Since it's essentially going to "pickle" that would make sense. Much faster break down. That's good to know, though, there are some things I ain't touching....LOL The Bokashi is going to have to make do. LOL

Katie,
You should have some pretty good fertilizer with all the fish remains.

adoresaiken,
The leaves and coffee grounds are terrific. I've been adding them to my copost piles.

Doc. You should follow Katie and get some fish guts (any fish market will have them) and then pop them in your Bass-O-Matic 2000!!! Remember the Dan Arkroyd skit on SNL???

Totally correct, chopping stuff increases the surface area, making for better fermentation and increasing the speed of breakdown.

Pat,
I am not sure how cold it is where you are...it will likely be warming up soon. Freezing of EM1 kills off about 10-20% of the microbes, not all of them. The inoculant also adds enzymes, amino acids, trace minerals, and vitamins. So, it is not a waste to apply when it is still cold. However, I would wait until you don't have to worry about using the hose. You could start building up a compost pile now to get read for the warmer weather and bed prep.

I used to order manure in March when I lived in Massachusetts and start spraying it right away. Besides EM1, my favorite tool was always my rear-tine roto tiller...a 5Hp brute that I used to dig in everything, much like doing sheet composting.

If the land has been treated extensively with synthetic chemicals, you will want to go with heavy applications of AEM1. I would shoot for 20+ gallons per acre in the first year. You can make 22 gallons of AEM1 with one gallon of EM1. Get a gallon now and start the applications on a weekly basis. You will probably want to get another gallon sometime in August. Do foliar sprays in the early evening...about once a week. Get most of it in the soil in the beginning and into compost that you'll mulch with. I would say 15 gallons of AEM1 now through the end of May.

Eric, I'm confused. I see AEM Plus on the site, but does not appear it's available for sale. So how does that work? What's the difference between the 2. Or can you add something to the EM to make it AEM? Please clarify this for me, thanks.

The Shad will be running in the Rappahanock soon. That will get me all the fish I can handle. LOL

AEM means activaed EM. You get the EM and mix it with molasses and water and let it ferment to get AEM. I think. Eric will correct me if I'm wrong. By acitating - or extending - your EM you can make 22 gallons from of AEM from one gallon of EM. The AEM doesn't keep as well but it does the same job.

You will love the bokashi when you compost fish scraps.

katiebear

Ok, that helped. Until I actually do this, it's real easy for me to get confused. Molasses is on my list from the feed store. Just found out we CAN have bunnies and chickens. So DH and I have to talk a bit more about housing and hutches and where to put them. That would be great. Big :)

As for chopping the items that go in the Bokashi bucket - mine are all kitchen scraps to begin with. Sometimes I chop the discarded stems into 2-3 inch pieces, sometimes I'm in a hurry and don't. It all seems to work out. Scraps from the dinner plate are already in pieces. The contents of my buckets go into the worm bin after the two week fermetnation time. So far the bigger pieces haven't been a problem.

Thanks gardenm..that's good info. I have a few things ready to go in. So I shall be starting up the Bokashi tonight!