soil food web

Is anyone using the "soil food web" approach to gardening. I've been reading about it and it makes a lot of sense to me, but it seems complicated to implement, a least in the beginning. I'm wondering if anyone on this forum has any experience with using it.

I think that any gardener who bascially sticks to organic methods, uses organic mulch and applies compost is using the "soil food web" approach. Sort of basically, feed the soil which in turn feeds the plant.

Exactly what complicated aspect are you referring to?

Karen

I agree, as long as you're not using nasty chemicals all over your garden you've probably got a good start going, and as long as you continue to use organic approaches your garden will continue to improve. The only time it might be hard or complicated is if you have a yard where you or someone else has been using lots and lots of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers for years and years and you want to try and fix it very quickly, then there's probably quite a lot of effort involved. But if you just take things slow, stop using chemicals and start using good things like compost, and your soil will improve over time.

I guess I'm thinking of the aerated compost teas and specific adjustments for bacteria/fungal dominance.

I've doing all the "usual" stuff for 20 years now. No chemicals. Some manure and compost and lots of mulching with fall collected leaves. My garden does OK, and I get reasonable harvests, but my tomato plants, for example, are never as lush as a friend who also does the "usual" organic stuff (in a different part of the province, with different soil) , and I don't get the quantity of tomatoes she does . There are sections of my garden where stuff just doesn't grow as well. Also I have a problem with my fruit trees. I think they are "stressed" as I rarely get more than 6 plums from the "healthiest" tree.

I recently won a soil food web soil test as a door prize for a talk I went to about the soil food web, and my test came back showing that my soil was "bacterially dominated with reduced fungal, protozoal and nematode populations". Which kind of fits with what I've seen in my garden. Kale, (which likes bacterial dominence) has always done well. Maybe it has something to do with the underlying soil in the area. The testers are not trying to sell me anything. I know who they are and I trust them.

According to the literature, what I need is fungally dominated compost, and compost tea. I have located a source of "fungal dominated compost" made from sawmill waste, but it is expensive. Compost teas seem to be pretty complicated to produce. I'm wondering if it's worth getting in to all that.

Have you read this book?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0881927775/bookstorenow99-20

I thought it was very good. It's been a few years since I read it, but I do remember that they explained how to make bacterial or fungally dominated compost, and what to use as mulch to accomplish it. From what I remember, they recommended making compost heavy on carbon sources, and mulching with the same to achieve fungally dominated soil. I believe they recommended this for trees, shrubs, perennials.

Bacterially dominated compost heavy on nitrogen, and mulches of the same, recommended for annuals and vegetables I think.

I might be misquoting because, as I said, it has been several years since I read the book. It does have a lot of interesting material, though.

Karen

That's the book I've been reading. It's the compost tea part that seems complicated. You have to buy or make a "tea brewer" and get the aeration right.

The balance of bacteria/fungus varies for different things. If I remember correctly, most weeds do best with bacterial dominated soil, then as it gets more fungal, it gets better for grasses, then brassicas, general vegetables, small fruits (strawberries, blueberries), fruit trees and eventually old growth forests which are very fungal. My garden has a reasonable amount of fungus but still not enough for ideal vegetable growing. (The weeds, however, are doing great!)

I am going to do more of the easy stuff i.e stop digging (which breaks up the mycelium) work on aeration, and increase the variety of my compost by using bark (and maybe the fungal compost) in addition to leaves, and use more of them. But I wonder if anyone has experience with the more complicated "compost tea" part.

Compost tea is not hard at all, I bought a brewing system from Soil Soup a couple years ago, theirs uses worm castings as the base for the tea but you can use whatever you want. For theirs, you fill the bucket with water, add a bit of molasses, then put the worm castings in a fabric "tea bag", start the pump and let it go for about a day. The recipe you're trying might have different components, but it shouldn't be any harder. And if you don't want to spend the money on a fancy brewing system, get yourself a bucket and an aquarium or fountain pump and that should work just fine too, the key is that you need to be mixing up the tea rather than just letting it sit there.

It seems most people use the bucket and aquarium air pump because it's cheaper and apparently easy to make. I don't use compost tea, maybe I should but haven't so far. I have my hands full enough with basic gardening maintenance.

Most folks who do use it swear by it, though.

Karen