Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 12
Microbial Inoculants
STEP 3
Do you have too much compost? I know I don't. It's always in short supply. Most of us
don't have too much organic matter in our soil either. In fact, most of us don't have nearly
enough.
The same goes for microbes. We generally need more of them. It may be because we
don't have enough organic matter for them to eat, we have big monocultures in our land-
scape, we've used pesticides or chemical fertilizers, we've used drip irrigation or otherwise
withheld water from the landscape, we've been tilling our soil, or even because of the gen-
erally toxic environment we live in with pollution, antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals
around. Most soils are lacking a healthy soil food web and we need to get the microbes
back in there. Of course, we need to address these other issues at the same time too.
Remember, microbes make our soil healthy, feed and protect our plants, and clean our
water. They even help to control weeds, insects and diseases just by improving the health
of the soil. They're vital to the success of our garden, and we can bring them in through
composting, but it takes time. Fortunately, there are some quick ways to inoculate our gar-
dens with microbes. An additional benefit of using these methods over compost is that we
can apply some of them not only to soil, but directly onto the leaves. Although it doesn't
hurt to do this a few times a year, just doing it the first few times is the most important.
We've already seen how inoculants are important to use with your legumes, and when
most people talk about inoculants, that's generally what they're talking about. There are
new ones being developed all the time, but there are three I use regularly. Two of them —
compost tea and Effective Microorganisms (EM) — deserve their own chapters, which fol-
low. The third, mycorrhizal fungi, is below.
The reason I use these inoculants is that they're tried and true, and I believe them to be
the most important. Many of the newer products are blends of just Bacillus species, which
are beneficial, but in my opinion, are not even close to being as good as a mixture like EM.
That being said, I'm sure there are some out there that are beneficial.
