Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The Soil & Its Inhabitants
It was night and a bacterium was sitting down to dinner in the soil. It
froze as a nematode went whizzing by in search of food, fortunately in a
hurry or the bacterium would have been eaten alive.
The fungi next door had been there for three minutes, but had not at-
tacked, so the bacterium figured it was friendly. It seemed to be having
fun anyway, trapping nematodes and eating them, so our bacterium con-
sidered it an ally tonight.
The bacterium had spent the day consuming bits of organic matter to
help build the soil village. There are many like it, with new ones being
born all the time — a good thing, since the lifespan of the bacterium is
less than an hour.
And so it goes. The bacteria, the fungi, the protists, the nematodes, the
earthworms and other small animals, and plants working to build the vil-
lage.
Conventional soil science teaches that soil is a relatively inert medi-
um, an anchor for plants made of sand, silt and clay and a handful of nu-
trients for plant growth. If soil has enough nutrients, gardener's will be
okay.
Traditionally, not much has been mentioned about organic matter and
next to nothing on the soil food web. In many soil textbooks, you would
likely find multiple chapters on fertilizing with nitrogen, phosphorus and
potassium (NPK) and next to nothing on organic matter and botany. Fer-
tilization is seen as the number one soil management strategy in many
textbooks.
