Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Soil Biology
If you're a market food grower, you may want to know how many microbes you have in
your soil and how diverse they are. You can get a microscope and learn to do some of this
yourself, but for most people it's best to have a lab such as Soil Foodweb do it. At the time
of this writing, it's about $60 for a basic test that covers bacteria and fungi, which is a good
start. You can pay over $200 to include protozoa, nematodes and mycorrhizal fungi. Prices
are currently double in their Canadian labs.
The only reason to do this kind of testing is if you're prepared to act on the results, and
that means balancing out your soil food web. That involves learning how to make specific
composts and compost teas that select for specific kind of microbes, which I touch on later
in the compost tea chapter. This is a lot of fun, but I understand that most home gardeners
won't want to jump into it. It's worthwhile mainly for landscapers and people who grow a
lot of food.
I may do biology testing on a new garden if I know I'll be gardening there for a while.
Otherwise, I just go ahead and make the best compost and compost tea I possibly can, al-
beit not as specifically suited to the soil as it might be based on testing. For now, I think
soil mineral testing is more important. The reason I include biology testing here is because
I feel there's a good chance that many of us who currently test our soil minerals will one
day be testing our soil biology too.
