Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
that will make the kind of cheese they wish to make. One can wait around and
hope that the right yeast spore will fall into the vat and create champagne, or one
can increase the odds in their favor by adding the cultures that they want right at
the start. We want to be sure that the best possible soil life "culture" is there and
ready to make the minerals and organic nutrients in the soil available.
Beneficial Soil Organisms (BSOs) have proven their value in bringing vibrant life to
the soil, in protecting the soil and plants from disease and drought, and in making
soil nutrients readily available.
BSOs are also valuable for freeing nutrients that are in the soil but "tied up". For
example, soils may have good phosphate reserves, yet the plants growing on
those soils are starving for phosphate. Many farmers and gardeners in this
situation resort to adding soluble phosphate fertilizers to a soil that already has
plenty of phosphate, only to have the added phosphate chemically combine with
cations in the soil and become unavailable to plants within a few weeks. The
reason for this is that elemental Phosphorus is an extremely active "acid" mineral.
It has a powerful negative - charge, and just can't wait to latch onto the nearest +
charge. The nearest + charge is usually Calcium, and together Ca and P form
Calcium phosphate, a very stable compound and exactly what bones are made of.
Seen any water-soluble bones lately? It takes either strong acids or the right
microorganisms to break the Ca-P bond.
Another good reason to use pro-biotic soil cultures is that many soils have a hard
time breaking down organic matter to form humus. Seeding the soil or the compost
pile with the right biology will greatly assist in breaking down tough plant roots,
wood chips, corn stalks, and other "chunks" of organic matter in the soil, releasing
the tied-up nutrients all along the way.
Here is a third important reason to use a good BSO culture to seed the soil:
Healthy soils always contain healthy symbiotic fungi. 95% of plant species have a
natural and ancient alliance with the soil fungi. Some fungi send out their long
"roots" called hyphae (hi-fee) for many meters, both deep into the soil and just
below the surface in the topsoil. They search out nutrients and moisture and bring
them back to share with the plants. Other fungi are smaller, and only live close to
the plants they are partners with. They break down small rock particles while
searching for nutrients, digest dead organic matter, and even protect the plants
from disease by producing antibiotics; the originals for all of our antibiotics were
from the fungi. (Penicillin is produced by the common blue bread mold.) In
exchange for being fed, helped, and defended, the plants feed the fungi, sharing
the sugars and other carbohydrates that they make in the open air and sunshine
with the fungi that never see the sun.
The name for these types of symbiotic fungi is mycorrhizae (my-ko-riz-ee), or
mycorrhizal (my-ko-riz-al) fungi. Myco means fungus and rhizae comes from
