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Re: Beneficial Soil Microbes - and Steiner BD preparations do not ...



Hi David Inglis -

I agree with you that Steiner didn't emphasize that the preps could be good microbial inocula.  I sometimes think when he wrote for the general public, he knew that scientific terms might be difficult for many people to grasp, and so put things into less difficult concepts. 

I've seen a fair bit of variation in the way preparations are made.  What one person gets really adamant about being the right way to make a prep is different from what someone else claims is the right way.  I've always understood that with the plus silica cow horn material, silica was added to the materials in the cow horn, not that the cow horn was filled with just silica. 

Remember, I was careful to say that the material we assessed was the fresh material, just out of the horn.  If the fresh material is used to make a liquid preparation, even just a pinch of that fresh material has a great inoculum of fungi and bacteria. 

But if you dried the material down, stored it for a few months, then the organisms will "go to sleep" and some will die.  But still, when you have only a couple million bacteria and a hundred fungal micrograms per gram of the material, and you add a pinch to a liquid preparation, you are still inoculating alot of organisms into the material.  It's still a decent inoculum.

So, if you add the preparations to something else, you are getting a good set of organisms added in.  Could there be other active ingredients that are important?  Of course, as the bacteria and fungi grew in the plant materials, and in the compost, they made bio-active compounds.  Those compounds get added as well.  Is there energy being added?  Sure, of course.  All of these things will be a part of the prep. 

So, did Steiner know this?  I think he did.  He had access to microscopes.   

Do you have to know all about all the things in the preps in order to use the preps?  No you don't.  I don't know everything about how engines work, but I still drive a car nearly everyday. 

But if you want to know if you are making a prep to have the maximum benefit, maybe we need to recognize that the microbes in the material are an extremely important part in making that prep what it should be. 

OK, I'm biased in favor of the little critters. But still, we need them in the right numbers, at the right level of activity, and we need the right kinds for the plant you are trying to grow.  You can cross your fingers and hope, or you can add the right set of organisms and the right nutrients, at the right time, and set the system up to succeed in being the right place for your plant to perform exceedingly well.  On occasion testing to make sure all is right might be a good idea. 

Elaine Ingham
President, Soil Foodweb Inc.
www.soilfoodweb.com