Re: Beneficial microbes - composting

From: Elaine Ingham (Soilfoodweb@AOL.COM)
Date: Sat Dec 28 2002 - 04:13:44 EST


Stick your hand in acid strong enough to kill Phytophthora on contact and
tell me what happens. Any acid able to kill an active fungal disease
organism is going to take the skin off your hand.

Biocidal? Drink it and then tell me. Inject it in a plant, what happens?
Cell membranes are cell membranes, doesn't matter, mammal, fungus or plant,
those hydrogen ions are going to kill cells. You think a plant can survive
with it's roots system or it's trunk eaten out by acid?
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I understand from the literature that salicylic acid was THOUGHT to be
effective, but in fact has been shown not to be effective at eliciting
systemic acquired resistance. Same with jasmonic acid. People THOUGHT they
had isolated the chemicals to make plants resistant to disease, but nope,
they have not. I went to a seminar about three years ago where they were
showing that - hum, graduate student of Joyce Loper, I think. Cindy Ocambo
also gave some talks to that effect as well. So, unless I've missed
something more recent, that whole flurry of excitement about SAR was shown to
be pre-mature.
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Phosphoric acid injected into trees does not solve a phosphorus deficiency in
the trees, because H2PO4 is not the proper form of P for the plant
internally. Injecting phosphoric acid into your veins would do nothing for
any P deficiency in your body. It would clear out any cancer cells, for
example, but would probably kill you at the same time. Injecting trees with
any acid strong enough to kill a fungal disease is really hard on the tree.

And the question becomes, is such treatment truly effective at killing the
disease? Is it a short term set-back for the disease, or a real cure?
Apparently just short term set-back. The CAUSE of the problem was not dealt
with. I am sorry that I can't remember where I read this, but probably in
the Journal of Arboculture, or New Scientist.

I recall some papers by Walt Thies on the efficacy of injection of biocides
into trees. I think he said it just made people feel good that they were
doing something. Ultimately, there was no clear evidence that it did the
trees any good. Once the disease organisms got over the short term slow
down, the treated trees succumbed even more rapidly than the not-injected
trees.
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You made the case that it was a deficiency of P, or maybe Ca, that allowed
the disease to take over.

If you add phosphoric acid to an alkaline soil, how long is the phosphoric
acid actually available to the plant? Most soils west of the Great Dividing
Range in Australia are calcium carbonate rich, correct? Add phosphoric acid,
and you make calcium phosphate. Takes about 15 seconds for the reaction to
occur and for the PO4 to become plant-not-available. Not much benefit to the
plant. Certainly isn't solving any P deficiency in the soil.

Add phosphoric acid to acid sulfate soils, and the pH problem goes from
really bad to really, really bad. Not much benefit to the plant.

So, in neutral soils, or close to neutral soils, what does the phosphoric
acid react with, and how long is PO4 actually available to plants? And where
are the roots of your trees? Anywhere close to where the acid was added?
And if they were close, what did that acid do to the roots?

And where acid was added, regardless of soil pH, what happened to the
beneficial, disease-suppressive organisms in that soil? If your house was
flooded with phosphoric acid, how long would you stay alive? Are you
important to the function of your neighborhood? So is each critter in the
soil. Individually, maybe not all that important. But collectively, the
plant won't survive without them.

What organisms come back most rapidly after biocidal treatment? Beneficial
organisms, or disease organisms?

Why?

Why does addition of phosphoric acid "work" in ag systems? You apply
phosphoric acid after harvest, or before planting, not when live plants are
present. But what does acid addition do to the microbes in the soil? Why
is it that we can't hold onto Ca in soils treated with toxic chemicals? But
we hold Ca just fine in soils not treated with toxic chemicals. Why doesn't
the P present in soil, including Australian soil, become available to plants?


Is P or Ca actually lacking in Australian soils? There must have been some
in the soil for the trees to get to be old growth. So why has the P or Ca
disappeared so suddenly?

Maybe it hasn't disappeared. Maybe the organisms that normally solubilize P
for the plants, and who normally hold Ca in the soil, have been killed by the
disturbances imposed by people. All those darn off-road vehicles.

Soil disturbance destroyed the biology in the soil that protected the root
systems of the trees from disease and solubilized P and Ca from plant
not-available forms into plant available forms.

It isn't adequate to just stop off-road vehicles from continuing to damage
the soil. The damage that has been done has to be fixed. We ripped out the
soil's internal organs, and we expect it to heal itself right away, without
any triage? No help at all?

Any chemical addition is just a short term fix, and cannot solve the problem.
 You have to deal with the cause, not the symptoms. If your veins were
clogged with a disease fungus, you wouldn't be getting enough P either.
Symptom, not cause.

If the organisms that normally make P available to the roots are no longer
present, leaving the plant nutritionally unable to protect itself, and if the
root, trunk and leaf protective fungi are no longer present to prevent
disease from gaining access to the tree, disease attacks the not-protected
root or trunk or leaves.

Maybe the way to best combat the lack of root, trunk and leaf protection is
to put the protection back. Maybe the best way to get nutrients converted
from plant not-available forms back to plant available forms is to get the
right biology back into the soil.

Who was it that protected roots? Who made those nutrients available? Who
retained them in the soil in the first place? Why did we lose both the
nutrients and the organisms?

Don't tell me that we haven't lost a majority of them. We have.

Is a survey of the biology of soils all over the world needed to document
that over and over? Fine, we need that funding. But we've already published
data showing that ag fields lack the organisms present in healthy native
soils. We did a gradient from healthy forest in Wyoming, to meadows, to
native grassland, to ag fields in Colorado. Biology declined along that
gradient. No one can argue with that data.

We lose life in the soil when we disturb that soil by plowing or compaction,
by applying any toxic chemical, or high levels of any fertilizer. Any
fertilizer is a salt, and kills organisms by osmotic shock. Any acid kills
organisms because of membrane disruption.

Does Mother Nature destroy organisms in the soil? Sure she does, it's called
lightening strikes, fire, flood, drought, frost, freeze, herds of animals
compacting soil, erosion, all sorts of things. Does Mother Nature then build
back what was destroyed? Sure she does. Takes time. People usually aren't
that patient, they don't see those processes occurring around them. But
remove disturbance, and the soil builds. Sometimes very slowly, sometimes
quickly.

Can we help build soil faster? Sure we can, if we understand what we should
be doing to help the processes along.

How are we going to put back the organisms we've destroyed?

Could we stop destroying what is left of our soils, and start building them
again?

People have to stop pretending that the organisms aren't killed, that they
somehow just reappear after being killed by toxic materials. Like magic,
these organisms are everywhere, all the time? Don't worry, they just come
back? Why would they? What food do we leave them to eat? There are no
bacterial or fungal condominiums left in a compacted, or flooded soil. Where
are they going to live?

Put the broadest possible set of organisms back, add the foods to feed them
at the same time, allow them to build their condominiums, build soil
structure. We need to help them make nutrients available to plants. Then
the plants will feed the beneficial organisms that protect their roots and
solubilize nutrients.

What is it that contains all these things? And yet, does not destroy any
precious resource? That in fact takes waste material, and makes it worth
alot of money?

It's called well-made, aerobic compost.

Well-made, aerobic compost tea is a way to apply compost more easily.
Compost tea has less long-term benefit because it lacks the non-soluble
nutrients present in compost. But it has the organisms, and foods to feed
them.

It's a twelve step program, folks. Don't stop at step two.

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


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