Re: Depleting Forest Soils

From: Elaine Ingham (Soilfoodweb@AOL.COM)
Date: Fri Dec 20 2002 - 10:25:18 EST


Think this one through.

If everyone in the US took just a handful of good forest soil from the forest
to make their soil tea, would we have any healthy forests left? Imagine Dow
deciding to use healthy forest soil as a product to package for people to
make compost tea.

I don't think it is wise to encourage the general public to use forest soil
as a resource. We don't have enough healthy forests as it is, and now you
want people to mine that resource? How many times a year? If we push
healthy forest soil tea, and people make one to ten teas a year, what happens
to our forests?

Come on, think this one through. If you have your own undisturbed patch of
healthy forest, ok, use up your own resource.

But it would be much wiser to take that handful of healthy forest soil and
inoculate your compost with those organisms. Multiply them in the compost
you will add to your ag soil, to your compost tea, etc. Sell your compost as
a source of great microorganisms to people who don't have access to healthy
forest. But don't be telling them to go destroy forest soil.

You can harvest the roots of your trees, chop them up, and use that as a
mycorrhizal inoculum. But you have better make sure there are no diseases on
those roots first.

Use the forest litter layer to inoculate some mycorrhizal spores, but make
sure the spore inoculum count is high enough to be of use. It is a numbers
game. And put the inoculum in the right place to be of greatest use.

And remember, the majority of fungi in conifer systems are ectomycorrhizal
fungi which are not appropriate for row crops or vegies. You can't use that
soil to gain what you want for annual plants.

Think things through......

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


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