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Re: Depleting Forest Soils



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