Microbial life vital to good soil
All soils contain every nutritional element required by all plants but for two: the sun and carbon.
In a study undertaken by Sparks in 2003, where soils were evaluated for their mineral content globally, it was found that, bound up in the crystalline structure of clay, sand and stones, all the minerals a plant needed were there in abundance.
Looking at the wide ph ranges minerals need to become water soluble, and so plant available, one notices there isn’t one ph band that does it all.
Hence, it is not financially viable to add the various chemicals to our lands to dissolve the minerals our plants need to be productive.
Plants need far more than just the N:P:K ratios to produce.
So what do we do? How do we get all the minerals released to plants as they need them?
Have you ever wondered, when you see a stretch of untouched veld, how plant life is maintained with no chemical inputs? That plants flourish, with very few diseases.
According to modern agricultural practices, this cannot be as the Earth’s ground is just a matrix for plants to anchor themselves in, and plants require vast amounts of synthetic and toxic inputs for success.
But this does not explain why all plants, including your crops, release exudates, a sweet, starchy food, throughout its root system.
Plants release exudates to entice beneficial bacteria and fungi to their root system.
The role of these bacterium and fungi are to live, work and eventually die in the root zone.
When further analysing the root system of a plant, one finds all kinds of ph’s happening.
Bacterium are responsible for the alkali component of the cycle and fungi make the acid collectivity necessary for the breaking down of the crystalline structure of the clay, sand and stone, converting nutrients to a plant-available form.
Dr David Johnson of NMS University did a study to establish what positively influenced plant growth.
He found there was no clear correlation between the addition of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium or organic matter and plant growth, but there was for the bacteria:fungi ratio. Plant growth rose and fell in direct proportion with this ratio.
This entire “soil food web” cycle supplies the plant with all of its nutrients as the system ever complexes on itself. It is a selfrenewable source of nutrients that keep plants healthy and stress-free.
Consider your farm’s soils not as just a matrix to hold a plant’s root system together – rather that they are a nutrient powerhouse.
Rethink tilling, the addition of chemical fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides.
Foster microbial life and you will have happy, bug- and disease-resistant plants, that are nutrient dense, with fewer fallow periods on which to base your economic successes.