I agree Sal. You seem to be speaking of a different philosophy of agriculture
(as has been said in this thread previously) about soil management vs. product
mgmt. A 5 gallon bottle of bugs sprayed on an acre of land will not change the
microbial population significantly, unless those same bugs are applied via
composts (with their food, as you say)
sal wrote:
> I think microbial solutions are a great thing. I 1st. got my soil Microbes
> from Mr. Petrik.Sr over 15 years ago and he 1st. told me of the life in the
> soil and how to keep that life alive. I heard that many folks brought fruit
> snip
> one of the wisest folks I ever heard talk on the soil food web Dr. Elaine
> Ingham (Oregon State University) http://www.soilfoodweb.com/index.html told
> us while trying to repair strawberry fields that have been using poison gas
> for years to kill all life in the soil and now may no longer be able to use
> it needed to bring their fields back to life. she said that it took tons
> and tons of compost to bring the fields back as it seem the longer the
> growers have been using the poison gas the longer it will take to make that
> soil good again. She also said and this is the important part that using
> inoculated compost the amount of compost was cut way down and the fields did
> produce as much as before with no poison gas. it was the Inoculated compost
> that did it so to me that is Scientific Basis done in the field that show
> that microbes added to compost that is added to the fields do help and is
> not fo fo dust but a real something. Microbes can be raised organic also I
> snip
Dr. Ingham does good work. but, again, (as you say) she's not talking about
putting a bottle of stuff on the soil. She's talking about adding the stuff to
tons of compost. I also feel that tons of composts are needed for proper soil
fertility. Composts need to be tested for nutrients, and assessments of
mineralization rates need to be known. If a compost contains a large amount of
N but mineralizes it slowly, then less nitrogen is available for plants to use.
> Because the USDA pushes chemicals that kill microbes they feel we don't need
> them so they are going to say microbes are bull but I think they the USDA
> are the bull. sorry I may not be a good citizen for saying that and because
> I have a mind of my own and don't agree with the USDA I have used microbial
> solutions and glad I did and will use them again. . I feel the USDA is
> going one way and we are going the other . and they just stopped us dead by
> taking natural farming over and calling it USDA organic. . we like
> microbes and soil life I'm sorry about that. when I water I am watering my
> microbes and when I feed I am feeding my microbes. The USDA bum raps the
> stuff I feel is good and glorifies the poison stuff . they don't regard
> soil life and they don't understand organic . sorry about that it is Just
> MHO.
The USDA is huge and variable. There are many sides to the USDA, and many
people (and this list, I Believe) interested in sustainable and organic
agriculture are USDA. The funding for my Ph.D. work was obtained through the
USDA Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program (SARE), and I
_never_ used poisons. I did use fertilizers (as a relative comparison to
conventional agronomic practices). I wasn't asked to use pesticides, in fact
the research was funded because of it's alternative nature. . . That's also the
USDA. . . Sal, I'm not bashing you at all. But we all need to see the whole
picture, and separate USDA the regulatory monster from USDA the research and
extension people.
--------------------
Russ Bulluck
Visiting Post-Doctoral Scholar
Department of Plant Pathology
1 Shields Ave
UC-Davis
Davis, CA 95616
lrbulluck@ucdavis.edu
-------------------------------------------------------------
The soil population is so complex that it manifestly cannot
be dealt with as a whole with any detail by any one person,
and at the same time it plays so important a part in the soil
economy that it must be studied.
--Sir E. John Russell
The Micro-organisms of the Soil, 1923
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