From the soil do we arise
and it is the soil to which we
return.
This episode is a remembrance for my friend
Doctor. Elaine Ingham the originator of the Soil
Food Web an idea that stands at the
core of regenerative agriculture.
We published this episode originally
nearly four years ago
about half of you have subscribed since then
so we're running it again as an homage
to Doctor. Elaine but also because it's simply
so damn good accurate and inspiring
Doctor. Elaine Ingham spent her life teaching us
all that soil is not dirt but is
a living community.
For decades, she helped farmers, gardeners,
scientists understand that fertility does not begin with
the fertilizer, it begins with biology.
Through her research teaching and tireless advocacy, she
showed that healthy soil is built by relationships.
Bacteria feeding fungi, fungi feeding plants,
organisms cycling nutrients in an intricate web that
supports life above ground.
Long before soil health became a common phrase,
Elaine was already explaining that the key to
resilient agriculture
was not inputs, but ecosystems.
Her work helped shift the conversation from domination
of soil to partnerships with soil.
She gave practical tools to farmers trying to
rebuild depleted land,
inspired compost movements around the world, and helped
countless people realize that restoring soil biology could
restore
restore productivity,
water retention, carbon storage, and ultimately hope for
sustainable food systems.
She also said fuck you to the industrial
fertilizer corporations.
She's told me in private about their rejection
of her science and influence,
of their attempts to suppress her work and
scare her, of getting removed as a speaker
because of petrochemical fertilizer event sponsors, and generally
how she had to fight the entire weight
of the modern industrial agricultural
complex.
Beyond the science,
Elaine was known for enthusiasm
and accessibility.
She had a gift for turning complex microbiology
into something could people could feel in their
hands.
She spoke with the conviction of someone who
believed deeply that knowledge should empower people, not
intimidate
them. Many who met her remembered not just
what she taught, but how passionately she believed
that ordinary gardeners could become stewards of the
living soil beneath their feet and how important
that was.
Elaine's legacy
is not only in the papers published or
institutions
founded, it lives in healthier fields,
in compost piles tended with intention,
in farmers who learned to trust biology again,
and in the growing global movement that sees
soil not as a resource to extract from,
but as a living partner to care for.
And her legacy is in creating educators.
Elaine was an instigator,
an influencer,
and a mentor of mentors.
She helped us understand that if we take
care of the soil, the soil will take
care of us.
You know, you know, she offered me a
job after this interview, but I warmly declined
because I'm was already so busy. But it
was one of the most meaningful affirmations of
my efforts in regenerative agriculture
doctor Elaine will be deeply missed
it is taken for granted nowadays that healthy
soil is alive
The ground we walk on is alive, but
this was not the case just forty years
ago when western agriculture thought of soil more
like an inert robot.
The soil food web methodology
describes the community of organisms
living all or part of their lives in
the soil.
It describes a complex system in the soil
and how it interacts with the environment, plants,
and animals.
It describes the web of life from large
animals all the way down to most basic
microbiological
level in soil and water.
If you wanna really grok the Soil Food
Web in an instant, do an image search
for Soil Food Web and see any of
the incredible illustrations that exist. Or check out
the ShapingFire Instagram today for one of my
favorites.
The soil food web is at the very
core of regenerative agriculture and not only will
inform your cultivation efforts to help your plants
thrive, but will inform humanity and how we
may heal our planet before we make it
uninhabitable for ourselves.
If you want to learn about cannabis health
cultivation and technique efficiently and good with cheer,
I encourage you to subscribe to our newsletter.
We'll send you new podcast episodes as they
come out delivered right to your inbox along
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important news items from the week and videos
too. Don't rely on social media to let
you know when a new episode is published.
Sign up for the updates to make sure
you don't miss an episode.
Thanks for all the kind messages y'all sent
about my brain injury issues the end of
last year. I continue to get better though
I'm still taking it slow for the moment.
And thanks to the folks who put something
in the tip jar thanks to Steven Mary
Jane Suzanne Polly and Rancid forever
if you too wanna give a little something
something into the tip jar for the team
you can do that by Venmo ing at
shangolos
as the cannabis market continues to compress and
crumble over much of The United States there
are fewer and fewer regenerative cannabis companies that
have the budget for marketing
if you know of a regenerative company who
should be an advertiser on shaping fire please
let them know and let me know too.
It is by working together that regenerative cultivation
expands. And we now offer a smaller entry
package of commercial, so we're able to include
folks with smaller budgets. Thanks a bunch.
You are listening to Shaping Fire, and I
am your host, Shango Los. We are in
our tenth year of Shaping Fire, and this
is episode one twenty six.
My guest today is soil biologist, educator, and
activist, doctor Elaine Ingham. Doctor Ingham uncovered the
soil food web nearly four decades ago and
has been pioneering research about the soil food
web ever since.
Widely recognized as the world's foremost soil biologist,
she's passionate about empowering people to bring the
soils in their communities back to life.
Be clear that when I say doctor Ingham
uncovered the soil food web, I mean she
invented the soil food web, or rather the
soil food web understanding of nature,
and then continued to research and teach it
even though she was getting aggressive pushback from
the agriculture industry,
which essentially made her an activist too,
simply for trying to publicly describe how soil
actually functions.
Doctor Elaine's soil food web approach
has been used to successfully restore the ecological
functions of soils on more than 5,000,000 acres
of farmland all over the world.
Her professional scientific experience is long and impressive,
and if you want to know it in
detail, check out the Wikipedia page on her.
Doctor Elaine also has established the Soil Food
Web School to educate the next generation of
soil biologists.
The courses offered have been designed for people
with or without a science background, making them
accessible to individuals who wish to learn and
begin a meaningful, impactful career in an area
that will help to secure the survival of
humans and other species.
I've wanted to invite Elaine to be special
guest on Shaping Fire for a few years
now, but decided to wait until I myself
had enough understanding of soil biology to ask
her questions that would be of interest to
you, the listener, and would be engaging for
doctor Ingham too.
As a ShapingFire listener you've learned soil science
right alongside me the last ten years and
you're going to love today's episode. And Doctor.
Ingham says she does too.
Today's episode is not an introduction to the
soil food web. If this perspective is new
to you, when you are done here, I
recommend you jump over to YouTube and watch
one of the many videos that explain the
basics of the Soil Food Web model. Today's
episode is a series of discussion lines that
have arisen out of me actually using the
food web insights to grow cannabis and my
discussions with other regenerative growers.
During the first set, we discussed the use
of indigenous microorganisms
to optimize plant resilience and the overlap between
the soil food web and the water food
web and what that means for growing cannabis.
In the second set, we talk about sterile
growing environments,
beneficial insects as both garden defense and food
web antagonist,
and how to get cocoa coir pots as
biologically active as possible.
Finally, we finished the episode in set three
with a discussion of the timely use of
aerated compost teas and compost extracts and bringing
the soil food web techniques indoors for cultivation.
All that today on Shaping Fire episode one
twenty six.
Welcome to Shaping Fire, doctor Elaine.
I'm I'm very happy to be here. This
is gonna be fun. Yeah. I'm so glad
to finally have you on the show.
So, you know, many of us aspire to
strengthen every level of the soil food web
in our garden. So, you know, we can
most effectively play its melody.
And this often includes
the use of incubated indigenous microorganisms
known by most folks as IMOs.
But cannabis plants are not indigenous to many
of the regions of the world where we
cultivate it.
Are there ways to make the cannabis plants
feel more at home in the environments where
naturally they never establish themselves? Like, how how
can we make non indigenous plants that we
grow connect more fully with the local biology?
We're we're actually doing a really good job
of doing that already.
The damage that we do to our soil
when we till it, when we put out
these salts,
the inorganic fertilizers are all salts,
and that's definitely
playing havoc
with those microorganisms
that might have,
prevented
cannabis from being able to grow in their
particular system.
So we're already doing the things to a
great deal that would allow or would,
select for the for cannabis.
You know, so as human beings,
change things, we alter we are making a
better and better environment
for cannabis. And so we're already
making things better to grow cannabis because it
it is a plant that needs somewhere between,
like, a point five ratio of fungi to
bacteria,
up to maybe one to one equal biomass
of bacteria and fungi. And then there are
values that we're looking at, you know, does
your does cannabis need at least
135
of bacteria and fungi?
Or can,
it's gonna is it actually gonna do better
if we have a little more bacteria? So
the bacteria are up at 400 micrograms per
gram. Whereas the fungi are at half or,
you know,
even less
than that and will depends on,
on the
species or the subspecies of cannabis that you're
growing as well. So
I think we're already doing everything necessary to
grow cannabis
all over the world.
Your answer is surprising. And if I understand
it correctly, disheartening because what I think you
just said is,
because we are eroding the strength of our
soil globally, it has less defense mechanisms and
is therefore,
creating a wider environment for cannabis because
we're destroying the soil. You know, I I
is that about what you said? That's really
basically what I said. Gosh.
Yeah.
Alright.
Great for cannabis growers, but not so great
if you wanna be growing
grapevines or
shrubs or different kinds of, you know, the
highly productive grass species, for example. Yeah. Or
or, you know, food that has nutrition and
and all the other things that we need
to survive. Mhmm. Gosh. Alright. So, I'm gonna,
slightly
change the question then to to tease out
something else. So so even though,
we humans, by,
eroding and degrading the soil are actually making
it more appropriate for cannabis,
When we do when we do bring cannabis
plants into areas
where,
perhaps the the weather is something that they're
not used to or the indigenous microorganisms
are not what they're used to, even though
there is eroded soil and so we're getting
the, you know, the the pH and the
parts per million that might be more appropriate
for cannabis growing. Are there other things that
we can do
to decrease,
you know, weather and and transport shock for
plants? Because so often, cultivators are moving their
plants multiple times from from a from a
nursery to a grow out greenhouse and then
finally into the ground.
Mhmm. And,
absolutely, I think there would be things we
could do to make it easier on the
specific plants,
in that process of dealing a root with
a root system that's getting bigger and bigger
and bigger.
What we really wanna do is give it
depth because
properly grown out in the real world,
cannabis usually
will,
broaden those root systems, will be, you know,
certain
diameter
from around those, around the main stems. But
then those roots tend to grow, should grow
down. They're looking for water that that they
have to have
in the dry seasons of the year. And
so if they've got proper structure built in
the soil, if they have the bacteria and
fungi present
that will build that kind of structure, the
protozoa, the nematodes that will help to build
that structure,
then the roots of your plants will go
down quite deep.
And, you know, we see,
cannabis with root systems down at 12 feet,
15 feet, 20 feet,
depending, I'm I think, on the the cultivars,
the type of
cannabis that you're growing.
So
when we're thinking about transferring
from something that grew up in the, you
know, little the small containers
in the greenhouse and now we're gonna put
them into larger containers,
It's not
diameter
of the container that you wanna think about.
It's the height
of the
growing
the container that you're going to be growing
that
cannabis in. Mhmm. Because we wanna mimic, we
wanna have
things be more like those plants are used
to out in the real world. And and
they have a drive
to get those root systems deep. I'm sure
almost everybody is, you know, when they've pulled
up a cannabis plant and they look at
the bottom and they see the roots just
going in circles,
against the bottom of the pot,
that is not good
for the plant. You have developed, typically,
have developed an anaerobic
condition in those root systems, trying to escape,
trying to get down
and deeper into the soil, you've made an
anaerobic little cubby area
that will grow diseases and pests incredibly well.
Not gonna grow the right sets of microorganisms
for the cannabis.
Cannabis root systems,
obligately
aerobic.
You've gotta have oxygen in there or they're
gonna succumb to
a number of different stresses.
Clearly, growing in,
in the earth is best so that those
those roots can reach far and participate in
whatever's happening in the soil food web at
that depth plus,
get their own water.
Is there is there anything that we can
do,
as as growers? Because so many of us
grow in containers that might be somewhere between,
you know, twenty, fifty, or up to 300
gallon pots, but they still don't go very
deep. They usually expand out wider Mhmm. Instead
of getting deeper.
And so,
is there anything that we can do to
to help the roots from becoming,
you know,
you know, anaerobic at the bottom, for example?
Anything, like, as simple as as making sure
to use linen pots, which let some air
go through go through, or
is there is there anything that we can
do out of that bad situation?
Yeah. I
if we get the food web into that
soil
such that there's a lot of nutrient cycling,
there's a lot of protection,
there's a lot of building structures, so water
is held right at the top of that
interface
going down. So the plant is getting all
the things it needs from
a shallower pot.
We could maybe reduce that stress. Mhmm.
And
so trying some of this out and finding
out, okay, how wide does something have to
be versus the depth that it's going.
And
and that's that's that's just research that hasn't
been done. I know a number of labs
have said, oh, yeah. We should do that.
But I haven't seen any data back, and,
it's been a while since I've actually been,
growing any cannabis.
Just too many other things happening.
Totally.
I like what you said about, you know,
we will help the root system out by
making sure it's participating
as much in the soil food web.
And just briefly on the last episode, I'd
spoke with one of your students, Andy Marsh,
and and and she was talking about,
you know, biological
inoculants,
not of particular nutrition, but of
residence of the rhizosphere.
Do you have,
you know, any suggestions
for inoculating,
our soil with actual,
you know, living beings instead of just nutrition?
Well, that's really what we're talking about when
we're we're discussing,
soil biology. It's the organisms going it's the
living
part of that soil,
that we're concerned about because it's the living
organisms, those things doing their jobs
so you don't have to do them,
is really what we're trying to do. We
wanna understand the function
of all these different microorganisms
in the soil and, you know, most
people have a hard time believing that there
is that many species of bacteria and species
of fungi. And in both cases, bacteria and
fungi were up in the millions,
hundreds of millions
of individual
species, and they're different
in different ecosystems.
So
we wanna
obtain
a, community of bacteria and of fungi and
of protozoa and nematodes. We want them all
to be good guys.
And I know some people cringe when I
don't use technical scientific
terms, but I think it makes more sense
to say, We want the beneficials
that will help your plant grow. And where
are you gonna go out there and find
them? And find them for the biome that
you're already living in.
Someday, that cannabis plant is going to be
planted
outside,
and it's gonna have to deal with the
conditions
of a normal summer
in whatever part of the world you're in.
And so you wanna make certain
they are the maximum protection
from the species, subspecies
of bacteria and fungi, protozoa, and nematodes, and
micro arthropods, and earthworms, and incatrades. And I
could keep going, but I lose most people
typically about in there. Wait a minute. I
didn't know there were that many different types
of yeah. There are. And you need them
all. Your plant needs them all to do
the jobs that you otherwise
are gonna get stuck doing if you don't
have your willing organic workers
in that soil
for your plant. So we wanna maximize diversity.
How do you do that? We're gonna have
you go out into
the area around
where you're living,
where you're gonna be planting the cannabis for,
you know, those cannabis that are gonna display
the particular
flavors or tastes.
You know, what all is going to be
in that, cannabis plant,
you're gonna wanna maximize diversity. So you go
out with your collection bag, and it doesn't
have to be real large.
It could be a little Ziploc
sandwich size or, you know, quart size,
baggy.
And you're going to take two or three
pinches
of
this area right around this fungal,
you know, mushroom. This looks like it could
be really interesting. So let's put some of
that in there because
that could be really beneficial.
Well, let's go over here and take a
couple of teaspoonfuls
and go over there. And every time you
see variation,
different plants, different
microorganisms, you know,
most people don't understand that
a mushroom is individual
strands of fungal hyphae. The individual strands you
cannot see with your eyes. But that mushroom
you definitely will be able to see with
your eyes.
And so
you might wanna
make certain that you know who the good
guy mushrooms are and take samples from around
their
connection with the soil,
and leave alone the things, the armillarias,
the things that could be pathogens or pests.
So a little bit of studying up on
what are the good guys and what are
the bad guys that you can determine
based just on morphology. What do they look
like? And so you're gonna be out collecting
a lot of materials.
Now, do you collect those in the springtime
or in the summer or in the fall?
And the answer to that is yes.
Because it's diversity, and there'll be different sets
of species that are awake and functioning
at different times of the year.
And you wanna get them all inoculated
into your compost.
Then let those organisms
grow up that are beneficials. We,
keep our compost piles
aerobic
because that selects
for mostly
just the beneficial microorganisms.
So the disease causers, the problem organisms,
they like to be there in the root
bound
pot because it's perfect with that low oxygen
concentration.
If we keep that soil well structured by
bacteria
and fungi and protozoan nematodes and everything else,
making hallways and passageways and building condominium housing,
building
large hotels,
building large
structures
in the soil so oxygen can move through
very rapidly, so water infiltrates and gets held
in that soil. You never allow leaching to
occur
because you need all those nutrients,
either in a couple weeks or maybe in
another month or maybe next spring.
So we wanna make sure we're holding on
to all of these things
by making sure we we have a huge
diversity
of all the organisms that grow in the
springtime, all the organisms that grow in the
summer. And they're fairly different,
what is actually growing and functioning,
but they take over
functions
that somebody else was doing in the soil
but they did the work better
at,
you know, 15 degrees Fahrenheit or 20 degrees
Fahrenheit or, you know, so as you go
through
changes in temperature and moisture,
oxygen concentrations,
all of those things,
you wanna make sure you have the organisms
that will be there to do the jobs
for you.
So making certain that you're inoculating
indigenous
local things, it is just laughable
to have somebody hand you a jug of
bugs
and say, these are the best microorganisms
we've ever found in the soil. What do
you mean by that?
That who is regarding
those five species in there as being the
best
according to what set of
considerations?
Are they best at taking up
carbon dioxide? Are they best at taking up
nitrate? Are they the best at making ammonium?
What does your plant need?
Cannabis needs a balance,
pretty much an equal balance of ammonium
and,
nitrate.
And so we want an equal amount
of biomass of bacteria as a fungi.
And
when we get talking a little bit later,
I'll bring up the subject of succession
because that's going to be a big
determinant of what you're going to do with
different kinds of cannabis
to get the product that you want.
I have two follow ups. I'm gonna ask
them at the same time because I have
a feeling that you are likely to weave
them together.
The first follow-up is,
we're big fans of having, you know, biologically
active compost piles here to pull from for
all sorts of reasons.
But I also know that my brethren in
cannabis love to cut corners.
And so, I can very much imagine,
cultivators taking the collected inoculant
and instead of putting it into their compost
pile, instead,
just putting it right into their their containers.
And so my first part of the question
is,
is there, a specific
benefit to inoculating
the compost pile first even though the process
is gonna take longer? Is there a is
there a real extra win for having it
be in the compost pile first? And then
Absolutely. And then second, after you do the
collection but before you do the inoculation,
do you recommend just taking the the collected
matter and just, you know, taking it over
to your compost pile and just place it
in there? Or do you recommend
a,
an an oxygen incubation, like, with an aerated
tea to kinda build up the population first?
We mostly,
put the organisms directly into the compost pile.
Mhmm. Because while we want active organisms,
we want to
constrain the conditions in that pile,
so we're selecting for just the beneficials.
So you don't ever want your pile to
go anaerobic.
The instant you start to smell bad smells
coming out of that pile or, you know,
funky kind of, you know, the ammonia smell,
the,
rotten egg kind of smell mixed together. How
do you describe that?
But you know by smelling it that something's
going anaerobic in there, and that means you
have to turn. You need to get oxygen
in there.
If you're too close you know, if you
haven't gotten
up to 131
degrees Fahrenheit
for a full three days, then, you know,
you've gotta kinda eke along,
because you really don't wanna turn it until
you're you've gotten
that preventative
kind of medicine for the bad guys are
gonna get killed by the heat.
We also wanna make sure there's no anaerobic
conditions.
So what you might do there where you
can oh, this is smelliness. Only day two
and I've gotta wait till day three
to turn it.
Hasn't been hot enough long enough to kill
the human pathogens, plant pathogens, yada yada yada.
What you'll do instead is take, like a
PVC pipe or a metal rod,
you know, not a lot of thickness to
the
hole maker, and you're gonna take that and
push it down through your compost pile,
pull it back up because that's going to
leave a hole
all the way down to the bottom of
your compost pile, bringing oxygen
back into the system without
turning
the whole pile.
When you've gotten to 131,
over 131
degrees
Fahrenheit,
over 55 degrees Celsius,
for three days.
Then you turn with the pitchfork
and get that all aerated up. And there
is a very specific way we take the
hot middle and put it on the bottom
of the pile when you start to turn.
And what was
in the cold top part of the pile,
it goes into the middle.
So that that's the part of the pile
that's gonna have,
killing
the disease causing organisms
for part two,
and then the bottom part of the first
pile goes on the top. And so you
always turn in the same fashion so you
know
everything in your pile has been in the
hot middle
for more than adequate periods of time. And
if you can't turn
because of temperature considerations,
you get the PVC pipe or the, pipe
of the metallic pipe and,
build yourself some chimneys.
How many chimneys? It depends on how fast
you're getting hot,
and this is where we always have
people running into trouble unless they take the
foundation classes
and,
learn how to make good compost.
We have hands on,
classes that you can take
as well as the,
virtual,
training that you get, in
the foundation courses.
So, you always wanna
learn how to turn. You wanna go through
all of the,
well, why do we look at the recipe
for the compost?
We're selecting
for those organisms that are going to best
promote
the plants that you're growing in that situation.
So
always,
we want to,
you know, always wanna
make certain that the compost
doesn't have any diseases or pests. And and
you've gotta go through that step because there
is no other way
to kill all of those bad guys, especially
if you've got manure of any kind.
Anything that's been around an animal for a
short period of time or a long period
of time, there's too many pathogens. You cannot
be growing something that, you know, you might
be,
lighting up and licking
the plant material.
Surprise. It had a disease on it. Not
good. So we wanna take care of that
problem before we ever put it out on
our property.
Building compost is one of those things that,
you know, my dad my dad always said,
it's, you know, learn from your mistakes, but
if you can learn from someone else's mistakes.
And, I I and I I'm a big
proponent of of people actually taking formal compost
classes because, you know, a lot of it
a lot of the activity we can't see.
A lot of it is not intuitive,
and and you can destroy your own work
in simple ways. And so Yeah. It's it
really is something to to actually take a
class in. Yep. The road to hell is,
you know, with my,
good intentions.
Yeah. Paid by good intentions. Yeah.
So when I first began studying the soil
food web, after hearing you speak,
you know, I definitely got the impact of,
you know, the model of understanding right away.
And and I started applying it and then,
you know, encouraging it to others. But then
my mind was blown away a second time
coming across
folks talking about,
the water food web. And it's interesting because
in your brain, it's kinda like the same
basic model, but these were water loving creatures
instead of soil loving creatures.
And then and then some biology probably loves
both.
So it I mean, I assume it's it
would be a fallacy to treat them separately.
So what I'd like to know is how
do you think about the relationship
between the water food web and the soil
food web and and the the you know,
how they may overlap?
Because you still want the same nutrient cycling.
You're gonna have root systems down into the
water.
And and I don't know why people always
think that, well, if your roots hit the
water, you get to the water
table, like your roots can't go through
the water.
Well, why not?
What do we keep pouring on our plants
in order to get them to grow? Yeah,
it's water.
So what's so terribly
wrong about,
water?
As long as you keep it aerobic, there
is no problem. And the root systems of
your plants will go right down through whatever
water is present, get down into the sediments,
and then the root systems go into the
sediments, and the sediments are just like your
soil
at a slightly higher percent moisture.
So
you have to select for things that can
deal with that
high water content and there will be some
species
that you only find in,
you know, like when you're growing rice,
huge component
while that field is
underwater,
you will have
quite a bit different sets of microorganisms
present.
As you dry that surface out,
those,
microorganisms
that require
more than 50% moisture, more than 75%
moisture,
they will all go to sleep. They form
spores.
They will be present
next year. So how do we get all
the right sets of microorganisms
back into the soil
in a water system? Well, we're gonna make
compost
where we're gonna have it pretty,
wet and soppy most of the time. So
you can do exactly what we do with
terrestrial systems.
You can be doing with,
plants that are more aquatic.
So,
you know, you just have to recognize
the needs of your plant.
What does your plant do best? Does it
like it with moisture
fairly low,
moisture kind of medium, or fairly you know,
we're going into the pond here.
And you're gonna have to do some of
that testing probably yourself because it's not something
that,
in the world of
understanding
landscapes,
we haven't really paid enough attention
to this water factor.
How much water is normal? Well, it's normal
to be at this level in the springtime,
and then it dries down a bit, and
then it's completely dry
in just before harvest, which makes things,
harvesting much
easier.
So,
yeah, pay attention. It sounds like it's another
argument for being sure to collect,
you know, local indigenous microbes too. Because if
you are collecting from many different,
locations
on your parcel
and and you are building them into your
compost pile at different times of the year,
it means that you're collecting them. For example,
where I live,
it it rains for a vast part of
the year, but my my growing season,
we turn to drought. And so,
if I want my soil to, you know,
come into the drought season already being healthy
and then be able to make the transition
to a drier environment,
that seems to suggest that I would want
year round microorganisms
collected
so that my soil is, you know, jam
packed full of of flexible microorganisms
that can that can play that on off
around the around the calendar where these folks
go to sleep when these wake up, and
then these other ones go to sleep and
the other one and so we have this
this gentle seasonal back and forth. Mhmm. And
and it's all part of the biodiversity we
have to establish
right from the very beginning.
One of my favorite, things, and and I
and I'm probably gonna
paraphrase you poorly, so I apologize for that.
But one of the things that I found
very,
inspiring when I first heard you speak was
you were talking about the the beginning of
the soil,
as like this this threshold point between the
sky and the earth. And it all comes,
like, right down there to where we stand.
And it really kinda shifted my perspective for
how big these two halves are, if you
will.
I'd like to focus on,
an inch and a half of the soil
food web,
that that inch and a half right above
the soil. So so many cultivators choose to
grow tiny, you know, one to three inch
companion plants with like a a single leaf
or two leaves to create a a short
dense canopy over the soil surrounding the cannabis
plant.
We talk about using dichondra repens a lot
here on shaping the fire as an example
of that. The the multitude
of roots
and the root exudates
make for a rich and dynamic rhizosphere.
All those downward pathways of all those little
plants, you know, create a place for the
water to seep through so that we can
avoid becoming hydrophobic.
And, you know, all that all that exudate,
you know, conversation is is is really great
too. My question for you is this.
What sort of life happens in that little
space
between the canopy,
you know you know, an inch and a
half, two or three inches above the soil
and and the soil, that that inch and
a half of bioregion.
There's moisture held in there.
Like, who's living there, and and what what
biological processes are happening in that in that
small area?
And
I would really encourage you to start looking
at some of your soils, digging down
and trying to find out where these different
layers are.
When you're in a old growth forest,
because you don't really have well, especially if
it's not a very healthy forest,
you don't have anything that's gonna mix
that organic matter layer down into the soil.
And it's very harmful for most of our
plants
to not have some kind of mixing movement.
And that's again where the microorganisms are going
to come into play because they're going to
be moving
that organic matter as it's
decomposing
and getting into smaller and smaller bits,
you're going to have microorganisms
taking that away to build structure with.
And so it's not the top one
to 1.5
depth,
you want to see that
organic material
moving down into the soil. So that,
O horizon
or the intermediate between the organic layer
and the first layer of true
soil
where you've got sand, silt, and clay present,
as well as the organic matter,
you want the root system growing down through
all of that.
You don't stop. If you're a root, you
don't stop there either. So the root systems
are going to keep on growing. If your
roots are stopping
at 1.5
inches or
centimeters
into the soil,
you've got compaction,
which is deadly
when it comes to growing
plants that are going to have all of
the,
you know, genetic
characteristics
that we want. Good flavor,
strong
stem, resistant
to diseases and pests.
You've got to have
normal
soil
where those root systems are gonna keep growing
straight down. They don't usually stop.
If they're healthy, they don't stop at one
and a half inches.
So the roots themselves
will be a part of this contingent of
moving materials
from that organic matter layer down deeper and
deeper into the soil, water
moving along, taking the smaller particles down with
it so that
you develop a really good A horizon.
And of course, if you've got a really
good A horizon, then,
as you go deeper
and,
you know, all the small things stay up
there at the surface of the soil, the
bigger chunks
move down deeper into the soil B horizon.
And then as you get deeper and lower
than that mixture,
it's
C horizon,
which
most
soils people look at as being sterile,
which it absolutely
is not
sterile.
How far down do the organisms in your
soil go? You know, how far down do
we see these bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, micro
arthropods, earthworms, eincatrades, everything else.
So 12 miles.
Oh. That's how deep the soil
really is. Now your roots aren't gonna be
getting down there,
but all these really important
factors are going on in all of that
12 miles
of,
soil that you've got below
the,
interface with plants.
So if plant roots, how far
if you're looking at a Douglas fir, how
far down into the soil can the roots
go?
As tall as a tree is above
the surface of the soil,
so below.
So if your Douglas fir is
200 feet tall, the root system of the
plant is going to be about 200 feet
down.
So it's a great interface
between the atmosphere and what it's doing
and what's going on in the soil and
the soil below that.
You know, so lots of things I could
go off on a
go off on. But,
yeah, I think that's probably complex enough.
If our focus,
in for this aspect,
is to make sure that the
the organic material that is decomposing
on the top of the soil,
is finding its way down into the soil
to be moved around by the superhighways.
Is this a a a is this a
good case for why we would have a,
you know, a companion plant on top? You
know, many people use the term cover crop
even though that's not exactly accurate for us.
But but this if we grow these small
plants as companion plants and they create a
a one or a two leaf
canopy,
you know, two inches above the soil, it
creates this zone
where I imagine
that there is going to be a lot
of biological
life because it's, there's moisture there, and it's
protected some from direct sun.
And what I imagine is that there are
lots of organisms that are processing,
you know, the the the healthy compost that
I've put on top or or,
you know, anything I've collected around the area.
Anything that we put on top, the way
it gets into the soil
would
be, improved
if I have this this, you know,
canopy
that creates this, you know, two inch area
above the soil but below the canopy
where there can be active biology.
When you hear that, does that sound
like
nature, or or is that just something that
I think sounds great?
You've got got it almost
Mhmm. Right. And probably what you're not considering
here, again, is
the
compaction.
You need to have those understory plants or,
you know,
that grow out, and they may only be,
you know, an inch tall, two inches tall.
Depends on what your crop plant is,
how tall your cover plants are gonna be.
The ground cover is another, that's a word
I was looking for a minute ago. The
ground cover.
And you don't want just one species. You
don't want just two because
who's gonna survive next spring?
We we don't we can't tell you what
the weather's going to be, what it's going
to be like. So we wanna
maximize diversity right there.
Keep some of the things that cause maximum
diversity
to stay in your system
from now until
forever as far as you're concerned.
We wanna prevent
water drops falling from the sky
to directly impact on the surface of your
soil, because you're compacting
all of those airways and passageways when that
drop hits the surface of the soil. Wow.
It's the major
compacting
problem
that we have in agricultural systems.
Yeah. It's bad enough driving over your soil
with a big machinery,
but
big machinery can be constrained to just two
wheel rows.
Rainfall. How are you gonna get it to
fall in just one place?
And imagine the damage that would be done
if it fell in just one place. I
never considered rain as a as a compaction
action and but it it totally makes sense.
And and now I understand better what you
said earlier
about the depth of the roots where where
these these short plants might be nice because
they grow into, like, this this blanket
that protects it from compaction from the rain.
But but,
now I understand better that you're also saying
make sure you have a variety of plants,
that are going to have a deeper roots,
like, you know, radishes or something,
so that so that you've got a variety
of root depths and a variety of exudate
conversation that's taking place.
Exactly.
And really when you start looking at,
how is it that
having plants growing on that surface, short, low
growing
plants,
they're continuing
to have nutrient cycling going on all of
the time. So if your plant ever, you
know, suffers some harm,
the nutrient cycling is still gonna be there.
They're still gonna be hooked up to the
below ground system of mycorrhizal fungi
because everything in this orchard, everything in your
cannabis plot
should be connected below ground. It's, you know,
maybe not some of the kales and the
coal and
those early successional plots, the weeds,
those plants,
won't have the mycorrhizal connection. But as soon
as you get past that,
where we're looking at,
fungal to bacterial biomass ratio of upwards around
point five or greater,
they're all mycorrhizal.
And so everything's tied together.
We want the
surface protected
by the leaf material because when that drop
of water impacts on a leaf,
it pushes that leaf down
and the water gently
rolls off that leaf surface and ends up
in your soil.
So we've completely
taken care of that compacting effect
and some of those nutrients are moving with
that drop of water into your soil.
So there's lots of benefits and lots of
ways that you've got this continuous cover.
Usually these,
ground covers
wake up and start growing earlier
than your crop plant.
Now think about when do you transplant
your
cannabis
into
the ground outside?
Well, it's not the day after the soil
is no longer free, frozen, because most of
the time none of us pay attention to
how cold is the soil. Mhmm.
It's how nasty is it gonna be when
I have to be out there doing all
of this work. And so it's gonna be
a month later. And so you have think
of all that time
where those understory
plants
are getting the soil ready for whatever crop
you're gonna be putting in. It's a little
bit of,
you know, we you need to understand
what your
particular
crop
requires
in terms of fungal to bacterial biomass ratio.
You need to have that time to
build the fungal biomass if you're lacking in
fungi or build
the protozoan
populations
and
the good guy nematodes
So that you've got maximum nutrient cycling, all
of the things are being held and stored
and moved and built
just exactly the way they should.
So we want
nice cover, not just here and there.
We want
the best places,
where I'm seeing the best coverage,
is where they have 20
different species of seeds
that have been spread. And you can see
where this
summer
up comes these five species of ground cover.
But really, you don't see much of the
other ones.
But next year, it's like none of the
five that were really important last year.
They're not even, you know, peeping their heads
above because
things just are not right for them.
And so you wanna have something that's gonna
go, yay, this is perfect for me.
And so you'll get five or six different
species showing their heads, and then there's always
those years where everything grows.
And it's spectacular
when you look in your,
you know, in your garden is really what
it looks like because you've got the rows
of the plant you're trying to grow
for profit
and you've got all these understory
plants that are just peeking
through the, blades of,
and showing their heads so that
the the flowers
are beautiful.
Mhmm.
So lots of things to sit back and
understand and we're still trying to figure out
some of a lot of these things, you
know.
It's we
it's always interesting to try to figure out
where does all this nitrogen come from.
We have a bumper crop amount of nitrogen
in our soil, but if you go and
try to analyze,
you know, soluble nitrogen,
total nitrogen,
exchangeable
nitrogen,
there's a missing part of the nitrogen cycle
that
we're not paying any attention to at all.
And so, you know, people always do calculations
of well, you couldn't possibly,
keep these, you know, 40
440,000,
individual
plants, you couldn't possibly keep them alive and
happy with really high levels of nitrogen in
them if you don't use inorganic fertilizer.
And yet,
all of our plants have much higher levels
of nitrogen
than the chemically grown
plants.
So, you know, which one's gonna give you
better flavor?
Which one is going to give you more
nutrition?
Which ones are going to taste better?
So
there's some of this this work that we've
still got a
mother nature has not yet revealed
all to us.
We've got some more work to do. Yeah.
What a what a great time to be
a,
a young scientist coming up into the
the the system
where, you know, you've broken the idea of,
you know, the the the soil food web
and that
even though it seems obvious now, you know,
that the soil is alive, but now we
also have got the analytical technologies
to take measurements and and see what we're
working with. It's a it's a great time
to be coming into thinking about regenerative growing.
So we're gonna take a short we're gonna
take a short break and be right back.
You're listening to Shaping Fire, and my guest
today is doctor Elaine Ingham.
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Welcome back. You are listening to Shaping Fire.
I'm your host, Shango Los, and my guest
today is doctor Elaine Ingham.
So before the break, we were talking a
lot about the importance
of of encouraging
and supporting the soil food web and making
sure all of
the different plants in your garden are talking
with each other because indeed, we are looking
to support a web of communication
and transfer and some nutrition and things like
that.
So doctor Lane, you know, many cultivators
aspire to the soil food web ideals, but
they they still get hung up on keeping
sterile growing environments,
like even outside.
Instead of focusing on biology
and balance,
they intend
instead for, like, ideals, like like zero pest
present, like, there's not a single pest in
my garden.
How do you teach the mindset of the
soil food web
so that your students understand this the softer
idea of
biological
inclusion
and balance
instead of the absolutest
ideals of zero tolerance for anybody who isn't
on my team?
Yeah. It's because it's what we were all
taught when we were in grade school,
middle school, and so on. Certainly in any
microbiology
class, you know, what's the most dangerous
thing you're going to encounter
today?
The door handle
on the room because everybody touches it going
in and out.
And not really. It's not like that's a
special place for disease causing organisms to grow.
You're just inoculating
a lot of really interesting things on that
door handle,
but you're also inoculating all of the beneficials.
So
there's a balance there that you've got to
think. If you've got people with good
decent,
they've picked up their apple every day or
they've picked up some really good soil,
smelled it, they were working in their compost
pile,
you don't have to worry about the
door knob anymore.
Every morning go out there and wipe all
of your
door knobs with a really good
handful of compost that you know
has got all of the really beneficial organisms
in it.
One of the mechanisms
for why
this is important
is
that if you've got a sterile
system
there's nothing to stop
the disease causing organisms
if perchance
they get inoculated.
And so
runs through your
greenhouse,
all of the
containers,
all of the benches,
below the benches,
all the little spiders and all the cute
little,
buzzy little flies that drive us all crazy.
Where did all of these aphids come from?
Where did these white flies come from? Well,
it probably came because
you're being too sterile about things.
You're not letting there be those things that
would wipe out
those diseases and pests before they ever got
to a high enough concentration
that it would start bothering us as human
beings.
So whenever we're looking to,
get rid of a disease causing organism, especially
in a greenhouse,
is go in and look and see
where might the spores be hanging out. And
they're gonna have a specific part of the
greenhouse,
or if you're outside,
specific part of the soil,
typically
low oxygen,
lots of dead bodies of things, and things
for them to, you know, chow down on.
So those eggs or spores
when they hatch
have all the food they need right around
them, so they can very quickly move into
the next stage of their life where those
larval stages are moving off someplace else,
and they need the unclean,
ecosystems in order to thrive
and
have each one of those larvae
make it through
to adulthood.
And then, you know, the mom and dad,
they're flying around.
Every place they touch
is going to be a mass of these
disease causing organisms
going out on the surfaces
of the above ground parts of your plants.
On the crown of your plants, quite often
I'm sure some of you have noticed that
some of the larvae hang out right there
at the crown
of the plant. That's their favorite place and
they're slowly munching through and killing
parts of the root system
which now are gonna of course be anaerobic
and chock full of diseases.
So
sterility
is not a good idea
when we're trying to prevent
you know exactly
why we were spraying horrible toxic chemicals
all through the
through
the greenhouse.
So we want to have all of these
beneficial organisms in there so that when that
disease causing organism is
accidentally
brought into your greenhouse
and somebody leaves the handprint,
we wanna have those beneficial organisms that look
at those disease causing organisms
and go, somebody
brought
lunch.
And they chow down and take them all
out. There's a direct conflict in many cases
with those kinds of organisms, and
the beneficials
regard the disease causers as just a source
of food.
You want
those kinds of beneficial organisms in your system.
So sterile,
not a good idea because you can't keep
human beings
sterile.
And they're probably the biggest problem in spreading
diseases
throughout a greenhouse in in places that you'd
never think about.
You know, like when people are
standing at the table and they're transplanting,
this plant from a to b and they
take all the dead,
leaf material off, they maybe see some dead
roots and they pull that off.
What are they doing with that,
plant material? They drop it on the floor
next to them, right? And now you've set
up a perfect environment
for all of the white flies and
the micro arthropods,
the little tiny flying
critters,
perfect place for them to lay their eggs
and for the larvae to hatch out
and go through that whole stage right there
in the gravel
under your feet.
And people don't think about they've gotta clean
that too.
So what's the best way of cleaning
that floor material?
Apply some compost tea.
Apply some compost extract that's got the organisms
that are going to take care of all
of those disease causers.
Yeah you have to keep it aerobic enough
so don't over water,
but
certainly when you look at what triggers
the plants immune
system, it's resistance
to diseases and pests,
It's those microorganisms
that,
will trigger, they'll send out to the plant
the information
that there's something bad happening here, the hordes
of,
I don't know, what should we call them,
purple devils are coming at us.
They need help from the plant and the
plant needs to contribute
something to the upkeep
of those bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes
that will attack and consume the diseases and
the pests.
I can almost hear the the greenhouse managers
listening to this
in a being aghast
because, you know, their normal mindset is probably
to,
you know, spray or clean their floors,
with either some kind of, you know, chemical
sterilizer or, you know, a 10 to one
bleach, you know, depending on the the variety
of floor they have. And now instead,
you know, we're talking about no. Spray them
with compost tea because we want the entire
environment to be tied together,
biologically
so that it's prepared for any invaders.
And it makes total sense when you say
it, but, you know, it's it's also heresy
from, you know, the way things have been
done in the past.
Yeah. Because we didn't understand. Stranger to heresy
though, Elaine.
Yeah. What have I done all my life?
You know,
because I'm I'm mostly interested in the truth
and I wanna understand why things work.
And when we've had,
you know, systems that depend on
pulling the wool over people's faces
And because that's what the chemical
industry is, they've been convincing us to put
out terribly toxic things
to kill,
particular sets of microorganisms
who then just develop resistance
to those chemical
applications.
So now how
are you going to deal with these problems?
The only way is biologically. We've got to
get the beneficials
back out there. We've got to keep it
aerobic, yep, so that's a biggie.
We want to make certain that we've got,
critters that eat
those organisms and we want those things that
will inhibit,
well, definitely with toxic chemicals,
but it doesn't leave,
the area around
the bacterium
or around
the roots or the hyphae of the plants.
They don't just
mindlessly go out and apply
massive amounts of toxic chemicals
far beyond what you actually need.
So let's give these organisms a chance to
show you what they can do,
where you will become accustomed. Hopefully all of
our children
will
read stories about this time in life in
the history of man and go, how could
these people have been so blind?
Now it's the power of the written word,
isn't it?
It's amazing how much of that is, I
mean, sure, we need to learn best practices,
for using
nature to support nature instead of chemicals to
keep nature at bay. But but, like, outside
of the best practices, so much of it
is just trust too. Because I, you know,
I was brought up to trust chemicals
and pharmaceuticals for that matter.
And and, you know, as we realized that
that was a, you know, philosophy that that
over time was bunk,
now we need to kind of, like, untrain
ourselves back towards regenerative,
which which, you know, for the most part
is, you know, what we what we try
to do here.
I've got another question about, like, you know,
the the pest populations, and that's kind of
a corollary to this.
More and more folks in cannabis are learning
to effectively use beneficial insects
and trust them more just like we were
talking about.
When I think about beneficial
insects through the lens of the soil food
web,
I kind of imagine that dumping thousands of
beneficial
predators of any variety into a cultivation area
might throw off the balance of the the
local
soil food web.
Certainly, you know, target pest populations will be
reduced, right, whatever it is they eat. But
are there are there any other potential soil
food impacts that we should be aware of
when using beneficial insects? Because
we we are
super packing a particular
niche
of the soil food web with suddenly a
lot of participants.
And I like the idea that it's just
gonna they're just going to eat the target
pests and then eventually go off to find
new food sources, but I don't actually know
that to be true.
And it's essentially true, but it's like when
you
put a a huge amount of,
a predator into the system, it's gonna go
looking for prey, and it will drop the,
species.
And what if
those things that just got eaten
by the beneficial insects,
what if they were what prevents some other
disease from attacking the root system of your
plant?
And so you're you honed right in on
exactly what the problem is. It's a density
problem.
You've got to spread those beneficial insects out
throughout your whole bed.
You can't be applying them,
everything goes into the soil down here and
we assume they're going to spread all the
way down the end of your bed or
your
agricultural
field.
You want to be putting a few in
every places you're going down the line, just
a few, because
it takes a lot of microorganisms,
a lot of the smaller critters, to satisfy
the hunger
of the predator that you just dropped into
the system. And they were already competing with
each other
in whatever container
you were keeping them, and now you've let
them loose and they just go crazy.
And knock the beneficial
prey group down to almost nothing.
So now you're looking for potential diseases.
We need to, and so here's something that
we haven't quite gotten
around to, we need to have our microscope,
look at it and go,
here's the problem organism coming on. And so
I need more of
these bacteria, I need more of these fungi
If I'm going to put in
more of these beneficial insects,
they're going to be eating my bacteria and
fungi, and so I better make certain that
my bacteria and fungi get a little bit
of extra
food
so that they can multiply and maintain
balance.
Either that or you're going to have some
real shifts and swings,
and
lots of good nutrient
availability in the soil, and all of a
sudden because you put on the
good guys for keeping
the
disease causing bacteria
in line, you're also going to lose your
good bacteria and now there's not enough nitrogen,
phosphorus, sulfur, magnesium, calcium available to your plant
around that root system.
So if we could only do it one
root at a time, it might work. But
we're doing this to the whole system.
So I really do like to put these
organisms
into
the compost itself and let that
predator prey
balance itself out. And so when I put
the compost out there, it's already with adequate
amounts of bacteria or fungi or protozoa or
nematodes or whatever
as compared to
the predatory
organism that you put in there to shut
down
the disease causing or the pest,
micro arthropods out there?
This idea of having overdense
beneficial insects is the first time that I've
ever wrapped my head around the idea of
actually listening to application rates.
Because,
you know, I really had never thought about,
you know, using so many that it that
they would go and start to be opportunists
on other
necessary food sources that are not the target
pest and you know, it's true. You know,
when I when I reach out to my
you know, my corporate rep and you know,
I don't have a big garden but I
figure out what I need with them and
then and then I get my, my my
bugs and I'm like I'm like, okay. The
the application rate says this much. And then
I apply it to my, you know, pretty
pretty small garden. And then I look and
there's all this left in the bottle
and I I'll cop to this. I'm like,
I've got extra. They'll be more safe if
I add the rest.
Uh-huh. And and, like, I've I've done that
every year. And and now I'm realizing that,
it's actually working against me. And really, what
I should do is hand those beneficial insects
off to a friend for their garden. Yeah.
Yeah. Somebody else who can really use them
and will see that benefit.
Because you've used them before,
you probably have
a certain amount of
the beneficials
present because they leave eggs, they leave dormant
stages,
and they'll be up and moving doing their
thing.
You probably don't have to add as much
in the second year. So, you know, give
it to friends, give it to people and
say, you know, tell me how it how
it works out for you. And then pretty
soon you have another client.
I wanna hit on the pathogen,
topic. Again, you were talking about,
you know, when people drop, necrotic leaves on
the floor of the, you know, anywhere, greenhouse
or outside in their garden or whatever.
You know, it's it's incredibly common for cannabis
cultivators to defoliate their plants
to open up airflow
towards the inside
or to remove yellowing leaves and and place
them on the surface of the pot.
And, you know, the
the the kind of bro science idea is
to, like, you know, return the nutrients
in the leaf back to the plant.
It'll be good for the plant because I'm
just returning nutrition.
But on shaping fire episode 88, plant pathologist
Cora McGee suggested that all those leaves should
be removed from the cultivation area totally
to prevent the spread of pathogens.
What are your thought on this very common
practice of cultivators
to put
the like, even the healthy leaves that they
take off
onto the top of the pot instead of,
you know, removing them from the grow area
to, like, the compost or something. Yep. Well,
if you have no biology
in your dirt,
then yeah you have to do what she
said.
Because there's
those leaves, brown,
diseased,
happy,
good leaf material,
the diseases are going to take those over
and serve to increase the disease.
If you have no decent biology
in that soil, if you're trying to grow
plants in dirt,
it's not going to work very well.
But if you are using a biological
approach and you've got these really good organisms
in your soil,
then
the way to tell if it's working
that, you drop those
infected leaves on the surface of your soil,
you should see by the next day
that things are happening.
These leaves are getting eaten, they're being decomposed,
they're being turned into
soil
as you watch. So how long is it
going to take for
a small cannabis leaf to decompose? Couple days.
How about a bigger one? What if we've
got a real big, well it would help
if you shredded that up a little bit
and put it on the surface of the
soil because in a couple days
those materials would be gone as well. You
might still see the skeleton
of the major veins
for a couple more days than you see
the green plant material,
but it should all decompose.
If it doesn't decompose
then mother nature is trying to tell you
that you don't have all of the biology
that you need in here. Please go get
your microscope.
Go take a look at what the biology
is in this area. Why aren't they here?
Because they should be if you used good
compost, good compost teas, you should have all
of those organisms in the soil and that
decomposition should be
overnight.
So if it takes too long a time,
you probably want to try to figure out
who killed your microorganisms
in this part of the pile or in
this part of
your
growing system or greenhouse.
And
quite often we discover the places where
your neighbor
sprayed something and that spray blew into your
operation.
And so right here we're not seeing any
decomposition because we got glyphosate
in here and that killed your organisms.
Well, it's not gonna take that much trouble
for you to go get a little bit
of your compost and sprinkle it over that
area and make sure that the decomposition
comes along right away,
and
then you're good to go. So we have
very simple solutions to some of these quite
complex problems
that other people have. Mhmm.
It's interesting to tease out the differences in
perspectives of scientists because,
I can see very clearly now that, you
know, Cora offered that opinion
because she works in a fusarium
laboratory greenhouse
using
sterile soil because they're studying fusarium.
And so for her, she doesn't have the
strength
in her growing system of a very active
living
soil
because that would get in the way of
their measuring things, right, and and and ensuring
it. So it's always interesting
to to be able to tease that out
because so many people in Canos, they will
argue, well, you know, this specialist thinks this
and this specialist thinks that, and and, you
know, one of them has to be wrong.
And I'm always like, you know, you really
only you've only learned that kind of like
at a t shirt quote level, you know?
Like like like, you really need to understand
what's behind what they're thinking
before before you get all evangelist about it
or or especially angry about it. Yeah. Yeah.
And, you know, ready to choose somebody up
one side and down the other, which is
not a fun thing to to do. When
if they just took a step back,
viewed the system and realized
what's actually going on,
you know,
we aren't going against the principles of
chemical agriculture.
We're just paying attention to what mother nature
has already put in place.
And mother nature has been working in these
systems. Well, I've been working on this planet
ever since rooted plants arrived on the planet
which was a billion years ago. Mother Nature
has had a billion
years
to figure out these interactions
to keep all of these wonderful plants alive
and functioning.
If she didn't work,
then we would be in serious trouble. We
wouldn't have these plants.
So we've got to learn the messages from
nature. We haven't figured them all out yet.
So, you know, please come work in the
lab with us for a while and
discover all of these things, and then you
too can get your name in lights.
So,
you know, we're big fans of living soil.
I mean, you and I both personally, but
also, like, shaping fire program. We we we
talk primarily about living soil. We don't talk
a whole lot about
about hydro unless it's, you know, a special
water food web kind of hydro
setup.
But,
using a blend of cocoa coir and peat
is wildly
popular in cannabis cultivation at the moment, especially,
like, bagged cocoa coir and peat with, often
with, you know, preloaded
with nutrients.
And,
but it isn't soil. Right? And and the
biology of these pots seems like it would
be significantly
lacking in
soil food web biology that makes plant
living in soil thrive. Right? Because they don't
have the the sand, silt, and clay, and
organic material in them.
What are your thoughts? Like, how how do
you,
how do you teach this idea of
of of
the threshold between using
soil, which has got, you know, sand, silt,
clay, organic material
versus using,
coir and peat with with nutrients
because they they both grow
plants and people are very satisfied with their
cocoa plants. But I feel like they're leaving
some
taste
and pest resistance
and resilience and health, like like, on the
table because they're choosing, like, a half step
and not going all the way to living
soil. What are your thoughts on these these
coco peat mixes?
Cocoa
and peat,
probably need to be sterile.
You know, this is one of those situations
where it probably,
because you've got
the material in a plastic bag sealed,
and if there's any active organisms in there,
they're going to start growing on all that
great organic material in there, and your bag
is going to puff up and explode.
So they have to have,
use some kind of toxic material in order
to kill off the organisms in that peat
and coconut core. Could it just be like
heat or pressure, or does it know what
Could be. It depends on exactly what they're
set up to do. So, you know One
way or another, they're denaturing it. Right. Yeah.
They're
exiting that from the system. They're making certain
that they're nothing's growing in there.
So now when you add your organisms, say,
in a good compost,
you're gonna see some initial lag before
the organisms really get going. And often,
if the concentration
of that toxic material
was really high,
you won't see any microbial
growth and therefore you're
not getting
what you put the peat and
coconut coir in there to do, which is
provide a food resource for the microorganisms
that you want to help your plant.
When we get into an understanding of what's
the difference between soil
and dirt,
Dirt is just
the mineral materials.
So the sand, the sills, the clays
are
produced
by weathering
and that used to be the biggest thing
that,
could start breaking down
the boulders and the parent material and the
rocks and etcetera into sandstone play. But as
soon as microorganisms
came along, it's the microorganisms
that do that decomposition
of the rocks,
pebbles, everything else.
And that's what's producing sand, silk and clay.
So very specialized niche,
you don't need many of them because they're
not really going to be helping your
plants along, but
mother nature needs to have them out there
so we can go ahead and get those
nutrients.
So I've defined
dirt,
just the mineral component.
When you're talking about soil,
you have to add, and this is according
to the work of
Hans Jenny, one of the fathers of soil
science.
He defines soil very clearly as being the
mineral component, the sand, the silica, clay,
but you also have to have organic matter
in order to feed your microorganisms
and then you have to have the beneficial
microorganisms,
the bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes at the very
least
and then more
micro arthropods, macro arthropods, spiders, and all those
things also play into a really good well
rounded
soil.
So that's the difference between those two things.
The mix that you talked about is just
food,
organic matter. That's all that's going in, especially
since they had to
destroy the biology
on that organic material
in order for it
to sit happily
on the shelf in the greenhouse,
in the store, wherever they're storing it.
So
we wanna make certain that we get
that planting material out and mix it with
our compost,
making sure that the compost
isn't killed by the toxic chemicals that were
used to kill everything in the in that
organic matter. Okay?
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna take it one
more step and put a little sharper edge
on it. And the reason I'm doing this
is because,
so many people so many, you know, newer
growers ask me about cocopeat mixes. And, you
know, I I I don't I don't wanna
repeat inaccurate or incomplete information. So, well, I
wanna take it one more step. Let's say
that we're that that the person is using
a coco peat mix that has been,
denatured or sterilized
with
with heat or pressure.
And so we're not talking about residual toxins.
And and then the folks bring it home,
and they they they they fill their, you
know, containers with the Coco Pete blend.
And then because they want to,
capture, you know, some active biological activity,
they'll pour compost teas in there.
And and it be you know, many people
have the ideas like, okay. Now my preferred
substrate that I like to use
now has
microbe life in it because I just poured
my my tea in there.
And I've always resisted this idea after,
Jeff Lowenfeld's kinda said it real easy. He
said he said, you know, it's not living
soil if if worms aren't living in there.
And and and, you know, that that generally,
you know, it it doesn't apply to or
that that's not gonna happen in this kind
of like coco peat mix I'm talking about.
So so what are your thoughts on a,
you know, starting with a nontoxic but sterile
coco peat blend and then adding
compost teas, does does that get you there?
It certainly should,
especially if that compost that you use to
make the extract and then the tea,
if it has
the spores as well as any of the
dormant stages
washed off that leaf material, that compost material
and into the water that you're now going
to inoculate
on the peat moss
and
core.
It's always a question of how much you
don't want to overdo because that's a really
strong food resource.
And you might have such a rapid growth
of microorganisms
in your beds that now that Since you're
starting from zero. Yeah. Uh-huh. Because, you know,
you now let this,
you know, goodly amount may be too much.
You know, and how do you determine what's
too little and what's too much? And we
often encourage our students to do a little
bit of testing in small containers.
So take a handful of
your
compost, take a handful of the
pea
and coir mixture
and mix it all up. Now put some
of your compost tea in there at the
concentration
that's the same as outside
and watch and see what's happening.
And if you come by the next morning
and you go, what is wrong with the
there's a smell in here. Where's that coming
from? Smells like someone vomited.
And you realize that that's your,
little container of,
core and,
etcetera.
You put in too much biology. That's too
much food for them. So
crank down
the amount of compost that you're putting in
with all those great organisms,
reduce it by half and see if you
don't get a better effect. You don't really
want to be experimenting with something where you
just put your valuable plants into.
And you know, the next morning it's, Oh
surprise,
how dead is that plant going to be?
Mhmm.
So
that's
the care that I would want to have
people take. Get that microscope out, take a
look at the biology that's present.
As soon as you mixed everything together and
then twenty four hours later
take another look and see that everything has
just gone gangbusters
and, you know, it's Florida sealing
bacteria
squished into small places.
Not
what we want. That's too rich
for your plants, so back off.
So it sounds like if I were to
kind of, tie this all together into a,
you know, a quickie best practice, it would
be,
if you,
prefer to use cocoa and peat,
and make make sure that they are, denaturing
from something nontoxic like pressure or heat. And
then once you get it to your house
and you wanna add biology to it, go
ahead and use your compost teas, but start
slow and low so that you, you know,
you don't, you know, push it too far
too fast. And I would think that,
I would wanna encourage people to also use
a variety
of of teas and, like,
worm casting extracts and things like that. So
you're continuing to add variety to the pot
in slow amounts
as you go. And, you know, it it
won't ever become
living soil, but but if you've chosen cocoa,
this is gonna be your your best way
to also have a,
an active biology.
Yeah. And I Mhmm. Yeah. For me, it's
it's still a compost
because the,
core and the,
the peat moss, those are just foods for
your microorganisms.
So they're,
you know, you're going to have to
replenish that food or maybe, you know, as
you're taking
a little bit of compost, you have a
little bit left over, spread it out on
this field so you get a little bit
of the sand silt clay mixed in.
Yeah. That's interesting. I never considered quora food.
And and as it degrades, I can see
how how it would be. I've always kind
of thought of it as like akin to
Styrofoam.
Yeah. Nope. It's definitely a carbon source. Mhmm.
Yep. And your fungi need that.
Bacteria don't like it much because
bacteria
have a carbon to nitrogen ratio typically down
around,
10 carbons for every one nitrogen,
which means, all bacteria are desperately in search
of nitrogen.
And they get all the carbon they could
possibly ever use and they blow it off
as CO2. So
they are not the organisms we want in
our soils
if we're trying to sequester carbon.
You want to get the fungi growing because
fungi have a C:N ratio of up around
100
to one. And so the fungi
will take all that extra carbon
and put it inside its empty
fungal tubes, the empty hyphae.
And
that prevents
micro arthropods from being able to eat
the
fungus.
So it's a really good way to
put things away in a very safe place
for a very long period of time.
So if you're ever thinking of, carbon sequestration,
keep that in mind. Right on.
I'm really grateful to that you went down
that path with me because, I'm much happier
because, you know, historically,
my my Coco friends, you know, I I,
you know, kinda make it a habit to
ask them hard questions about the biology. And
instead of being a jerk like that, I
can I can go to them like, oh,
do you know doctor Elaine's best practices for
this? Here, let me support you in in
your chosen way. And I think that's a
much better way to interact with my friends.
Yeah. I just, you know, why why are
they taking the peat moss? There's so many
other,
good sources of food for the microorganisms
right around you, in your natural
biome, in the habitat you're in. Why buy
something like peat moss
that's destroying an ecosystem someplace
and using that as food for your microorganisms?
Why not, you know, well there's lots of
other places where you could get waste
organic matter
And
as long as you're keeping some eye on
how much banana peel and how much oats
and how much of what are your kids
eating
and you're putting in the garbage,
dry it out every night. There are dryers
that you can buy that are very inexpensive,
and then you just, when you finish drying
it down you just crunch everything up and
put it in
a bag in the refrigerator.
And so you
can make your own
peat moss.
So,
while peat certainly has a use use as
a source,
most of the time I'm hearing people say
that they like the peat in the mix
because it,
retains water and it helps
kind of, like, balance the water
that's in a container.
Is there a,
is there something else that you prefer to
peat
to help,
kind of stretch out a watering and kind
of help
regulate
how
wet the pot is or or or rather
that will sustain the watering a little longer
in a balanced way?
Yeah. You wanna get the particles
in the,
whatever
your like the my example of
the food, waste food in your kitchen and
you dry it down and you grind it
up
and now you take it out of wherever
you're storing it because if it's completely dry
you don't have to worry about it.
And take that out now and how much
water will that dried material
be able to hold? And usually it's quite
close to peat moss.
So I kind of think of those kinds
of
materials
because it's a diversity, you've got some potato,
you've got some banana, you've got what else
did your kid not eat, broccoli, cauliflower,
and you dry them down and now how
much water will it take to wet that
back up? And I think you'd see it
was very close to the peat moss.
Thank you for that. I've only ever thought
about those scraps as a food source and
not as
a, you know Water holding a hydration. Yeah.
Totally. So Yeah. Alright. So we're gonna go
ahead and take our second short break and
be right back. You are listening to Shaping
Fire and my guest today is doctor Elaniam.
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today.
Welcome back. You are listening to shaping fire.
I'm your host, Shango Los, and my guest
today is doctor Elaine Ingham.
So doctor Elaine, you know, in regenerative farming,
we do our best to mimic nature itself,
to support it, and, you know, use nature
to repair itself.
Does that make a case for cultivators
to emphasize
compost
extracts
over aerated
compost teas?
Because, you know, burgeoning
incubated populations of oxygen loving microbes are pretty
unlikely to occur naturally in the soil,
while compost extracts
really more effectively bio mimic what happens
in nature
by seeping into plant material and then seeping
through it as we find in nature. So
so how should we wrap our heads around
that?
It's one of these cases of it depends.
You have to take a step back and
look at what you want
as,
the outcome
of applying
these different materials.
So for example, with a compost,
you're gonna put it down someplace that needs
the organic matter as well as the organisms
replenished
in that soil. And so typically
right down the furrow or
right around the trees
in
a orchard
or something, you know, with shrubs or
blueberries, whatever.
When we're looking at compost tea, that's
really the organisms as they
typically exist
in
our close,
the closest we ever come to making soil.
Those organisms we want to extract,
the concentration
that you need to
put into your system
to get the biology back up to where
it belongs.
So when we're going through succession
and we're trying to understand that early in
succession it's strictly bacterial,
midway through succession it's
fiftyfifty
fungi bacteria. When it's
in an old growth forest
it's
a 100 to a thousand times more
fungi than bacteria in the system. And so
understanding
that we are going to
extract
the,
compost
and,
apply it
as that amendment.
Everybody's
gonna be asleep normally,
that is supposed to be asleep at that
time. Anything that's supposed to be happening now,
that's already happening in the compost.
So when you do the extraction,
these organisms go out hopefully more or less
in the balances that we wanna see. So
we'll take a look using our microscopes
to determine if what I'm putting on is
strictly bacterial,
and that's gonna help those,
early successional systems
that we probably don't want because
early successional systems are,
are gonna be mostly weeds
and you know things that aren't crops. They're
not really anything that farmers wanna see.
If we
improve that fungal component
then we're going to be putting on an
equal biomass of fungi and bacteria
and we're selecting for the more productive plants
in the system,
you know, grasses and
vegetables,
those kinds of plants. As we go over
the edge into a fungal dominated system and
now we're
promoting the growth of
shrubs and trees,
the higher in that successional process
up into the old growth system, we're going
to be just pushing fungi like crazy.
So how much biology
do you need to be putting out and
of what type? So answering those kinds of
questions, if we've made a compost tea, extracted
the organisms from
the compost
into a liquid form because it's way easier
to apply a liquid than it is to
apply that solid material.
We're drenching right around the base of all
of the plants that we are concerned about
that we want
to get going and making sure that that
fungal to bacterial ratio is what it needs
to be.
So typically that's what we're going to be
applying.
We will
let that
do its thing
about, for about a week and we'll go
back and take a,
another sample
and look at what's happened in that soil.
Has the biology
improved? And if we're trying for something that's
equal biomass, fungi and bacteria,
are both the bacteria and fungi
getting,
higher and higher in value?
That's what we wanna see. So we're constantly
checking. What if you see the, you know,
the,
place that you were hoping for both bacteria
and fungi to grow and the fungi are
just taken off like crazy.
Well, that's not good for
the plant we're trying to grow. Our plant
needs equal biomass.
So we'll go back and we'll, develop,
like a compost tea
where we're going to be putting in
bacterial
foods.
So we're getting the bacteria up to where
it's going to equal what's going on with
the fungi.
And so then that gets applied. Well what
if it was the other way around? Well
then we would put in foods
that would improve
the,
the fungi instead of the bacteria.
So we have these, you know, tests along
the way to make sure everything's going the
right direction.
If you,
don't have a microscope and you put things
on, you're just crossing your fingers and hoping
that mother nature is going to be kind
to you. And, you know, mother nature, I
think, has a not so wonderful attitude about
human beings
because we have not been doing nice things
to her
work on this planet.
And so we've gotta fix this and get
it back to where it needs to be.
And so here you have all of the
tools
that you need to have. Now
with
a compost
tea,
in general the reason why we would be
making a compost tea is because we've got
to up the amount of bacteria or fungi.
We also,
when we're looking
at the above ground part of the plant,
the form of
putting
the biology back out there is going to
be as a compost tea.
Because we wanna look and see what's going
on. If,
everything's going just fine, probably we put out
something that was equal biomass, fungi, and bacteria
for any tree that's out there. Well, you
do wanna pay pay attention to your soil
because when you apply the tea
to the foliage,
you're also going to be getting some of
the compost tea on the ground.
So, you know, it
you've gotta be looking at what's going on
in the ground. You've gotta be looking at
what's happening in the,
in the foliage
so that you determine
what kind of tea are you gonna be
making, what kinds of foods are you gonna
be adding into that system.
So
I mostly only use compost teas if I've
got disease causing problems
in the foliage.
And then it's strictly a foliar spray, I'm
not, drenching it on the soil at all.
And so we typically get rid of those
diseases very rapidly.
If you can get out at the beginning
of the growing season, you know
that there's a particular disease that this orchard
or this these plants
are very,
likely to have problems. They have,
you know, the growers are saying, you know,
every year we've been applying these toxic chemicals
and the toxic chemicals just aren't doing the
job anymore. What are we supposed to do?
Well,
you come along and we'll put the compost
tea out there. And it does a very
good job on dealing with
every disease organisms. There's several
recent papers in the scientific literature showing that
if they put a good compost tea out,
that they can deal with Fusarium.
No problem there.
You know, when we are dealing with different,
you know, like Dutch Elm disease, no problem
there. We've got that one figured out. So
in some cases, we may have to go
into
the plantation
or into
the agricultural field,
and figure out,
how to get rid of a disease
by applying in the foliage.
And most of the time we get it
figured out after, you know, just a couple
weeks what we need to do to give
constant
protection to the plant.
And remember that it's not just the organisms
you're putting out, it's the fact that you're
getting
nutrient cycling going again in the root system.
You're making certain that that plant has all
the nutrients it needs to express
the disease protection.
To express that resistance to diseases and pests
and problem organisms.
So it's a whole system
working together.
And,
so hopefully you can see why it's,
it depends
kind of answer. Yeah. It is a depends
kind of answer. And and I wanna I
wanna, focus on one thing you said because,
perhaps I misunderstood.
I believe I heard you say that, you
really only use compost tea,
if there is an imbalance in the plant.
And then if you do use it,
you use it as a foliar and not
as a root drench.
And and if I heard you correctly, my
question is this. If
if it's important for us that the plant
has the nutrition it needs to remain robust
and have an active rhizosphere,
so
everybody's communing and communicating
and trading and the and the plants getting
what its needs,
if if
if there's if I'm not act adding
more
nutrition and active biology
via a compost tea,
are are is the nutrition that you're referring
to
simply amendments
that you have added in advance before the
life cycle of the plant?
Well, new I was trying to go through
the the succession of treatments that we usually
do
in,
and and trying to deal with
these large tubules. In that one case that
that, you wouldn't use a root drench. Like,
no like, you would use it in other
cases.
So yeah. When I understand. When you first
go out and take a look at what's
in the soil and you go, oh my
gosh. They're
the only thing I find here are bacteria,
and
they are really not very good bacteria
because that's all that can grow with the
toxic chemicals and the inorganic salts and all
this
tillage. It's the only thing that's surviving.
And so our first applications are going to
be
compost.
If you don't have enough organic matter in
your soil to grow your microorganisms,
and that cutoff is 3%.
So one of the biggest things we'll have
to do when we've got those kinds of
problems is get out there with more organic
matter. Well guess what is
your, in your compost? It's organic matter and
organisms, so get it out there.
So we'll come back
two weeks later,
and
we may go in furrow at that point
where we're putting the compost tea down in
furrow, but we want to make certain that
we've got the balance right. So before,
so here we are, we've put the compost
down if we need to,
and a week or two weeks later, we'll
come back and take another look at the
biology and make sure it's getting going in
the right direction.
And then that determines for us what's still
missing.
And so what do we have to,
what kind of compost are we going to
use? We're going to be extracting
these organisms
to
put into the soil
as a drench going along the row.
And we may have to repeat that once
or twice before we can get the balance
of the microorganisms
back up to what it needs to be.
And then we're going to really turn our
attention to what are the diseases
that the client has
shown
are problems.
And so now we're going to
determine the compost
tea that we're likely to have to apply
because of, you know, is it a,
you know, there's too many disease causes, too
many diseases for me to mention. But
based on this disease, we're going to make
a compost
tea that will
very
strongly
suppress
those diseases that are strictly foliar.
If it's a root disease,
we would probably go back to
drenching the soil
or maybe if it's a really specific part
of the tree that is showing disease symptoms,
then
conifers are much more likely to behave in
that fashion.
We'll inject
the compost
extract
into the soil
around that
infected root
and kind of hope
that that takes care
of the disease in that root.
If it doesn't, it's going to kill that
plant.
When should we take it down now or
try to
baby this,
one very sick tree? Should we take it
down? You have to your client is the
person who's gonna make that call. I understand.
Thanks for, breaking that out a bit more.
It's it's interesting how any conversation,
about, you know, it's just for it's for
somebody who's taking their soil seriously
and thinking about varieties of compost tea. It
always comes back to microscope skills.
It really does. It's like, you know, for
for for a decade, we are making sure
we're trying to encourage, you know, cannabis growers
to get soil tests. Right? Even though they
were afraid to send their soil in and
because people were generally, you know, hiding and
they didn't wanna send in soil tests. You
know, eventually, it got safe enough to send
in soil tests and such.
And so, you know, people are pretty well
established that beyond the importance of a soil
test, but right on those heels is is
basic microscope skills so that you can understand
what's going on in your soil and your
compost.
Mhmm. Yeah. And it's,
it's easier to do the microscope
work yourself rather than sending it off to
a a laboratory where you're not quite sure
what kind of methodology
they're using to extract the
soluble N,
the total N, the exchangeable,
all of those different things. And you know,
people hand me. So chemistry
reports and you know, it's got like a
column of numbers behind
you know, titles like phosphate,
sulfate, things like that. And it's like,
this is meaningless.
You've gotta know what,
extraction agencies they've been using to really context
is for the numbers. Yeah. Yep. And,
so
yeah. And it's it's really easy to find
that that information that's important.
And what do you have to do to
make get this plant back into a really
healthy condition?
A lot of times I find that chemical
analysis is isn't much help. Mhmm.
Yeah. And we're working on trying to really
figure that out for people so that there'll
be a publication coming along that really helps
them
integrate
what's
going on with
the nutrients
from what the biology is doing, as well
as having some of the,
soluble
and,
total nutrient values,
in the system, Help people really figure out
what they're doing. Excellent. We'll we'll we'll look
forward to that report. This next question, I
think, is a lot simpler than the last
couple.
You know, it's it's it's really common,
towards the end of a bloom cycle in
cannabis
for growers to stop water before,
harvest day.
And,
my mentor did that and,
you know, he said, well, it's it's like
a tomato plant. We're letting it know it's
at the end of its season, and we
wanna decrease the total moisture volume in the
plant so it's a little easier to dry.
And I'm like, but in in my thoughts,
it's always been I would want to be
watering
my soil biology,
you know, all the way through harvest
because
without water, I'm gonna start losing
my stable balanced microbe life as they start
going to sleep. And and then that really,
really tells the plant that it's the end
of the season and that, you know, perhaps
it's time for molds to take over to
recycle the plant. So I really wanna key
I think I wanna keep my microbiology,
like, strong and moistured,
right up to harvest day. But, you know,
I'm I certainly am I'm willing to be
inaccurate. So so what are your thoughts about
this common practice to stopping watering plants in
containers, like, a week before harvest?
I don't think it's really gonna do the
microorganisms
in your soil any harm.
You're getting them ready for,
you know, the harvest period being gone.
So
these organisms are have been of course
building aggregate structure in the soil around the
roots
to hold on to water.
And so if anything what's happening is you're
getting the plant to go deeper,
put those roots down deeper into the soil
to grab the water that it needs.
So the plant has mechanisms
for upping the amount of water that it'll
take out of the soil
around its root system.
And so I'm not sure how much good
it really
for a week is probably
not enough to affect the growth of that
plant in any way.
So in really dry arid areas maybe so,
and so it would be interesting to look
at that.
What goes on with the biology around the
root system
as you're letting this drying
process happen.
You're not going to lose any species, they're
just going to go dormant.
And especially with water,
you know, they've got a fair amount of
time
to respond to the fact that the water
really is drying out and it really is
time to go get into dormant form.
So when you come through and you harvest,
you have less damage from harvest
because
the organisms are already going sound asleep.
Yeah. I don't
it doesn't doesn't really ring my bells at
all to to get worried about that. So
let's talk about something specifically for the indoor
cultivators for a moment, Elaine. You know, many
indoor cultivators,
try to mimic outdoor regenerative techniques in their
gardens because perhaps they don't have access to
outdoor space or maybe they live somewhere where
the weather is just not gonna play ball.
And so they wanna grow indoors, but they
they don't wanna go the whole, you know,
you know, you know, the two part salts
game because they want to be,
you know, using
a healthier cannabis themselves. And so, you know,
perhaps they're still in pots, but, you know,
it's becoming very common to use four by
four or four by eight indoor beds.
But
being indoors, there's a clear limit to how
much soil food web biomimicry
can take place because
there's so much of nature that you're not
participating in and that you just can't
mimic
indoors in a tent.
For indoor folks, how should we think about,
you know, that natural limit to how much
bio mimicry we can do and best adapt
our indoor gardens in attempt to, you know,
make them as true as possible to the
soil food web?
Yeah. The biggest problem I think is going
to be that the roots should be growing
down,
and not out to the sides.
And
I suppose if you had a situation where
that's the only,
you don't have
some place where you can hang
baskets with the plants growing in it up
at six or eight feet high
so the root systems can go down into
a trench that you would dig in the
floor. That's a novel thing to picture.
Take the boards out between your Ground Floor
and
the basement. If you could
have
the above ground part up in a you
know, a bubble window and then the pot
and with the roots growing down into your
basement,
you might be able
to be more typical of what we want
to have occurring out in the field.
But what if your field isn't actually doing
that? Your field is
compacted
at some depth,
and the roots will only grow down to
that depth.
They will tend to go sideways then
and be fighting with the next
plants over
because they're all
not getting the nutrients or the water that
they need.
So,
which is,
what is it that you're trying to mimic?
Your not so healthy plants that are outside
hitting a compaction layer?
Or
you're going to be building structure in that
compaction layer so over the years
you're going to be able to,
get the root systems of your plants down
the,
twelve, fifteen feet that we're hoping for.
And then you would have to bio mimic
it inside your house where if you brought
those,
pots in.
So it sounds like since we you know,
even though I really love the idea of
sketching out this this hanging pots and and
having it go through a tube to a
trough, It's it, it sounds like, really,
folks who want to
bio mimic soil food web, their best
things to focus
will be on just ensuring
that they have got the most complex
soil and rhizosphere
as possible,
by,
you know, supporting
the residents that are already there
and then continuing to inoculate
with
with IMOs
and and such things and just focus on
the biology of the soil and and call
that, you know, good enough.
Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah.
You know, using
the the extracts, the compost, the teas as
needed
to try to
keep the food web balanced,
where you because one of the things you'll
discover
is what is
the balance of bacteria and fungi for this
particular cultivar
of cannabis?
Which one did you buy and
how much difference is there going to be
between this first
species versus the second subspecies, whatever. Mhmm. That's
gonna be fun to find out about as
well.
So,
so I've got I've just got two questions
left for you. And and and and before
we go to the final one, which is,
you know, kind of a a delightful philosophical,
you know, position for us to end the
show with,
I'd really love you to just give us
your your elevator,
pitch about, the soil food web school that
you started because
so many of us have been accessing,
you know, your education and message and insights,
through, you know, books and papers
and YouTube,
presentations
for these years. But but now you you
know, you've kind of you've kind of taken
all of that and gone pro and made
it,
a a
a system so that somebody can work through,
the entire range of soil food web ideas
and then, you know, get a certificate in
the end as well. So, well, would you
just tell us a little bit about that
before we wrap up?
We what we saw was that,
people learning the
techniques
and then going back home and applying them,
it's hard for them to do the research
kinds of things.
We didn't go through that
of how to figure things out if it's
not exactly the way
we were talking about it in the classes.
So we realized that was,
we needed to start
getting our students understanding
that
every time we say it depends,
that means they're going to have to do
a little bit of researching.
And I like the little containers,
where we can put in, you know,
let's see, six cups of our woody mix,
three cups of our
green plant material,
and then one cup of our
high nitrogen material. And you mix that all
up and
make certain that you're watering it so you
know
it's got a nice
amount of moisture in it. Treat it just
like you would your larger compost piles inside
the bird cages.
And
watch the temperature.
Is that really high nitrogen that you put
in? Is there a problem where you're not
seeing any bacterial growth and you can
design
your
compost system
better?
But
you're doing some testing where you're trying different
materials
as high nitrogen. Which is the best high
nitrogen that I've got?
Which is
the best woody substrate?
Does it matter if I let that woody
substrate
get completely
involved in a bunch of different
fungi and I use that as composed as
compared to something that was just ground up
two or three months ago or something like
that.
And so
you test for yourself and we're teaching
our students that
way to deal with
questions that you might have
and figure it out for yourself. Now we'd
like to have you all
send back in what you discover so we
can just keep enlarging
the table
about where in the world are you and
what is the best
source of high nitrogen, the best source of
sources
of woody materials,
and so on and so forth.
You know,
lots of examples that I could give, but
I'll keep going.
It it sounds like,
the the the main,
gist or intent, I guess, is probably a
better word for the Soil Food Web School
is
so so so we've we've studied these ideas
of the Soil Food Web,
you know, wrote to memorize them. And what
the school does is it it gives you
the skills to do the research
so that you can do the processes that
you need in order to be able to
work with soil,
not just like you read it in a
textbook, but that you actually have ownership over
the techniques and the ideas. Yep. Right on.
Because we we know that every bit of
a biome
is not gonna be behaving the same way,
especially if you understand succession, which I just
barely started going through, which,
you know, when you look at a watershed
and you look at the fact that up
there at the top of the mountain is
mostly conifer forest and then you've got deciduous
forest and then you've got, the shrubs and
bushes and this is succession. You're you're looking
at succession.
So where is your land or where is
your client's land?
Is it down here in,
the riparian zone?
Is it,
weedy area that
gets disturbed all the time by
wild and crazy things, you know,
going up the slope a little bit into
shrubbery
and really high, good highly productive grasslands.
You have
to have that microscope to be answering most
of these questions about what's missing,
so
you can pretty easily
start to build a good library about here's
what you do when,
fill in the blank, and if we can
have that for the school.
So you see what we're doing is what
are the,
what are the the the things that will
make it easier and easier
for
for students to be successful out in the
real world. Yeah. It sounds like it's a
setup for what to do when the answer
is it depends. Yeah.
So let let's follow with this this one.
So so doctor Elaine Ingham, you've been an
educator
and an activist actually for soil health for
decades, and it's certainly true that regenerative growing
techniques have, you know, increased in popularity,
and
the generations behind us are are even more
interested than us.
But also, you know, the fertilizer lobbyists also
still have a strong hold.
And
what advice or insight would you share with
those who will carry the torch forward in
this fight
that that sometimes almost seems overwhelming?
Well,
it seemed overwhelming
to convince the world
that soil is alive
45 ago,
and yet we've done that. It's amazing.
Once
we got over
kind of the threshold
of people accepting
that,
it didn't matter what the chemical companies were
talking about. It didn't matter
that our politicians
are in the pocket of those people.
When the general public decides,
it goes that way. And so,
you know, we've gotta
make this as understandable
for the average person
that
they get it and they
demand,
that their food is grown this way. So,
you know,
we're gonna get all of our nutrients
from
plants
that are cycling nutrients and building nutrients and
building protection,
and that transfers to us.
The
microorganisms
on the outside of all of the food
that we eat
should be what mother nature put there
and not what we
put there by spraying pesticides
or spraying,
you know, for whatever it is we're going
to go out there and try to kill.
You don't ever kill if you don't have
to. I guess there's a few exceptions like
human pathogens. Yes, we do always have to
kill them,
but it's going to be using a system
that is not toxic chemicals that spread
everywhere.
That
leach
from all of our ecosystem,
from all of our organic, our agricultural systems
into
the water and destroys water quality of everything
downstream.
So we've got to get
the reasons
for dealing with landfills
that are just oozing
horrible
combinations
of toxic chemicals
into
the rivers and lakes and streams and
how's the human, how how are humans supposed
to survive
if,
those are the kinds of systems that we're
living in. Yeah. Thank you, Elaine.
So,
so this brings us to our end. Doctor
Elaine Ingham, thank you so much for sharing
your time and your expertise,
to join me today here on Shaping Fire.
But even more so,
thank you for your long career of of
research and sharing it and, you know, giving
a damn and sharing that too.
It was absolutely,
you know, I've I've enjoyed hearing you
talk before, but it's been an absolute joy
to have the opportunity to actually interact with
you. Thank you so much. Well, thank you.
Yeah. Some great questions, and
you led me through them in
a really
thoughtful and useful way. So I hope we
can do this again next year. Thank you.
So, dear listener, if you would like to
hear more from doctor Elaine Ingham, you're in
luck because she is a guest that,
there's a whole bunch online. So,
I recommend you start these three places. The
first and foremost
is soilfoodweb.com.
That is doctor Elaine's website. It's the home
of the school. There's all sorts of resources
and it's a great place to start.
The second place, especially if you, are interested
in,
you know, learning some techniques as you go
is the Instagram
for the school as well. And that's,
soil food
web school on Instagram.
And, you know, that there are there are,
like, kinda, you know, institutional posts about what's
going on at the school, but there's also
a whole bunch of technique in there as
well. And, you know, it's a profile that
that I enjoy following. And then finally, probably
the best place to go,
is is YouTube,
if you if you like listening to your
education like this. There's a whole bunch of
stuff that Elaine has done online.
And then, of course, doctor Elaine is, you
know, a a very published,
scientist.
And so if you also like to read
your education,
you can find, you know, you know, many
scientific papers and her books, you know, with
a with a simple search online.
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