The book is Teaming with Microbes, The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web, Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis. Timber Press, Portland. 206pp. $17.
http://www.amazon.com/Teaming-Microbes-Organic-Gardeners-Revised/dp/1604691131. The next book is Teaming with Nutrients.
Fungi are the primary decomposers in soil, far more than bacteria, which rely on what was already started by the fungus enzymes (Teaming with Microbes, p. 65).
Fungi transport useful chemicals to plant roots in a strange swapping mechnism. The plant gives up food for the fungi and receives those elements it needs. Usually some change must take plant for the roots to take it up, and the fungus does this (p. 66).
Protozoa prey upon bacteria and together mineralize nutrients for plants, providing 80% of the nitrogen needed in the root zone (p. 84).
Mr. Inorganic Gardener thinks he is giving nitrogen to his plants by pouring fertilizer on them. The Creation Gardener is more efficient and cost-effective by providing organics for the creatures. He will mulch the grass into the lawn and so the nitrogen and other nutrients are locked up in the root layer, circulating through various creatures and concentrated by the earthworm.
Nematodes are another surprise for me in gardening. I knew they existed. Bad nematodes eat living plant roots. But there are many good nematodes. They taxi bacteria and fungi around because nematodes (the size of a human hair) are much larger and more mobile than their passengers. Since one problem is concentration of useful creatures, the movement of nematodes and earthworms puts the useful root-zone creatures in new places.
It is comparable to mixing a powder into a liquid. The fine particles clump if they are put in the bottom of a container and liquid is poured over them. However, if the powder is added on top of the liquid, it is easily dispersed by stirring, especially when the liquid is already moving around in a whirlpool. I always thought of earthworm movement, but never the movement of the smaller creatures offering taxi rides to the smallest ones
