Soil Amendments - The Good, the Bad, and the Ridiculous

 Gabe Brown had four years of crop failures, which made him change his methods and emphasize cover crops.

Ridiculous
Let's start by dismissing the two ridiculous soil amendments, highly recommended by word-of-mouth, but useless for the soil:

1. Egg shells are made of calcium but they do not blend with the soil. They might be picked up by birds but do not affect the soil. Like meat products, they may attract the wrong crowd.
2. Epsom Salt is promoted by Martha Stewart - world famous gardener cook and hostess. The compound is a good bath salt and dissolves instantly in water. I bought an economy 8-pound bag and let half of it fall into the water. Not on purpose! It dissolved into the water and vanished, just like my toenials. No, I made that up. We use it for foot soaks. The Epsom Salt Council recommends it for every plant imaginable, but that is seldom the case. 

The Bad

Foods are not a good idea since they promote a distinctive and unpleasant garbage can aroma in the garden area. That is why most composters will stick to leafy matter that does not attract raccoons, skunks, and bears.

Chemical fertilizers can have a temporary impact on plants but they slow down or stop God's Creation process. Man-made fertilizers are toxic. Walk down that fertlizer aisle and inhale.

 Decades ago, the Salatin family began building the soil, which had been stripped bare from predatory farming.

Chickens hunt for food in the heavily manured fields.
This reduces pests and fragrance, preparing the chickens for market.

The Good

I am willing to share decades of reading and experience with everyone, which should save time and effort for some, incite curiosity among others.

• Save time! Soil amendments - whether finished or raw compost, leaves, manure, shredded wood, plant material, or all those exotic materials listed by Rodale Press - can be left on top of the soil, where God's own sanitation crew will pull it down up to the soil's capacity. Some common sense should be used for the kinds of manure, the freshness of the bouquet, and the amounts.
• Red Wiggler earthworms will pull down organic matter, dig, aerate, and fertilize for free. I added them early to the entire yard, and the results were immediate.
• Leaves are the foundation of all soil fungi, which are the network builders in feeding all plant roots in the yard. Leaves are mostly carbon, which should not be scorned. Fungi need carbon to grow, so why pay money or exert effort to haul carbon sources away.
• Pine Needles have a pleasant aroma for a long time. They can be a perfect mulch, not allowing any weeds through, but some gardeners fear they are too piney. I covered one garden deep and hardly any weeds came up - and even that took some time. But I grew Hostas, Pokeweed, and Blackberries there. Books say - do not overdo pine needles. I suppose it is good not to use them by the truckload, except where suppressing weed growth is a virtue.
• Coffee grounds add nutrition to the soil. Some people get pounds of them from coffee shops. I just toss the coffee didees into the rainwater barrel. Every so often a rich mixture of rainwater, grounds, and paper soak the bird bushes near our window. I dote on those bushes so they serve as shade and as perches for birds when feeding and entertaining us.
• Cover crops are great for the soil and for weed suppression. I overwhelmed myself with Buckwheat last year, but it built up the soil and elbowed all weeds aside. Buckwheat dropped enough seed to come back and grow six feet tall this year. All growing roots improve the soil.
• Weeds are powerful in improving the soil. Invasive weeds are not fun (English Ivy); nor are toxic ones (Poison Ivy, Giant Hogweed, Poison Hemlock). But deep taproots should not be scorned (dandelion, Poke) since they contribute so much to soil building as they shed organic matter and feed the beneficial fungi. I let Pokeweed grow modestly in the rose garden and then prune it back, but wildly in the back to feed the birds. Dandelions are herbs, so they grow where they wish.
• Newspapers, Cardboard. They must improve the soil because I have to replace them as weed blockers. Cardboard lasts the longest. I hold down both with shredded wood.
• Shredded Wood Mulch is best when used without dyes. I am not sure what chemicals are included in those dyes, but coloring wood is akin to spraying the lawn green. Wood mulch holds down the newspapers and cardboard, limits the sun germinating weeds, keeps moisture in the soil, and decomposes into the soil.
• Tree stumps and logs are ideal when borrowed from people removing trees from their property. Stumps are primarily food zones for all kinds of creatures, where the soil meets the wood. They also serve as perches for birds, bases for solar lights, and modular fences.

 This is the best single book on the soil food web.
Lowenfels realized the folly of chemical gardening.

 Those who study this book will be decades ahead of the rest, but it is not easy reading.

One gigantic effort is not going to convert a property overnight. Who has the energy or materials to do that? Instead, a regular application of natural ingredients will build the soil over time.

I asked neighbors for newspapers and received stacks of them, used those, and then areas to use stacks more. When I had plenty of paper from a small truckload of them, a second load arrived. Now I open the front door a crack and yell "No more newspapers!" They laugh.

Sometimes I appear at a neighbor's door with a bunch of roses in a paper cup. "Here are your newspapers back." They like that as much as I like their contributions.

YouTube
One way to study this topic is to search YouTube for organic gardening advice. I am linking a few for starters.

Gabe Brown on Soil Health - Cover Crops

Joel Salatin Polyface Farm

Joel Salatin - Building the Soil

Soil Carbon Cowboys

Hot Peanuts fix nitrogen in the soil and the plant is everywhere. City slickers buy nitrogen and kill the plant with toxins. Make sense?

Regenerative Farming and Regenerative Yale Divinity. Insights for the Gardener

Tropicana is blooming again.

While grading, I listened to various YouTubes on regenerative farming. My favorite speaker is Gabe Brown, but there are many other experts who have videos as well.

The new Yale Divinity dorm could feature
the compost drum. Lutheran School of Chicago dedicated this compost drum about 6 years ago. 

Yale Divinity School sent me a glorious color magazine that features the regenerative dormitory they want to build. I can fund it and name it for $10 million. Although Yale Divinity chokes at talking about Creation, they are really dealing with the concept of God's magnificent handiwork, His engineering, and His management of all that He fashioned through the Word. He invented re-cycling, no?

Another buzzword is sustainability, although that includes quite a bit of Left-wing political activism. Increasing carbon for the soil is linked with absorbing greenhouse gasses (Carbon Dioxide), global warming, fake statistics, and the rants of Al Gore and Company.

New Insights about Creation Gardening
I have been reading about organic gardening since Dow Library days in Midland, in the 1980s. I read many books from Rodale Press and bought quite a few as well.

I am going to condense some new insights that I learned from Gabe Brown and others.

Armor for the Soil
God covers the soil - always, but man often leaves it bare. Although I was aware of all the benefits of mulch, these people argue - through research - that cover crops prevent drought by increasing the ability of the soil to absorb rain and snow.

Cover crops, if diverse, also host a wide variety of beneficial bugs. "Why use pesticide when fewer than 1% of the bugs are pests?"

Cover crops mine nitrogen from the soil. "Above one acre of farmland are 35,000 tons of nitrogen. Why buy nitrogen when God provides it for free. Plant legumes - peas, beans, vetch."

Cover Crops Suppress Weeds, Add Energy
I have been considering using more tiny plants to occupy territory in the rose gardens. One reason is that mulch attracts wind blown seeds and bird-donated seeds. Weeds are easily pulled or suppressed, except a couple that vex me - English ivy and Bermuda grass.

Buckwheat, White Clover, and Wild Strawberries are low growing, not obtrusive. Studies show that much of the soil improvement comes from the activity of roots. Some can also exclude weeds entirely - as Buckwheat has proven, while adding food and shelter for beneficial bugs.
Dutch White Clover has excluded almost all the grass in the backyard, simply by surviving the extensive rain we have had.

Carbon for the Soil
The chemical gardening books pooh-poohed manure. To wit - "Manure and tree leaves are just carbon, etc. No real NPK." These farmers realize that carbon feeds the fungal jungle, and these fungi grow from the carbon, feeding and watering the roots.

Some videos argue that rich soil absorbs carbon from the atmosphere. I find that whole line of "greenhouse gasses" bizarre and fraudulent. I have no idea what chemistry they are talking about with CO2 being absorbed.

The fact is, when I was reading everything possible about soil in the 1980s, fungus was mentioned largely as a problem - not as the most basic activity of soil.

A farmer with thousands of acres has to figure out the cost and benefits of his actions. Gabe Brown freely confesses that four straight disasters in farming forced him to learn about the soil and discover the value of natural methods, building the soil that builds the farm.

We Saw an M.D. Who Began Talking about Creation Through the Word. I Offered To Give Him a Creation Gardening Book

 Creation Gardening is an easy book to give away.
The author's price (write to me) is only $5 plus shipping.

Mrs. Ichabod had a doctor's visit, and we began talking with him about various things at the end. He mentioned going to seminary and then talked about God's Creation through the Word. I said, "I teach that." He asked, "You do and in...?" I finished, "Yes, six days - through the Word."

He was a bit startled about the idea of a Creation Garden, which made him smile. The next visit will mean roses and a book or two. I enjoy telling people that the flawless roses were grown without sprays and chemical fertilizer, which hails back to "If you do not believe the Word, at least believe because of the signs (miracles)" in John.

Diabetic Shock
Our son sees the same diabetic specialist that Mrs. Ichabod visits. She just received her copy of Creation Gardening before she saw him. LI said, "She was still disturbed by your roses when I saw her." By the way, she really adores roses, which we give her, so this news was intriguing.

Gabe Brown, Regenerative Farmer
Someone directed me to a video, which I will place at the bottom of this post. The initial video led me to a series created by Gabe Brown, regenerative farmer from North Dakota.

Those who are interested in this might want to investigate the theories of the soil-food-web, another general term for these practice.

Agricultural videos bring out the inner farmer in me, since both my grandfathers owned farms until the Great Depression.

Four Disastrous Years Taught Brown
My brief description - Gabe Brown began on a huge farm which he was buying from his in-laws. However, they had four years in a row which were a total wipe-out of the crops, due to natural disasters like drought and hail. They had no cash. He planted each year but had nothing to harvest, so the soil noticeably improved because the soil absorbed the destroyed crops.

Farmer Brown learned that he needed to focus on the health of the soil to have good crops and preserve his greatest asset - the land.

Chemical and plowing practices (tillage on the tape) have the following bad effects:

1. Plowing creates a hardpan that the roots cannot break through. Bigger, deeper plows push the hardpan layer down but do not solve the problem.
2. Plowing also reduces the carbon in the soil, which diminishes what the soil can do.
3. Chemical fertilizers do not reduce these problems, but make them worse.
4. Rainwater, which is often sparse, runs off and causes soil erosion, when the soil surface is hard and non-porous.

Did an earthworm take this photo of Gabe Brown
and his son Paul?

Brown's main emphasis is upon diverse cover crops, which keep most weeds down, soften the soil, and attract beneficial insects that devour the pests. Animal life of all types also eat weed seeds at a prodigious rate.

I had similar problems. I began gardening in shock - I could afford the chemicals. I had the almost-infinite resources of the Grace Dow library in Midland, so I read every gardening book (adult and juvenile sections) I could find. The juvenile books were often the best ones.

I softened clay by placing wheelbarrows of finished compost on top of it. The soil creatures did the plowing, mixing, and tunneling. Once the soil had digested the organic matter I used, the gardens were always productive. I did not want to spray what we ate, and I had no need for chemical enhancements.

I also created fast compost by putting sod clumps together in a hole I dug for a parsley garden. The soil became jelly-like from all the humus digested in it.

Scarlet Bee Balm is rampant,
but this purple Monarda is clumping.

Brown learned from an expert that he needed more than one plant in his cover-crops - he needed a mix of six. This diversity is what I am practicing in the gardens, because I reasoned, "The plants with another agenda can grow next to and among the roses, providing a good rest and feeding station for the beneficial insects." -

• Dandelions - a dandy and attractive herb.
• Horse, Mountain, and Cat Mints - well-behaved and clumping.
• Wild Strawberries, low-growing and planted by the birds.
• Clover.
• Buckwheat and other plants can be bee-friendly and squeeze out weeds, without becoming a bother.

I pull out future nut and maple trees, but the list above are never-pulls. Big obnoxious weeds can be dug out in some cases and given cardboard-mulch shade in others.

Brown's overall emphasis in his videos -

1. The soil must be built up, not abused until dead.
2. Repeated plowing is bad for every aspect of the soil. Organic growing is no good if someone plows that soil all the time. He does not plow at all now.
3. God mulches (did Brown steal that from me, or did we both steal it from Creation?) He calls cover crops/mulches "the armor of the soil."
4. Soil is an ocean of life, below ground with too many creatures to name, above ground, with hundreds of beneficial creatures that live from it and benefit us.
5. Diversity of plant and animal life is natural, based on Creation, and this mix leverages all the outcomes of natural far beyond what we can imagine until we see it. Almost Eden and I see hawks resting and searching on our property - because we have so many creatures living from it.

All the children and Do-It-Yourself fanatics are learning that YouTube covers every topic. I have started to create videos for the classroom. Now I am going to create some for gardening. That will have to wait a bit until I get some other items finished.

The Feeding of the Multitude after the Big Rain

The Feeding of the Multitude, by Norma Boeckler

Sassy and I had our morning walk and the sky was overcast. Mrs. Ichabod and I went out later in the Icha-boat, and we returned in a downpour. The rain has continued in the afternoon, often with such force that all the rain-barrels and buckets are full again.

One seed can, a zinc garbage can, was left open yesterday and filled with rain early. Yes, I was the one. I poured the seed over the platform feeder so the water would drain off a bit. Soon a baby squirrel was eating his sunflower seed soup with great energy. I did not warn him away this time.

Lenski or Luther pointed out that the fragments were gathered into baskets to show that nothing should be wasted or taken for granted when God gives in abundance.

Squirrels, doves, and sparrows will gladly work through the leftovers to take care of their needs. We can see that divine management system all the way down to the microbe level. I try to get that across to Creation gardeners and those wanting to abandon expensive and bad growing methods.

Norma Boeckler

Today our Army Ranger landscaper and his grandson dropped off four enormous bags of soggy leaves. Autumn has begun. Those leaves will cover the cardboard layer in the new gardening areas.

Before garbage trucks and green bags filled with organic treasure, God created a system to capture the useful chemicals in the top layer of the soil, normally the first foot of soil. In the Great Plains, that may be several feet of topsoil, created the same way but with prairie grass and millions of bison.

Fungi, bacteria, nematodes, and protozoa break apart the vegetation and decompose the dead animals. These carefully engineered microbes swap chemicals by their mutual balancing act, and higher level creatures continue the same.

 Norma Boeckler

As I was explaining to Mrs. Ichabod, the earthworms are giants compared to the microbes, and yet they cannot digest on their own. They take in food for bacteria to break down and help with a little gizzard to grind the food and hard stuff. The bacteria benefit the earthworms, which donate nitrogen products and Caltrate to the soil, in the form of kidney excretions, casts (manure), and calcium carbonate. The earthworms love  sweet, calcium carbonate fortified soil, and they manufacture it, which makes most crops more productive and helps break down chemicals more easily.

Rains and animal byproducts add to the nitrogen and other useful chemicals in the soil. Birds not only plant their favorite foods - they leave some fertilizer in the soil with the seed.

Those four bags of leaves are more than soggy masses to hold the cardboard down. They will suppress weeds (and also harbor some) but they will ultimately become part of the soil. Chemical gardeners say, "Their NPK rating is 1-1-1 at best. Leaves are mostly carbon. What a waste of time!"

The Creating Word determined - at the beginning - that the ocean of life in topsoil would not only gently mix those leaves into the soil, over time, but also increase in population with added food and hold those essential chemicals in the top foot of soil. The biomass in topsoil includes:

1. Earthworms
2. Animal excretions
3. Dead plant materials
4. Slugs
5. Moles 
6. Voles
7. Mice
8. Beetles and grubs
9. Spiders
10. Bacteria
11. Protozoa
12. Nematodes
13. Fungi
14. Centipedes
15. Millipedes
16. Sowbugs and pillbugs, and
17. Many more living and dead creatures.

All these require water for life and store that water by living and dying. They eat food and become food, so the chemical exchanges never stop, and plants are nourished by fungi at the root hair level, the plant giving carbon in exchange for the moisture and chemicals needed.

 Norma Boeckler

So we will cart those four leaf bags to the cardboard carpeted areas, and let God's Creature enjoy the banquet set before them. 

• Birds will flip and probe the leaves to find the creatures that move the leaves and pounce on them.
• Earthworms and other creatures will reach up from below to pull down cardboard and recycle the leaves.
• Fungi will pull apart the more complex chemicals and bacteria will work on the simpler formulae.
• Beneficial insects will overwinter in the leaf little and reward our efforts next year.
• Spiders will find interesting places to cast their nets for themselves and their young.

The Feeding of the Multitude takes place all the time, as determined by God's Word. Jesus the Son of God demonstrated this power of the Word in the Feeding of the 4,000 and the Feeding of the 5,000. In both cases, the fragments were gathered up, more than they began with, to show the abundance that comes with the Word. 

And nothing was wasted or thrown away carelessly.

 Norma Boeckler

Tending the Earthworm Population. The Soil Food Web

Uncle Jim's Earthworm Blog - red wigglers.

The earthworm - such a simple creature - and yet so valuable to gardeners and farmers. The total earthworm population on a piece of land is hard to imagine, but that is also true of ants, beetles, spiders, slugs, bacteria, protozoa, nematodes, mites, springtails, and fungi.

I copied some material below to help someone  who was asking about all this.

Hosting earthworms is a great idea. Increasing what they like will leverage their population and the benefits thereof.

Composting - Keep It Local.
I outgrew my need to turn compost, shovel it, wheelbarrow it uphill to the garden, etc. So I make my compost on the spot. The goal is to have a yard and gardens brimming with earthworms, because they do so much.

Vermicastings 
Vermicastings (the name given to worm poop) are 50% higher in organic matter than soil that has not moved through worms. This is an astonishing increase and radically changes the composition of the soil, increasing CEC because of the greater amount of charge-holding organic surfaces. Other nutrients, therefore, have the ability to attach to the organic matter that has passed through a worm. 

The benefits don’t stop there. The worm’s digestive enzymes (or, properly, those produced by bacteria in the worm’s intestines) unlock many of the chemical bonds that otherwise tie up nutrients and prevent their being plant-available. Thus, vermicastings are as much as seven times richer in phosphate than soil that has not been through an earthworm. They have ten times the available potash; five times the nitrogen; three times the usable magnesium; and they are one and a half times higher in calcium (thanks to the calcium carbonate added during digestion). All these nutrients bind onto organic matter in the fecal pellets. 

Worms can deposit a staggering 10 to 15 tons of castings per acre on the surface annually. This almost unbelievable number is clearly significant to gardeners: the ability to increase the availability of nutrients without carting in and adding tons of fertilizer is about as close to alchemy as one can get. 

Master shredders 
Earthworms are classified as shredders. As they search for food, they break down the leaf litter in the garden and on the lawn, greatly speeding up the decomposition of plant material, directly and indirectly. They open up leaves and other organic matter, giving bacteria and fungi better access to the cellulose (and other carbohydrates) and lignin (a noncarbohydrate) in the organic matter. Earthworms, then, obviously facilitate the recycling of nutrients back to the plants.

Lewis, Wayne; Lowenfels, Jeff (2010-09-10). Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web, Revised Edition (Kindle Locations 1400-1414). Timber Press. Kindle Edition. 

Earthworms like darkness, moisture, sweeter soil, and organic matter. They use bacteria to digest the organic matter they swallow and excrete. Thus the gardeners tiny helper has his own tiny helpers.

Organic matter they love:

• Animal manure - but avoid cat and dog manure.
• Grass, leaves, and wood mulch.
• Upside-down sod or sod denied sunlight. 
• Newsprint and cardboard.
• Food garbage but not meat, fat, or bones. Never onions or garlic in close quarters.
• A pile of newspaper left on soil or sod will soak up moisture and soon boast a colony of fat, healthy earthworms.

Earthworms hate:

1. Light. They dig down to avoid it. 
2. Garlic and onions. They will head for the hills when those scraps are used.
3. Dryness. They need lots of moisture to thrive, and moisture provides the rot they need to eat.
4. Man-made fertilizers. Insecticides. Fungicides - all are earthworm killers or repellents.
5. Rototillers - when the colonists broke up the woodlands for farming and plowed the soil, they changed the soil over to bacteria prominence (Lowenfels, Teaming with Microbes). We are overly in love with osterizing the soil. As my neighbor said to me today, "Rototilling made my garden worse, not better."

Simple concept - organic matter placed on top of the soil
will be pulled down and mixed by earthworms and soil creatures.
Save your backs, gardeners.
Turn that wheelbarrow into a planter.

These charts remind me of football play charts - not very helpful -
but here is some written information about all this.

---

Kelmed from Cornell University

Invertebrates of the Compost Pile

In small-scale outdoor composting systems, such as backyard compost piles, soil invertebrates are likely to contribute to the decomposition process. Together with bacteria, fungi, and other microbes, these organisms make up a complex food web or energy pyramid with primary, secondary, and tertiary level consumers. The base of the pyramid, or energy source, is made up of organic matter including plant and animal residues.

Tertiary Consumers (organisms that eat secondary consumers) centipedes, predatory mites, rove beetles, fomicid ants, carabid beetles

Secondary Consumers (organisms that eat primary consumers) springtails, some types of mites, feather-winged beetles nematodes, protozoa, rotifera, soil flatworms

Primary Consumers (organisms that eat organic residues) bacteria, fungi, actinomycetes, nematodes, some types of mites, snails, slugs, earthworms, millipedes, sowbugs, whiteworms

Organic Residues leaves, grass clippings, other plant debris, food scraps, fecal matter and animal bodies including those of soil invertebrates

As you can see in this pyramid, organic residues such leaves or other plant materials are eaten by some types of invertebrates such as millipedes, sow bugs, snails and slugs. These invertebrates shred the plant materials, creating more surface area for action by fungi, bacteria, and actinomycetes (a group of organisms intermediate between bacteria and true fungi), which are in turn eaten by organisms such as mites and springtails.
Many kinds of worms, including earthworms, nematodes, red worms and potworms eat decaying vegetation and microbes and excrete organic compounds that enrich compost. Their tunneling aerates the compost, and their feeding increases the surface area of organic matter for microbes to act upon. As each decomposer dies or excretes, more food is added to web for other decomposers.
Nematodes: These tiny, cylindrical, often transparent microscopic worms are the most abundant of the physical decomposers - a handful of decaying compost contains several million. It has been estimated that one rotting apple contains 90,000. Under a magnifying lens they resemble fine human hair.
Some species scavenge on decaying vegetation, some feed on bacteria, fungi, protozoa and other nematodes, and some suck the juices of plant roots, especially root vegetables.
Mites: Mites are the second most common invertebrate found in compost. They have eight leg-like jointed appendages. Some can be seen with the naked eye and others are microscopic. Some can be seen hitching rides on the back of other faster moving invertebrates such as sowbugs, millipedes and beetles. Some scavenge on leaves, rotten wood, and other organic debris. Some species eat fungi, yet others are predators and feed on nematodes, eggs, insect larvae and other mites and springtails. Some are both free living and parasitic. One very common compost mite is globular in appearance, with bristling hairs on its back and red-orange in color.
Springtails: Springtails are extremely numerous in compost. They are very small wingless insects and can be distinguished by their ability to jump when disturbed. They run in and around the particles in the compost and have a small spring-like structure under the belly that catapults them into the air when the spring catch is triggered. They chew on decomposing plants, pollen, grains, and fungi. They also eat nematodes and droppings of other arthropods and then meticulously clean themselves after feeding.
Earthworms: Earthworms do the lion's share of the decomposition work among the larger compost organisms. They are constantly tunneling and feeding on dead plants and decaying insects during the daylight hours. Their tunneling aerates the compost and enables water, nutrients and oxygen to filter down. "As soil or organic matter is passed through an earthworm's digestive system, it is broken up and neutralized by secretions of calcium carbonate from calciferous glands near the worm's gizzard. Once in the gizzard, material is finely ground prior to digestion. Digestive intestinal juices rich in hormones, enzymes, and other fermenting substances continue the breakdown process. The matter passes out of the worm's body in the form of casts, which are the richest and finest quality of all humus material. Fresh casts are markedly higher in bacteria, organic material, and available nitrogen, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and potassium than soil itself." (Rodale)
Slugs and snails (left): Slugs and snails generally feed on living plant material but will attack fresh garbage and plant debris and will therefore appear in the compost heap.
Centipedes (right): Centipedes are fast moving predators found mostly in the top few inches of the compost heap. They have formidable claws behind their head which possess poison glands that paralyze small red worms, insect larvae, newly hatched earthworms, and arthropods - mainly insects and spiders. To view a QuickTime movie of the centipede click on this image


Millipedes: They are slower and more cylindrical than centipedes and have two pairs of appendages on each body segment. They feed mainly on decaying plant tissue but will eat insect carcasses and excrement.

Sow Bugs (right): Sow Bugs are fat bodied crustaceans with delicate plate-like gills along the lower surface of their abdomens which must be kept moist. They move slowly grazing on decaying vegetation.

Beetles (left): The most common beetles in compost are the rove beetle, ground beetle and feather-winged beetle. Feather-winged beetles feed on fungal spores, while the larger rove and ground beetles prey on other insects, snails, slugs and other small animals.

Ants: Ants feed on aphid honey-dew, fungi, seeds, sweets, scraps, other insects and sometimes other ants. Compost provides some of these foods and it also provides shelter for nests and hills. Ants may benefit the compost heap by moving minerals especially phosphorus and potassium around by bringing fungi and other organisms into their nests.
Flies: During the early stages of the composting process, flies provide ideal airborne transportation for bacteria on their way to the pile. Flies spend their larval phase in compost as maggots, which do not survive thermophilic temperatures. Adults feed upon organic vegetation.
Spiders: Spiders feed on insects and other small invertebrates.
Pseudoscorpions: Pseudoscorpions are predators which seize victims with their visible front claws, then inject poison from glands located at the tips of the claws. Prey include minute nematode worms, mites, larvae, and small earthworms.
Earwigs: Earwigs are large predators, easily seen with the naked eye. They move about quickly. Some are predators. Others feed chiefly on decayed vegetation.

Mulching the New Roses. Plus Soil Follies

The fungus has trapped the nematode, dissolving its body,
bartering its chemicals for some delicious carbon from the plant's roots.
Fungi need carbon to grow.

Mulching the new roses requires a large bag of newspapers and plenty of cyprus mulch.

The mulching began last year, with 10 bags of mushroom compost added around the maple tree's perimeter, cyprus mulch spread under the drip-line of the tree. The idea was to create enough soil to plant some shade-tolerant roses, since the tree was so poorly managed. Our helper and I pruned as many branches as we could at that time - safely. This spring our landscaper friend trimmed all the trees with great glee, using a powerful, small electric chain saw.

When we moved into this house, the maple tree was a disaster of suckers and untended bulb growth, plus weeds growing around the base. Cutting out the suckers growing up from the base helped. More trimming followed.

We now have a circle of new roses growing around the tree, drawing attention to more weeding and suckering that needs to be done. Mulching creates an attractive, woody look while feeding the roses year around. Earthworms like a damp, dark environment. When I dug in moist areas around the tree, the red wigglers were plentiful and active. They were almost absent where the soil was dried out.

Soil Follies
Many false ideas about gardening come from earlier ages. When woodland soil was broken up in colonial days, and animal manure added, production improved. That changed the soil from being woodland and fungi dominant to having more bacteria, which is good for vegetables. But the theory of the time was - plants eat soil.

Tull also actively encouraged farmers to loosen soil before planting crops; he had noticed that vegetables did better in loosened soil and from this concluded that plant roots possessed little mouths and ate soil particles (how else could a plant ingest nutrients?). Believing that loose soil consisted of smaller particles that would more easily fit into root mouths, he developed a horse-drawn hoe to put his theory into practice. His writings later caught the attention of gentlemen farmers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who encouraged their fellow Americans to break up soils. The end result is that most home gardeners still break up and turn over their soil at least annually, even though we know plant roots don’t eat soil.

Lewis, Wayne;  Lowenfels, Jeff; (2010-09-10). Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web, Revised Edition (Kindle Locations 2803-2808). Timber Press. Kindle Edition. 

If plants eat soil, then it makes sense to turn it over and fluff it up, so the rototiller industry continues unabated. Leaves should be composted or mulch-mowed into the grass, not gathered up and hauled away. My neighbor at Almost Eden Nursery collects bags of autumn leaves to use as free food for his plants.

Fungi feed the plant roots directly in that delicate interface between soil and root hairs. Since one teaspoon of soil can have three miles of fungal tubes, breaking that up should be minimized. Soil should be left undisturbed, as much as possible.

Let me offer one anecdote from 2015. Our heavily mulched old rose garden had plenty of maple leaves stuck on top. Our helper said, "I will have to get out the blower and get rid of the leaves." I knew that would also blow the mulch around, so I suggested waiting. "Soon they will be gone."

Leaves do not leave this yard. I add leaves from other yards. Now all the leaves are gone from the rose garden, because the earthworms have pulled them down and digested them. The leaves, newspapers, and wood are all part of the food the roses get daily. No fertilizer is added, and the roses are spectacular.

Dandelions
My favorite herb likes to sit on top of the rose garden mulch and send its tap roots down below. They are mining calcium, which they can get deep down but not at the surface. Some call dandelions lawn nails. All plants like soluble calcium, but not all have such deep roots.

I bought a very large pair of scissors to trim the most aggressive dandelions and use their nutrition for the roses. I like cordless trimmers, but they nibble slowly, good for large swaths of trimming.

Lawn weeds can be influenced by the soil food web. Dandelions, for example, appear in calcium-poor soil surfaces. Their long taproots seek out the calcium they lack, and the calcium is deposited in the soil when the dandelion dies. In time— unfortunately, sometimes quite a long time— the soil food web biology works this calcium into the upper layer of soil, where it has been missing.

Lewis, Wayne;  Lowenfels, Jeff;   (2010-09-10). Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web, Revised Edition (Kindle Locations 2630-2633). Timber Press. Kindle Edition. 

Traditional theory holds that plants need the macro-ingredients (NPK) and also the micro-ingredients. That lends itself to soil mixing, but ignores the need for trapping nutrition where it is needed. The inorganic fertilizers pass through to the water table, providing only a little boost. Notice how often the great, wise gardening books say, "Add more fertilizer after blooming, or just before, and later too." Every gardening center will argue against manure because, you know, salts in it. And what are inorganic fertilizers? Nevermind.

The great and wise argue for fertilizer because most of it is wasted. The more one uses the chemicals, the more they wreck the soil food web. Lacking the natural controls, more chemicals are added to treat the problems cause by the previous wonder-chemicals.

Tuscan Sun rose - $5 each.

The soil creatures move nutrition around by devouring each other, and that traps these nutrients by holding them in their bodies, to be used when necessary by the fungi feeding the plant roots in exchange for carbon. Thus an active, healthy soil food web will maximize the number of soil creatures in the root zone - the top 12 inches - trapping useful, soluble chemicals and moisture.

Soil creatures do not feast and sink down into the water table, to pollute it with their dead bodies. Their deaths simply feed other creatures.

Bad Foundation
Most gardening is based on a poor foundation - evolution. Thinking about a Creation with a Purpose changes everything, especially Creation through the Word of God.

"Horrors!" - think the thought police. But early American and European scientists thought that way about everything around them. They were studying what God had done, not what chaos had developed by accident over billions of years.

When we look at every aspect of Creation having a purpose and many dependencies (bee, clover, nitrogen, soil creatures) - then all our practices change. They get easier and less expensive.

Every plant cell is a collection of chemical factories.

Wormhaven Gardening Book Preceded This Article by Decades

That is not me in the back yard,
just some Amish farmer stealing my secrets of Creation gardening.
The Wormhaven Gardening Book - free PDF, share it with anyone.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/10/the-amish-farmer-replacing-pesticides-with-nutrition/380825/?single_page=true

“In the Second World War,” Samuel Zook began, “my ancestors were conscientious objectors because we don’t believe in combat.” The Amish farmer paused a moment to inspect a mottled leaf on one of his tomato plants before continuing. “If you really stop and think about it, though, when we go out spraying our crops with pesticides, that’s really what we’re doing. It’s chemical warfare, bottom line.”

Eight years ago, it was a war that Zook appeared to be losing. The crops on his 66-acre farm were riddled with funguses and pests that chemical treatments did little to reduce. The now-39-year-old talked haltingly about the despair he felt at the prospect of losing a homestead passed down through five generations of his family. Disillusioned by standard agriculture methods, Zook searched fervently for an alternative. He found what he was looking for in the writings of an 18-year-old Amish farmer from Ohio, a man named John Kempf.

Kempf is the unlikely founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture, a consulting firm established in 2006 to promote science-intensive organic agriculture. The entrepreneur’s story is almost identical to Zook’s. A series of crop failures on his own farm drove the 8th grade-educated Kempf to school himself in the sciences. For two years, he pored over research in biology, chemistry, and agronomy in pursuit of a way to save his fields. The breakthrough came from the study of plant immune systems which, in healthy plants, produce an array of compounds that are toxic to intruders. “The immune response in plants is dependent on well-balanced nutrition,” Kempf concluded, “in much the same way as our own immune system.” Modern agriculture uses fertilizer specifically to increase yields, he added, with little awareness of the nutritional needs of other organic functions. Through plant sap analysis, Kempf has been able to discover deficiencies in important trace minerals which he can then introduce into the soil. With plants able to defend themselves, pesticides can be avoided, allowing the natural predators of pests to flourish.

"Instead of trying to grow crops that are healthy with fungicides and pesticides, I started to grow crops that are healthy with nutrition."

According to Kempf, the methods he developed through experimentation on his Ohio farm are now being used across North and South America, Hawaii, Europe, and Africa. The entrepreneur promises clients higher-quality crops, bigger yields, better taste, and produce that carries a lucrative “organic” label. Kempf, however, considers his process as an important improvement upon standard organic farming methods. “Organic certification is a negative-process certification,” he explained, “You can do nothing to your field and become certified. In contrast, we focus on actively restoring the balance found in natural systems.”

More at this link.

***

GJ - In case you missed it in the caption, here is your free copy of The Wormhaven Gardening Book. I may rewrite it with the newest information in it.

A good summary of the concepts of soil food web can be found here. 

Table of Contents

• The Soil Food Web
• The Food Web & Soil Health
• Soil Bacteria
• Soil Fungi
• Soil Protozoa
• Soil Nematodes
• Soil Arthropods
• Earthworms
• Further Reading

The summaries parallel the material here, in Teaming with Microbes -

In the human world, we send in the National Guard, to hold the line against criminals . But in soil, the levels of inorganic fertilizer being used, or the constant applications of toxic pesticide sprayed, mean the National Guard of the soil has been killed, too. We have to purposefully restore the beneficial biology that has been lost. Where will the new recruits come from? You have to add them—bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, earthworms, microarthropods— back to your soil. Roots of plants feed these beneficials, but to make sure that the beneficials get reestablished, care packages may need to be delivered. 

Soil Foodweb , Inc., helps people rapidly reestablish the biology that creates the foothold for health to come back into these systems; and this book describes these hardworking members of the front line of defense for your plants . Where do they live? Who are their families? How do you send in lunch packs, not toxics, to help the recruits along? 

Win back your soil’s health. Put nothing on your soil if you don’t know what it will do to the life under your feet . If there is “no information” about how something impacts the life in your soil, or if the material has never been tested to determine what it does to the organisms in your soil, don’t use the material. If you have already purchased the product, test it yourself.

Lewis, Wayne; Lowenfels, Jeff; (2010-09-10). Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web, Revised Edition (Kindle Locations 50-60). Timber Press. Kindle Edition. 

Or - check out the Soil Food Web site.

The article on the Amish farmer shows a poor grasp of the concepts, but a good idea about the results.

Modern agriculture, promoted by the federal government, has turned agricultural land into a toxic chemical waste dump. Gardening centers promote the same ideas and warn against natural methods of the past. 

As I wrote before, I avoided chemicals at the start because they cost so much. The gardener who talks up natural methods will generate donations of useful material, whether from horses, rabbits, or newspapers. Many projects have been funded by free materials. I needed a lot of newspapers for mulching the fence line, and I got them.

They get roses in return, so no one is short-changed.

Our helper said, "I worry about how we are going to do all this, but you read all the time. The bush bloomed, just like you said." He was referring to the second bloom of the crepe myrtle bush. Now it is producing seed and going dormant, so it will be a feeder and shelter for birds a storage locker for insect larvae.

The Amish article focuses on adding certain minerals to fix plant problems, certainly a good idea on a farm where the soil was once soaked in toxins. 

My approach has always been to create healthy soil, the foundation for healthy plants. If plants have everything they need, insect damage and plant disease will be minimal. 

The Rodale Press organic gardening books were my introduction to Creation gardening. The soil food web material is my second stage of education, far more detailed about life at the microscopic level. I am in a continuous state of wonder about the interaction of fungi, bacteria, protozoa, and nematodes.

Here is a summary of damage I saw while gardening without chemicals:

• Cutworms on the borage, so I tossed the plant away. Roses were not affected.
• Some chewing on the sunflowers, which was trivial once they grew more.
• Some bugs in several gourds. All the rest were perfect.
• A little eating on the white rose blooms, but no other roses.
• A bit of black spot (a fungus) on two roses.

Pole beans and tomatoes were prolific. Roses were - and are - the talk of the town.