There’s a dance going on, above and below ground.  It’s an intelligent dance – in ways we are just beginning to understand – and it’s synergistic, responsive and adaptive.  Plants and microorganisms engaged together, living and dying, as nature moves forward in succession from rock to old growth forest over vast amounts of time.  

So why isn’t everything an old growth forest? Backward moves in succession come in many forms, e.g fire, flood, drought, insect infestation.  And there’s the human kind – deforestation, tillage agriculture, urban expansion… as that catchy song goes, to put up a parking lot.

If we could transcend the human lifespan and observe succession, we would first witness bare rock being colonized by photosynthetic bacteria.  As these bacteria live and die, they provide biomass for other types of bacteria, who in turn produce food resources for organisms like mosses and lichens.  These leave behind biomass that can support early successional fungi, providing the perfect environment for weeds to move in.  With their quick growth cycles and rapid seed dispersal, dead weeds bring enough cellulose to the soil to attract the microbiology which allows for early successional plants to emerge – early grasses, brassicas, riparian and wetland plants.  

As cellulose continues to increase, so does fungal biomass.  This paves the way for weed suppression and the emergence of highly productive grasses, row crops, perennial herbs.  Lignin is brought to the soil, now feeding more fungi than bacteria.  The ratio tips further as we move to woodier plants such as grapevines, berries and shrubs.  The more woody and complex these plant materials become, the further the dance toward fungal levels that can support deciduous trees, conifers, and on to old growth forest.

We can speed up this process, and use this knowledge to regenerate soils.  To begin, we want to know how many organisms are present, whether they are beneficial, and how the ratio of fungi to bacteria compares to where our plant lies along the successional path.  Bring a sample to Seedy Saturday (Cobble Hill) or Seedy Sunday (Duncan) and let’s take a peek at who’s home in your soil!