The most challenging thing about helping people partner with microbes in their gardens is encouraging a shift in mindset.   Gardening is a bit like parenting – there are lots of opinions and different ways of doing things, methods are handed down through generations, and results can sometimes be frustrating.  Thankfully for soil health (and for kids today!), we now have a lot more information than the generations before us.  

A relatively new concept is that, given the right conditions, a heathy soil food web will provide for a plant’s nutritional requirements.  One of the hardest mindsets to shift is the idea that we don’t need to dig in manure (unless you need more bacteria, which is rarely the case) and, really, we shouldn’t be digging much at all.  Tilling or turning over the soil slices and dices one of our biggest allies –  fungi.

Jenny had a soil analysis done last spring, and it became clear why her herbs weren’t doing well.  The soil food web was out of balance and selecting for weeds.  The solution?  Adding in fungi and microbial predators to unlock the nutrients bound up in the bodies of the too-bountiful bacteria.  We talked about planting into a thick mulch of biologically complete compost.  “But shouldn’t I dig it in, and add manure while I’m at it?”  Nope.

Some herbs established that season, but things weren’t optimal.  Spring came again and the microbes had really settled in with the rains.  Jenny reported that all that was left of the mulch was woodchips.  “I’ll dig them in.”  Please don’t!  Weeds were conspicuously absent, and chives doing well.  Without doing further soil analysis, this was enough information that things were heading in the right direction.  Another layer of biologically complete compost, and the struggling bay laurel picked up.  Fish hydrolysate to feed the fungi and the herbs started to thrive.  To Jenny’s surprise, she can go days without watering, and still not a weed in sight.

Practices take a while to take off.  Mindsets take a while to shift.  But it’s so worth it!  Join me at the Homesteading Fair at the Hub on September 16 to talk microbes and mindsets some more.