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This transcription discusses the competition between aerobic and anaerobic organisms based on oxygen levels. Aerobic organisms win under aerobic conditions due to their efficient enzyme system, while facultative anaerobes can adapt to both aerobic and anaerobic conditions. Oxygen levels play a crucial role in determining which organisms thrive. Keeping environments aerobic is important to prevent the growth of harmful pathogens. Measurement systems like oxygen probes can help monitor oxygen and CO2 levels to maintain aerobic conditions. Oxygen and CO2 levels need to be balanced to prevent anaerobic conditions where toxic materials can be produced. Maintaining aerobic conditions is key to controlling the growth of pathogens and ensuring a healthy environment. Okay so we just have a few more left to go before we get down to some nitty and gritty. One of the questions people often ask me is you know why is it that these diseases they have a certain range where they win in competition with other things but you know when we're aerobic why do the aerobes win under aerobic conditions the anaerobes win under anaerobic conditions well it's just a tad more complicated than that so I want to go under over the reason when we're in aerobic conditions why is it that the aerobes win here and the facultative anaerobes don't win here so I don't understand that. Aerobic organisms only make one set of enzymes they only require one set of enzymes in order to use the foods that are present under aerobic conditions so their final electron acceptor they only need one set of enzymes in order to make that energy so the cost of doing business is minimal when we have oxygen more or less greater than six parts per million that's the general threshold most people accept you get some argument from some folks about no it's 6.2 no no no it's 5.8 sorry if it's close enough so in general on average we start approaching this threshold those aerobic organisms their their enzymes don't really work very well once we start hitting that threshold if you can't compete with you can't get food you can't be winner of the hill when your enzymes won't grab the nutrients away from somebody else then you're going to go to sleep you're going to go find a nice place to hang out until conditions become right for you to start growing again when we're dealing with facultative anaerobes so facultative anaerobes up there they will always make enzymes that allow them to use aerobic foods use their foods under aerobic conditions but they also have a set of enzymes that always being made allows them to allows them to use foods in anaerobic conditions so they are always making two sets of enzymes when you're actually in aerobic conditions these guys are always going to win because the energy drain for them to grow under aerobic conditions is so much less they're going to reproduce more they're going to have more offspring they're going to flood the market they're going to grab the foods away from these guys who are energetically not as capable when oxygen's up at this level but as soon as oxygen starts falling down into the 60 ppm level their enzymes aren't capable of grabbing nutrients away from these guys so now these guys are going to win and so what if your oxygen's fluctuating between six maybe going up a little bit to 6.5 but it's coming back down if you're fluctuating in that zone these guys are going to be the winners because they just can't wake up that fast they can't respond when oxygen comes back up for a few minutes an hour a couple hours into the aerobic zone but then it's sucked right back down by these organisms growing under aerobic conditions and using the oxygen so because of the two enzyme system that they have to have that's why these guys win here the competition has to go to sleep and then these guys win but as these guys keep using up oxygen when they're functioning with this set of enzymes that are aerobic they require oxygen for the last step of energy production they keep using up the oxygen eventually oxygen's going to fall below four parts per million and when you fall below four parts per million and you've actually been down there for a while then the anaerobic guys win because they again only have to have one set of enzymes and they are better at grabbing nutrients when we get below an oxygen concentration of four parts per million so they start to win so the facultative anaerobes really they have this habitat that they grow in but you drop lower in oxygen concentration that true anaerobes are going to win if you get enough oxygen back into the system then the true aerobes are going to win interestingly enough all of our human disease causing organisms are in this category think about your digestive system sometimes aerobic sometimes anaerobic that habitat selects for the growth of facultative anaerobes so all our human pathogens are in this range if we can keep the material aerobic make sure we've got the aerobic organisms keep it aerobic those organisms will out compete wipe out deal with take care of E.coli, Salmonella, Shigella, Pasturella all of our human pathogens but it requires those two things you can't just wipe out all the aerobes let the material get aerobic and then say see E.coli grows under aerobic conditions yes so sure in that habitat where you have no competitors E.coli will grow under aerobic conditions because if they're not here then these guys can do just fine with no competition so you got to have those things when we're trying to make really good compost prevent the pathogens wipe out the pathogens out compete them we have to have both the aerobic organisms present and we must have oxygen present when we go truly anaerobic when we get down into below four parts per million oxygen true anaerobes make some of the most toxic materials of anything we know on the planet one drop of Clostridium Biculinum toxin is enough if you add that into the water system of New York City one drop of Biculinum pure Biculinum toxin would kill everybody in New York City that's how toxic it is it's a pretty instantaneous very nasty way to die because all of your muscles just basically go that's it no more breathing really toxic Clostridium Biculinum only grows in oxygen concentrations below 2.0 we don't want our compost going down that far we don't want anything to be allowed to get that anaerobic where we might grow these extremely toxic materials because they really are bad news if we're allowing our oxygen to drop below 6.5 we or 6.0 we really could set up a system where we're growing E.coli where we're growing Pasturella we're growing the organisms that cause plague or typhoid or um so a lot of our the fevers that take out human beings cholera things like that so hopefully you understand now why it is we got to keep things aerobic and we have to keep the aerobic organisms present and growing so we don't have that the pathogens capable of growing in our compost or in our teas or in our extracts or anything just a word on measurement systems if you choose to not use temperature or if you want a backup system in case you go anaerobic and yet you you know you want to try to resuscitate your compost you're going to have to get an oxygen probe so an O2 probe oxygen probes come measurements can be made in several different ways and you want to look at your oxygen probe and what system are they using to measure oxygen some oxygen probes will give you total atmospheric gas well then what are the numbers for the aerobic the facultative and the truly anaerobic or if you've got a carbon dioxide meter that you could get a CO2 probe so CO2 and oxygen are typically flipped sides of each other so which one do you want to buy if you choose to to buy it which you could get an oxygen probe or a CO2 probe what are the numbers so we're just going to quick go over those those values so no matter what kind of probe you get you can understand what it means with respect to microbial growth we can measure dissolved gases so this is the actual value the concentration of oxygen for example some probes will give you percent dissolved gas well you can get an oxygen probe or you can get a CO2 probe they're kind of flip side of each other so you know which one do you want to buy or which one do you get now you can interpret them so let's go over this quick total atmospheric gases we're looking at all of the gases in the atmosphere so a total atmospheric gas 75 of the atmosphere is into gas so right there in any of our readings you have to remember that we've got this constant 75 of the gas is nitrogen gas and so oxygen max oxygen concentrations on the planet right now are at about 22 percent oxygen when you're looking at percent total atmospheric gas CO2 in general the people measure CO2 and the rest of the gases that will be present so maximum concentration under good aerobic conditions is three percent as you start to use up the oxygen for whatever reason and you start dropping in oxygen concentrations the threshold going from aerobic to anaerobic is about 16 percent well if oxygen is dropping CO2 is coming up and so CO2 nine percent we're going over the edge into facultative anaerobic conditions so notice 22 plus 3 25 that's the remaining amount 16 plus 9 25 so it's kind of easy to figure this one out if you've got an oxygen probe you can do a pretty good job estimating what your CO2 must be if you've got a CO2 probe you can do a pretty good job estimating what your oxygen would be so you don't really have to have both as we drop to nine percent oxygen or increase to 16 percent CO2 we're going over the edge into anaerobic to the anaerobic conditions so those are the important readings if your oxygen probe or your CO2 probe are giving you total atmospheric gas be really careful when you read scientific papers that you know which measurement system they're using because if they're giving you percent dissolved gases they're ignoring nitrogen gas so total atmospheric gases you got to remember they're including nitrogen when we're looking at percent dissolved oxygen they are ignoring N2 gas and therefore the sum of oxygen plus CO2 have to reach 100 the only thing they're only things they're paying attention to is oxygen plus CO2 so they have to sum to 100 so again it doesn't really matter whether you buy an oxygen probe or CO2 probe 98 percent is the typical max oxygen concentration when you're using this system of measurement two percent for CO2 as oxygen's used up and you drop to 75 percent going into the facultative range or if your CO2 is elevating coming up to 25 percent so when it drops to 60 percent oxygen or you're up to 40 percent CO2 you're dropping into the true anaerobic range so what if somebody says to you everything's perfectly wonderful we're at 30 percent oxygen which system are they using and is that actually wonderful 30 percent oxygen that's plenty so if you think you're you're here and you're thinking in these terms 30 percent oxygen is like wait a minute how can you get that but could only max so what they're injecting oxygen into the atmosphere they're breathing out of an oxygen tank okay 30 percent oxygen using this measurement system is that any good oh jeez you and I are not going to stay alive in that atmosphere and yet I've had people who ought to know make those kinds of statements to me my oxygen was 25 percent so we're perfectly fine wait wait that that's not possible or it's so anaerobic we don't even want to think about it be really careful people will try to pull that fast ones on you especially you know in a sense to you guys who are into the world of commercial composting but I've had tried to have people in the world of commercial composting has tried to pull the wool over my eyes more than once on that particular one figuring that I just wouldn't understand well then it's kind of fun when I can attack and consume it's them I don't understand but they try to throw the numbers around and hope that they're going to to you know make your eyes glaze over and oh yeah yeah 25 percent good yeah that's good compost no it's not be aware look out when they try to dazzle you see we've got a CO2 meter we've got to use it regularly for about six months and we found that there's a correlation between CO2 levels and temperature like temperature of life to CO2 levels of life and the CO2 is bigger than air so that's the problem that we wrote and we found that the temperature variation is going to be dramatic and that's what I think is as long as you're making certain that you're not going anaerobic you don't need oxygen or CO2 probes sometimes you have to have an oxygen or CO2 reading to satisfy regulatory demands so we do have to understand this but we've realized that certainly for people are not commercial composting oxygen probes and CO2 probes are just an expense that you probably really don't have to bear but you do want to understand it you do want to be able to somebody who waffles in and you don't know what you're doing because you don't have an oxygen probe you've got to be able to talk back to them and explain this now what you're talking about where temperature and elevation are really have to be understood to be able to interpret the reading really comes when we're doing dissolved oxygen dissolved gases and if you're doing scientific papers this is the proper form of measuring oxygen this is the concentration of oxygen in your gas right which would be that is because you do have to be aware that the concentration of oxygen or CO2 varies with temperature the higher the temperature the less oxygen can be held maximum oxygen maximum oxygen concentration at 30 degrees max oxygen concentration is going to be something like well it does also depend on barometric pressure elevation really so let's say we're at sea level we aren't too much above sea level here are we so at 30 degrees max oxygen concentration at sea level so here we are at sea level max oxygen concentration is going to be 30 degrees we're looking at probably about eight parts per million and you can adjust for that on most of the dissolved oxygen probes that you could get but let's say you're at 20 degrees sea level max oxygen concentration now is up around 10 you can you're not going to be able to grow too many organisms at this temperature before you go anaerobic exactly same mix of foods everything exactly the same but you're starting at 20 degrees celsius you can grow a whole lot more organisms you're not going to be in danger of going anaerobic let's say we're at 10 degrees celsius and now we're up at about 12 parts per million what if we're at zero degrees we will be up around 14 parts per million depending on salt concentration but at sea level well what if i am up in new south wales at the top of the mountains and i'm not at sea level anymore as we increase elevation the concentration of oxygen max oxygen concentration that i can have is going to drop so if your temperature is going up if your elevation is going up you're losing your ability to grow organisms because before you go anaerobic so you got to be aware of that so we were talking about foods before the middle of the winter time we can put in lots of food in fact we probably want to put in lots of food because we want to get those organisms growing really fast in the middle of the winter in our compost come the middle of the summer we might drop the amount of bacterial foods especially so we don't go anaerobic quite as rapidly or we're going to have to be aware that our temperature was going to rise and we're going to have to turn our pile a lot faster than in the middle of the winter so you got to adjust your thinking with respect to what's going on with your microorganisms in your pile depending on your elevation and the ambient temperature we can get away with a lot more things when it's when the temperature is colder can't get away with things when the temperature is hotter we've got to drop our food resources we've got to reduce the amount of juicy green material when we're in the middle of the summer or we're going to have to turn more often so there's always choices when we're doing composting there's always choices so how about beating this into your brain if we've gone anaerobic it's not compost we've lost our beneficials they're sleeper they're dead we've lose our soluble nitrogen phosphorus sulfur strong acids have been produced alcohol we've got all of those problems I'd like to just show a couple of pictures especially as we're staring through the microscope so we're staring through that microscope and we're looking at our microorganisms when we see our fungal hypha and so there is a fungal hypha in there but when it gets completely attacked by the anaerobic bacterium it just looks like this big stick of fuzzy stuff that's an indicator we are in the process of going anaerobic we have not been anaerobic for that long or the fungi would be completely attacked and consumed and we would have no fungal hyphae at all but you want to be really aware of these kinds of structures when you're looking through your microscope if you're seeing this you are in the process of going anaerobic and you better get oxygen back into that pile right now or you've lost your compost you've lost your beneficial fungi and you're going to have to start over so if you see those turn that pile immediately don't wait even maybe oxygen's not telling you you have to turn it right now you really want to turn it right now to get those fungal hyphae back in the system when you look at this this is a differential interference contrast microscope shot so this is what we're doing for total fungi measuring length and width when we're looking at activity this is an activity stain all I've done is turn off the brightfield lamp turned on the ultraviolet lamp we had already stained with fluorescein diacetate here and what we're looking at are the aerobic bacteria and fungi the ones that are active active aerobic bacteria and fungi you can see there are a few aerobic bacteria there's our fungal hyphae it's got just a little bit of activity left in it but the anaerobes have just about killed this fungus all the rest of those bacteria not fluorescing haven't stained haven't taken up these are all anaerobic bacteria fluorescein diacetate is only taken up by aerobic bacteria the anaerobes will not take it up therefore when our active bacteria are really really low but our total bacteria are really really high it's a suggestion that we're under those anaerobic conditions and we need to get oxygen back into the system as rapidly as possible this is a picture of mildew when you see these fungi that are very blobby they're globular like you know big distorted cells when you see this you've got mildew growing if you see this in your compost and there's a lot of it mildew only grows under reduced oxygen conditions and so it's an indicator that things have gone wrong in the composting operation if you see this fungus in your compost tea or compost extract same thing if there's a lot of it you really would want to think about exiting that compost tea getting rid of it where do you get rid of bad compost where do you get rid of bad compost tea put it on your weeds that's pretty good herbicide you know put organic matter back in there you're going to get rid of the weeds so that's probably not such a bad thing but don't put it on your grapevines you're going to cause a problem so I think we've talked about human pathogens the fact that it is the heat that will kill the human pathogens competition with the good guy aerobes will take out the human pathogens it will be inhibited we want to have the protozoa that will consume and I'm sorry I'm just really not following the handouts I'm really sorry 33 33 I'm sorry I'm just did not get this one connected right my fault I apologize I'm sorry I'm bad another with worm compost haven't really talked about that but when we look at a worm there's a worm maybe short fat little guy when this earthworm is moving through the worm compost it takes a bite out of the material in front of it anything that's in that soil or in that compost material goes inside of its mouth so first thing that's happening it goes inside the mouth the worm immediately swallows and it goes back into structure that is just like a crop on a bird it's a grinding organ all it is a great big muscle and it starts to grind on that material so that anything that was in the spaces in the pores that are now collapsing and ground one surface against the other any bacteria fungi protozoa nematode if the arthropod didn't move out of the way fast enough we're talking also arthropods anything that's going to get ground up and their body pops open any of the cytoplasm and internal contents inside these organisms that's what the earthworm takes up earthworms are predators they are not decomposers they don't make the enzymes to decompose organic matter they don't make enzymes to chew up solubilized bacteria they eat the cytoplasm that is released when a bacterium is forced open when that fungal hypha is popped open when that protozoan squished and pops open that's what the earthworm is eating so this muscle the crop grinding organism popping a bunch of these organisms are open then as it moves into the next organ in that in that earthworm again just a big grinding organism so all the way through that esophagus just grinding on that material just passing along popping it open eating the bacteria fungi protozoa nematodes micro arthropods as this material then moves into the hindgut or intestines whatever you want to call this this is like a giant growth chamber in here is an inoculum of some of the best species of bacteria fungi and protozoa growing in that space inside the earthworm and so all of the material passing through here is now going to get inoculated with these really beneficial species it's aerobic earthworms are strict aerobes that's why you'll see them coming up out of the soil and going across your sidewalk when your soil is water saturated and there's not enough oxygen in the soil the earthworms are coming up because they can't breathe they're gonna die they're sick they're unhealthy they're unhappy because think about you when you haven't had enough oxygen for a while I'm gonna make it out of here and you die so they're out there on your sidewalk trying to tell you something about the soil in your lawn or soil in the golf course or soil in your agricultural fields if the earthworms are coming to the surface and lying out on the surface and dying you've got compaction problems in the soil those earthworms encountered anaerobic conditions they're not staying alive because earthworms are strict aerobes you're going to have to go into your soil and figure out where the problem is but it's there those earthworms are telling you in no uncertain terms how long it's going to take to get the worm back to the root? you're going to have to if you're mixing together high nitrogen containing materials in your worm bin and the compost is elevating in temperature because of the growth of the microorganisms you're going to have to let that process occur before you put that material into your worm bin so typically in a worm bin we're dealing with no manure or if you're getting manure you're letting it go through the heating process before you add it into the bin so let that manure get real hot let it go through that composting process and then put it in the bin where you mix the manure with other materials so you don't get that high temperature increase because the worms don't tolerate temperature at all yeah there's your there's your gradient from it's way too hot in the middle there but as you're getting less and less of that high nitrogen material it's been used up the composting has been happening that's where the earthworms are hanging out with the temperature and the oxygen are optimal for them and that's why they won't move into the middle of that yard chemistry they don't tolerate nitrate well at all they don't tolerate sulfate they don't tolerate the inorganic salts very well at all and so as they're consuming material in here is getting inoculated with these really good species of bacteria fungi protozoa and then out the end comes the cast and that's the little round cast the ball what should we really call cast it's earthworm manure isn't it people get scared when we use that word manure so we call it cast instead so if this is what the cast is it's a little earthworm poopers how much of that compost material how much of the material the worm is in how much of it's truly cast and how much of it is not been through the earthworm and if somebody tells you that this material is a hundred percent earthworm cast what's the likelihood that's true so it has the cast means what's come through the digestive system of the earthworm and has been pooped out in those little round balls if somebody wants to say well you can see all the little brown ball little round balls in this material well you really probably ought to say back to them if they got a bag of nice little uniform round things in there they ran it through a sieve to give it all that nice round uniform material if you run these materials if you run compost through a sieve you just slice and dice the fungi so if it's sieved material is it a fungal dominated compost anymore I'd really question it I'd want to see their numbers how about what happened to E. coli as we went through this digestive system so this material can be chock full of human pathogens and as it goes into the crop and is ground up preferentially the human pathogens are destroyed because in general the human pathogens are the big round grapes they require a lot of food they like a lot of sugar they like a lot of good juicy things to grow on because think about your human digestive system what are the food sources in your stomach in your intestines in your large intestines good juicy foods so they're big fat things they're big juicy grapes and easy to crush them and lots of food as you move into the esophagus and this gets crushed more likely to destroy the human pathogens than we are to to destroy the bacteria and fungi that are present in the soil when you've looked at your soil samples when you look at your compost samples under that microscope today what is the size of the bacteria are they big round blobby things little tiny dried up raisins so we're more likely to get consumed here the human pathogens are selectively destroyed because of this kind of system once they get into this growth chamber because it's an aerobic system they cannot compete with the good guy bacteria and fungi and the protozoa they'll eat the human pathogens and so what's when we're looking at E. coli if we're 10 to the eighth E. coli per gram of material and it's consumed by the earthworm now so we're 10 to the eighth E. coli here by the time we're passing into the esophagus we're probably down around 10 to the fourth E. coli as we move into the hind guts of the earthworm we're probably down at maybe 10 E. coli per gram of material by the time we get to the worm cast you cannot find E. coli so it's worth it for the use of the compost as well that's right it's a great way to deal with human pathogens they are really deaf on the problem organisms that we have plant pathogens pretty much destroyed by passage through the earthworm digestive system when you're looking at root feeding nematodes they will not survive passage through the earthworm digestive system we want to have the bacteria and fungi growing in our compost materials because they utilize the hormones remember that chart where we were looking at the foods to feed different kinds of organisms hormones antibiotics both bacteria and fungi will utilize them fungi do a little bit better job on the really complex hormones and on the antibiotics the complex ones taken out by your fungi the simpler ones less structurally complex taken out by bacteria so do you need to know exactly which hormone has gone into this do you need to know exactly which antibiotic has gone into the horse seed or come out with the horse poop or come out of the dairy manure or what are the hormones being fed the chickens and so what's coming out in the chicken manure do you need to know precisely which hormones those are we probably don't need to know because as long as you have a good diversity of bacteria and fungi where are you going to find a maximum diversity of the really good bacteria and fungi we don't see the hormones passing through an earthworm we don't see them making them through an earthworm the antibiotics long gone thermal compost what is it that consumes the hormones and the antibiotics that might be coming in through the various starting materials the bacteria and fungi how do you know your bacteria and fungi grew temperature as long as you're reaching temperature you've done the job so earthworms growth of the bacteria and fungi you got to have it in both situations because the earthworms eat the bacteria and fungi so all that good life going on once that poop comes out here what's the set of microorganisms in a worm house yeah it's incredibly complex some of the best things really going great guns how about the outside of an earthworm earthworms move along on those slime layers how many of you've picked up an earthworm and now that slime's left all over your fingers you see the little slime layer that the earthworm leaves behind on your sidewalk when they're going through the soil the outside of the earthworm has the same set of microorganisms as we see in here so everywhere that earthworm is contacting with the outside of its body it's leaving behind that slime layer leaving behind an inoculum of these really beneficial bacteria fungi protozoa and we've done the experiment where we look at a petri dish where we put we spread out an inoculum of E. coli so that whole entire surface of this petri dish was covered with E. coli growing nice thick lawn of E. coli growing on that petri dish and then we dropped an earthworm onto that petri dish drop the earthworm down so there it went there was the earthworm dropped in and then the earthworm starts traveling around on the plate and he's eating the E. coli and then three minutes later we pick the earthworm out of that petri dish we put that petri dish back into the incubator overnight so that the E. coli know exactly what conditions to grow E. coli in so we know precisely how to make it grow so we've stuck this back into the incubator allowed those E. coli to grow next morning we came back and this whole place where area where the earthworm had moved was completely devoid of E. coli and just chock full of all kinds of other species of bacteria fungi having a wonderful time growing in this area the earthworm completely wiped out the E. coli as it ate its way across the plate and what was in the surface on the surface of the E. coli is competitive with inhibits the growth of the E. coli on that plate so that was that was real good but what happens with time so we took the petri dish stuck it back in the incubator and came out the next morning looked at the plate the next morning and these organisms had all grown out and they're growing across that plate competing with the E. coli in conditions that are selective for E. coli these organisms were continuing to wipe out wipe out the E. coli so all of this area the plate was now completely E. coli free so the next morning we came along and pulled up pulled the plate out and this area had expanded even more within three to four days the whole entire plate all the E. coli were destroyed within that short period of time the organisms on the surface of the earthworm we didn't let the earthworm poop here the worm was on that plate a short enough period of time that it didn't leave behind a cast this is just the effect of what happens after the earthworm passes through your soil the organisms in that slime layer continue to grow expand move out so how much of the compost actually has to pass through the earthworm yeah because think of all the space going out from that earthworm that's now also going to be dealt all the pathogens are going to be dealt with so passage through the digestive system contact with the surface of the worm when you've got a worm bin and you're layering more food food onto the top of that worm bin and this food could all be contaminated with human pathogens plant pathogens or whatever and you layered that food on top how many worms do you have to have in that compost so that within a three-day period of time all that food is going to be processed or contacted by the worms all of that material is now E. coli free what's the concentration of worms in that worm compost that we have to have so that we know all of the pathogens are taken care of no one's ever done that experiment there is no data in the earthworm literature to tell you what that needs to be I can't believe it that the earthworm people have just not paid any attention to the microbiology of earthworms because it's us that did this experiment and showed this result we need to have that work done I don't have the money to do it myself so as we're working with earthworm folks we really need to have you do these kinds of assessments so here's the data that would allow you to say absolutely unequivocally we got rid of the pathogens here's what you have to do by ourselves you need that data would you have a used worm passenger or worm passenger what's the rate factor in an earthworm for good bacteria in a compost what's going to control whether that worm compost is bacterial dominated or fungal dominated the stuff coming out the rear end of the earthworm is it going to be bacterial is it going to be more fungal depends on what you're feeding the worms feeding the worms fungal foods the worm cast is going to be fungal feeding a bacterial foods it's going to be bacterial what do you want is the species diversity coming through the worms different than what you would get in a thermal compost oh absolutely so wouldn't it be a good idea to always mix together thermal compost and worm compost so you're maximizing the diversity of what you're putting out in the field certainly when you're making compost seeds that's a really good idea now if you're going to do a 20 liter compost tea brew and you're using one kilogram of compost to make that 20 liters well half of that kilogram should be thermal compost and half of it should be worm compost yeah could we increase our diversity even more if we had thermal compost number one thermal compost number two earthworm compost one and earthworm compost two could we go crazy here how much diversity do we really need to have well little testing might be needed to really solidify this you realize you're in the giant earthworm area so no E. coli in compost it shouldn't be there ever because as long as we're keeping it aerobic how could the E. coli or other human pathogens possibly survive can you mess up and contaminate your compost sure think about food production think how it how easy it is in processed food to have contamination in processed food anytime a human being touches anything we need to have the attitude that we probably contaminated it with E. coli so if we're using if we're composting correctly there will be no human pathogens no plant pathogens no earth feeding nematodes in our compost earthworms cannot deal with weed seed earthworms don't consume weed seed they don't do anything to destroy weed seeds so you can't put weed seed into a worm bin because it'll just come right through typically you have to treat weed seed using a thermal process right so you might have to if you're getting manure and you know that there's how could there not be weed seed in the manure you're going to have to run that through a thermal process because the worms will not be able to take care of that problem there's if you have the soil and the earthworm encounters chemical residues and the bacteria and fungi haven't dealt with that chemical residue it can kill the worms worms are you know because they respire through their skin and they're absorbing anything that's in solution through their skin if you have an electrical conductivity problem in your soil too salty if you don't have enough salt earthworms are going to be wiped out if you've got toxic materials if you've got alcohol production dead worms so they're real good indicators if you should have earthworms in your soil and they're not there there is a good indicator something wrong well exactly what's wrong that's where you do the microscopy and try to figure that out if you've got good microbial growth in your soil and they're chewing up all the toxic materials the worm should have no problem living there the earthworm won't break down the earthworm by itself is incapable of breaking down any organic compound it's the bacteria and fungi that do that decomposition process you got to find the right bacteria and fungi to do those decomposition processes and some of the time we know specifically which bacterial species you have to have in order to break down specific waste products but how many of us can really go out and assay our soils to determine which toxic chemical is present in the soil most of us don't have that money is it deldrin that's the problem is it 2,4-D is it dbt is that leftover heavy metal is it is it the diesel that somebody dumped there 10 years ago that's still hanging around what's what's reducing the organism's ability to grow in that soil yep it's not hard at all you need a couple different species of pseudomonas rear end of an earthworm those bacteria exist they are normal component of an earthworm's digestive system we don't need to be going out and buying additional inoculum and putting those things into our compost or into our soils or teas typically all we have to do is get the really good organisms out there and the foods to feed them and we take care of these kinds of problems so the easiest thing to do is always let's assay what's in our soil why don't we have the organism add back in the organisms we're lacking by using compost, compost extract, compost tea and I don't care how you make your compost worm compost thermal compost mix a little of both together improve the diversity and then see what happens if you added all those organisms into your soil and they didn't survive what's the message mother nature's sending you yeah some toxic materials now we got to try to figure out what it possibly could be and add the bacteria if you met if we lost them for some reason maybe it's just lack of foods you need an organic matter level of at least three percent to get many of these organisms that can do the decomposition to do that work if your agricultural soil is less than one percent organic matter we're going to have to add some organic matter add some foods add molasses add some bacterial get them going okay well think about the difference between compost and compost tea when we're making compost tea we're already doing a lot to spin them all around you know so in a tea we've got a tank of some kind we're blowing air into there our compost is in a bag and we're getting that compost to bounce and jounce and jiggle and ripping the organisms off the compost into the water we've already disturbed that quite a bit we've done a fair amount of slicing and dicing of our fungi already but those little strands of fungi are having a perfectly grand time in your compost tea going oh there we go around oh more more send it around again around and around and around they go i think they'd probably get a little dizzy so after 24 hours they're probably going enough already enough i'm starting to get sick to my stomach who knows it's fun thinking of what a microorganism might actually be thinking as they're whirling around in here why not let's answer for more thighs it's a lot of fun so now as we're draining this tank and we're thinking about the particulate material in my compost tea am i going to plug up my sprayer i put it into my spray tank and i'm going to spray it out if i had too much particulate material in here i could plug up my sprayer so if i take that compost tea and run it through a sieve to remove the particulate matter as the fungi are going through that sieve if we get solid material coating the top of that sieve all of my fungi end up in the sludge on the sieve and they don't make it into your tea okay we've already swirled the organisms around we've got them kind of pretty beat up already they're surviving they're going to be able to grow in our tea they're going to be really happy when they get out onto the soil or your so hopefully they'll start growing but if you have to sieve out the particulate material you have to realize you've got to be constantly shaking that sieve to move the particulate material but now what if we got a compost and we want the fungi to grow and get nice long fungal strands and get this just as fungal as we can if we take this material and we put it through a sieve it's solid material so we're going to put it on our sieve and then we're going to scrape it back and forth to try to push it through the sieve what's happening to our fungi we've really sliced and diced and those fungi just really don't like that at all so if you've sieved your compost you've sliced and diced a lot of the fungi and you don't have to do that you wouldn't want to do that why would you sieve a compost to make it look nice to try to make it look like it's got better structure than it actually had before you well if it had good structure back in the compost pile you don't need to sieve it so the sieving process what's that done for to make it look pretty to make you think that it's got good structure it's kind of questionable practice isn't it because it's possibly misrepresenting oh no wait a minute what if you're putting your compost on a golf course green okay maybe there is a reason to sieve so y'all have got to look at what you're really doing with this material golf course guys now you put your compost on a golf course green and you've got any kind of chunky material in there you got a piece of wood chip you've got a stand of plant material you know an old straw a little bit of chunky stuff in there and your golf course superintendents are going to be going I'm firing you you are never coming back on my golf course again because you know how many of you play golf when you're putting across the green and there is a piece of wood between you and the hole whose job is going to be lost the golf course superintendent can't have that so when we're putting compost into certain kinds of places we may sieve it and we got to recognize that we just did some pretty significant damage to our fungi so that compost after we sieve it it goes out on the green and it just filters right down between the leaves of the grasses so it's sitting on the surface right under those and the golfers don't even know that compost is just put out there they just say oh look at how beautiful that green is wow we may have to come back in pretty quick and put out an application of fungal foods to help resuscitate the fungal hyphae that we just sliced and diced how happy would you be if we put you through a sieve the hole size on that sieve is pretty important isn't it so exactly how much do we slice them you've mentioned previously taking a particular matter and putting it back onto the compost is there any benefit in reserving some of the compost to use a monoculum for the next fruit excellent yeah so now think about now we've grown really good organisms in here we look at it under the microscope it's like wow great stuff well why not have you know just a small amount a couple mils goes in the beginning of the next group or why not take some of this and put it on your new compost piles we'll talk about that in just a few minutes when we're going through the temperature cycle and how do we make compost finished compost in 21 days that is the shortest period of time I've ever been able to make finished compost from beginning to end that's the shortest period of time and you will put a compost tea on day zero you will put a compost tea into this to make sure you have the organisms well what if you don't have to make compost in 21 days you got you know eight weeks is fine okay we can be a little more lackadaisical what if you don't have to make it but once every three months great we can be very lackadaisical we're not going to put that much we don't have to be that crazy about it if you're going to make compost in 21 days you are going to be crazy about this process you will be out there every day taking care of that compost pile so it will be done in 21 days so you can sell it get it out the door and get the next pile of material in so you can make money how long can you keep compost tea as long as your air rating is you can probably keep it about four or five days so it definitely could keep it especially if you put it in a refrigerator you could probably keep it a little bit longer than that maybe five to ten days as an inoculum for the next tea brew but you always want to be putting fresh compost in there so you're maintaining full diversity so mature compost once we've got done with the whole process what page is this on thank you I'm glad somebody else is looking through here what happens when there's time between the time Gerard made the manuals and I actually give the talk mature compost of course has to have a healthy food web you can't have done composting without the sets of organisms to do that process but we want both the bacteria and fungi to have less than 10% activity if it's mature activity has to be 10% or less of both the bacteria and fungi or the organisms are growing so fast you're getting temperature generated if you want to take your compost and you want to put it in a plastic bag and put it on the shelf and sell it in the store if you put compost that's not mature more than 10% activity organisms are still growing really fast you've got greater than 10% activity if you put them into that bag in a steel plastic bag that plastic bag is going to go boom and you know Woolies gets a little upset yeah when the bag ends up all over the inside of the truck or you know inside of the you know so they get upset you also want to realize that nutrient retention growth of the bacteria and fungi time things up holding them is balanced by the protozoa and nematodes eating the bacteria and fungi and releasing those nutrients so mature compost has normal nutrient cycling happening constantly cycling the bacteria and fungi are eating the nutrients that are being made plant available because hopefully there are no plants living plants in your compost yet bacteria and fungi are eating up retaining it the protozoa nematodes are eating the bacteria and fungi releasing so we have a balanced level we've got some nitrate we've got some ammonium but pretty low levels keeping it pretty low people always ask how long is compost good for we actually once we come back down to ambient conditions we've turned it and it stays at ambient temperature typically we're actually going to increase diversity for the next six months compost just gets better we can actually document that we'll see an increase in the number of species for the next six months after that we start losing species because they run out of food they go dormant we can't detect them maybe perhaps they actually really die but we cannot detect them in the compost after the compost is about six months old so you continue to lose species until at about two years the compost is no better than topsoil we get a pretty good price for topsoil don't we so compost should always be more expensive than topsoil because you're getting more organisms better diversity but it does say you don't make your compost and store it and keep it in the in that barn and wait to put it out no it's not the secret bank account you make your compost you use it yeah it gets a little better for the next six months but if I make my compost and I keep it here it's going to improve in diversity for the next six months if I make my compost and put it out in the pasture I put it out in the real world am I going to get the same improvement in species diversity when it's out there in the real world yeah so get it out there make it and use it don't keep it for maybe it was going to get better and and it's just going to get better and better it's compost the fertilizer so what page is this it's got to be around that area I will learn someday I think it's probably way back up front page six I really moved things around didn't I please recognize that in the commercial world fertilizer was defined by the chemical companies they are the folks that defined what is meant by fertilizer and so if you go back to U.S. regulatory information first fertilizer company so in regulatory information a fertilizer requires nitrate fertilizer must have nitrate that's the basis that that's what fertilizer is that's what the original definition of a fertilizer actually was regulatory and literature now we've expanded that definition so sometimes when you're dealing with fertilizers you got to look at the exact regs that are written now but it may include both of these forms of nitrogen well then we got into phosphate fertilizers so now we have a category called phosphate fertilizers which is different when you say fertilizer you mean the inter-gamma forms of nitrogen if you say a phosphate fertilizer then you mean PO4 a boron fertilizer you're talking about that specific single chemical and that's all that's being sold despite what other things might be in there so is compost a fertilizer? Compost doesn't contain much nitrate compost doesn't contain much ammonium it better not. Bacteria and fungi ought to be taking those inorganic forms of nitrates and ammonium and pulling them back inside of the bodies of the bacteria and fungi keeping it in the compost so it doesn't leach out but we've got the microorganisms that will do the nutrient cycling so the nitrogen in the bacteria and fungi will become available to your plants it will cycle it will constantly produce more ammonium more nitrate there's going to be a constant never-ending production of those fertilizer materials but how are you going to manage that isn't it going to have to be over time and that's what we do on the SFI report when you look at the SFI report and you know nitrogen produced pounds per acre of nitrogen produced it's over the next three month period of time so through your growing season through the next three months how much nitrogen would be released by the organisms in this compost that's what that value tells you if you send a soil sample in we tell you in that soil pounds of nitrogen per acre how much nitrogen is going to be made available to your plant over the next three months and isn't that the information you really want to know never-ending non-stop application of nutrients that your plant requires well isn't that a fertilizer it's not the legal definition so look out for that if you're putting claims on your compost bags if you're putting claims about your compost you got to be really careful with this definition your compost will provide nutrients to your plant no problem with that one but please don't make a claim that is a fertilizer because really you got to talk to your regulatory people and make sure that you're not offending them with the terminology that you're using I'm just getting the status question and I say you're going to plant a plant that's in and would you be putting the compost on the month before you're planting the crop or twice you're planting or what would be the ideal time to sample the first compost for that time so you would really want to get the biology in that soil up to speed so the bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes so typically at harvest in the previous year we would have put our first application of compost first application of biology so they have all of this winter period where we're likely to have some pretty good moisture where we're likely to have temperatures pretty decent to get those organisms revved up and get going and have them all ready to produce a constant rate the amount of nutrients that your plant requires if we can get our protozoa up to 50,000 protozoa and so that's including flagellus, amoeba, and phileas all three groups do the same thing so if we can get a 50,000 protozoa per gram of our soils we're going to be producing somewhere around 200 to 250 pounds of nitrogen per acre which is about 250 kilograms per hectare of nitrogen over the next three months so during the growing season and every day the nutrients that your plants require being made right in the root zone won't leach won't go away but that's what we're trying to do with the compost is put back into the soil that whole diversity of organisms that will provide everything that your that your corn plant is going to require now what if you want to double productivity well double the amount of protozoa you got well if you double the amount of protozoa you got to up the amount of bacteria protozoa the fungi the nematodes so that you are getting that nutrient cycling your plants require you want to get tenfold increase in productivity of your corn well then you're going to have to get even more organisms in there you're going to have to get more organic matter so you can have more nutrient cycling so you can continue to increase productivity it really becomes a limitation of the plant's physiology that's what should be limiting production of any crop material in your field the plant can only grow so fast and that's what should be limiting growth not nutrient cycling in our soils we've got to get the compost in there this is probably the driest time of the year they really we really have to be doing measurements of the organisms to see how much survive under your given conditions the better the structure in the soil the more the organic matter so they have a place to live they're going to survive without any trouble nothing will die everything comes back and starts to regrow it's not too different from a human being now how do you survive really bad times if you've got a really good house with a good well you've got plenty of stored food you know you've got the people who go out and protect you from the ravening wolves or the crazies coming from wherever if you're well protected you survive no problems plenty kids but if you're living in a hovel and there's just no good source of water anywhere you've got to travel 10 miles every day to get to a good source of water what's the probability that the wolves are going to get you are you not going to survive same thing for the critters in your compost or in your soil do they have the habitat that they require if your soil has no structure if your soil doesn't have biology if it doesn't have good organic matter they're probably not going to survive think about so what's the similar situation with a human being if we took you exactly as you are now and put you in an airplane flew over the Sahara desert you were describing dry dusty no good structure and there's nothing in that so we flew you over the Sahara desert right now and pushed you out the door would you survive no would your organism survive if you put them out into the Sahara desert no so what do we have to do before we get to the condition of there's absolutely no water no structure no organic matter no way any organism will survive we have to before we get to that condition put the biology back in right now wouldn't right now be the perfect time to be getting these organisms out into your soil we got water it's not frozen it's not too hot now if we dropped you out into the middle of the Sahara on a nice cool day with maybe some clothes on and a tent to live in a little extra food sent you with a lunch pack you would probably survive you'd be able to dig in you'd be able to know same thing with the critters right now we're putting them into a habitat that's not that tough come this spring when temperatures are getting a little bit warmer it's still plenty of moisture the plants are starting to grow pump in exudates out of their root system add the organisms they're going to live they're going to grow really take off on you don't wait until next summer after we've had no rain for three months and the soils turn to dust right now or now we would we could start now get the biology into the system so by this spring this spring when we plant we already have the biology up and going so we're going to improve yields we're going to get rid of the diseases we're going to get rid of fertility problems we're going to build structure roots are going to grow down deeper all the benefits could be achieved what's the best way to know for absolutely sure that you've got the organisms into your soil they're established they're growing they're surviving they're doing what they're supposed to do test that's what sfi is there for if you want to you learn to use your microscope yourself you do it up to you how much time do you have in your life uh-huh you're going to send your samples into a while so it's up to you what do you want to do how much compost to add well that's what we're really just talking about you add enough compost to establish the biology and feed them so how much compost is that well you might try some trials you know put a half a ton per acre onto this paddock put a ton put two tons put 10 tons well with compost you can put too much i've seen the situation where people have put out half a foot of compost and then let it compact rainfall just beat it right into the ground so northern territories or um in banana land i had the discussion with my um for my money i mean i'm way beginner at this but i would be going to like heaps more compost on than what he does um i grew a permaculture for my garden at home well my compost like that next to a grow engine and um you know my results are pretty good i think yep keep me going yep look at what we do and look at what Hendricka Chauvin does with landscaping he puts two feet of compost on and as long as you're making certain that it stays nice and fluffy and it's not compacting because the rainfall's beating it to compaction he has fantastic growth of the plants and his shrubs grow five feet in three months so hey you want those kind of plant those growth rates yeah lots of compost usually it's a question of cost for most people though you know they've got to go to the compost yard they've got to haul it and so what's the dollar well that's what he was saying to me and that's not well it wasn't so close but that we try to actually make as much compost as we make for for our garden hence why we spray um compost if you can make your own compost you probably ought to just be going out and putting compost just every time you possibly can give me a knife or so over there so you know in greenhouse operations if people want alaska-sized vegetables you know your cabbage is this big your head of lettuce is this big your carrots um alaska-sized vegetables you grill your vegetables in pure compost nothing else doable but economic viability if we pardon you're going to slice and dice some things when you cultivate but it may be exactly the perfect thing to do if your soil is getting too fungal and it's no longer the right balance of fungi to bacteria cultivate you slice and dice some of the fungi you may blow it back to exactly what your plant requires east coast of the united states europeans arrived chestnut forest how do you grow corn there no you knock the trees down you rip the roots out you put your plants into your row crop plants into that system won't grow too fungal way too fungal not appropriate so how do you take an extremely fungal dominated soil and instantaneously turn it into something where you can grow barley kill it plow it slice and dice that's what the plow is all about we didn't realize it when the one the plow was invented we didn't realize that that's what we were doing but that's what we were doing that's why plows work if you've plowed your soil too much and you've wiped out your fungi your plants are not going to be healthy they're going to be sick they're going to be unhappy mother nature is going to tell you about it you're going to have disease you're going to have insect pests you're going to have yellow leaves she's trying to tell you get the biology back in the soil you just didn't know it now you do we have no excuse absolutely because what makes phosphorus available to your plant bacteria and fungi solubilize it out of the rock out of the sand silt and clay out of that organic matter it's in the bacteria fungi protozoan nematodes eat it right in the root zone the plant says thank you now i would like some boron please so i put out the food to grow the boron solubilizers they solubilize the boron protozoa come along and eat them thank you for the boron now i want some iron so you iron solubilizers get to work out comes the food to feed the iron solubilizers they do their thing plant gets its iron the nuclear cycling system was present in the soil before plants ever existed on this planet the bacteria fungi protozoan nematodes microarthropods were already functioning doing their thing before plants even came into existence so of course plants don't have nutrient cycling genes they don't have to do that work themselves the critters that are in the soil they're supposed to be there they're the ones that are supposed to do the work who's been destroying those critters in the soil now we're suffering for it so we got to put on the biology the amount of compost that you're going to be put going to put on depends on the organism surviving add them into the soil but let's start soon enough so the organisms have a chance to get established and growing and you can check up on them do i have enough if not i'm going to add more so right now we can go out there and get this started come next spring we're going to check again and if the biology hasn't come along and done what it's supposed to we'll add some more organisms then we're going to soak our seed in a compost tea got to have good compost in order to do that we're going to put some compost in furrow or if you can't can't afford the compost we're going to turn it into a liquid form and we're going to put it in with compost tea but it requires good compost step number one to get the biological system to get sustainable agriculture started is good compost you're going to have to make it or you're going to have to find somebody who makes it so how many of you in the room make compost so those of you who are learning to make compost and all of a sudden you're starting to go gosh this sounds a little complicated you might want to talk to some of these guys because they're already doing it and most of these guys that are already doing it have been sending samples into the lab doing a pretty good job might be able to improve this that or the other thing but that's why they're here is to learn how to improve it nutrients uh i hope everybody understands this chart that in the chemistry world when you send samples into a chemistry lab pretty much all you're learning about is this part of the chemistry pool they tell you nothing about the totals that are actually present with a biology it is the organisms that solubilize those nutrients and convert them into exchangeable forms biology that takes them from exchangeable forms and makes them soluble and the biology helps your plant take those up without the biology you are stuck with the only nutrients that are available to your plants and soluble ones this is the only thing your plant can take up so if you don't have the biology you're going to run out of nutrients in no time flat in your soil and you're going to have to put intergenic fertilizers out which just exacerbates the problem makes things worse and worse compost puts the organisms back it also puts some nutrients back in so when we look at nutrient concentrations in compost here's a gram of soil we're looking at total nitrogen pools ammonia one of the soluble forms of nitrogen nitrate the other soluble form of nitrogen and look at what's present in a pea or broccoli soil grapevines kiwi look at compost if you're putting a ton of compost in look at all the nutrients you're adding if we're putting a ton of compost into the top 10 centimeters of our soil we are increasing the nutrient concentration in those top 10 centimeters by a serious amount we don't have to be putting more than a ton of compost out per acre so 2.5 tons per hectare and we are pretty much going to supply quite a few years of these nutrients as long as the biology is there to move them out of the total pool into the exchangeable into the soluble pool so we can run through a bunch of these different kinds of nutrients for you but it's the same story over and over compost 23,000 parts per million calcium is compost a fertilizer? it depends on your definition doesn't it you got to look out for the regulatory definition but when you look at phosphorus how could you ever run out of phosphorus if you're putting compost back into your soil for a ton of yields you only need 1.8 parts per million phosphate pretty much no matter what kind of plant you're growing per gram of soil your plant removes 1.8 micrograms of phosphate per gram of soil in order to produce one ton of harvest in that same area how many years worth of yield how many tons could you grow if you could get all of that phosphorus and turn it into a plant available form and your plant actually took it up what limits plant growth how much can the plant take up so if we can get the biology in here it's not nutrient limitation that's going to limit the growth of your plant it's your plant's physiological ability to take it up in proper balances here's potassium why would you ever add potassium nitrate to your soil you just screw things up when you do every single inorganic fertilizer is a salt and you are killing the organisms when you add those salts you're reducing the ability to convert your nutrients from the plant not available forms into the plant available form so compost is a fertilizer it's an inoculum it's food to feed those organisms how much do you need you just need enough to get things establishing going if you don't have the right organic matter use the compost to provide that organic matter you need to remember balance know what's in our compost so what kind of plant are we trying to grow put the put the compost back into the soil to establish the ratios of the fungi and the bacteria depending on what you want to grow I want to grow grapevines what's the right balance of fungi to bacteria where are grapevines where on the successional chart do you find grapevines right there so when we're looking at grapevines we need somewhere to two times more fungi than bacteria up to five times more fungi than bacteria so if we want our bacteria at 500 micrograms of bacterial biomass then our fungi had better be at 2500 micrograms so we will maximize production of our grapevines set the stage so we have grapevine growth we won't have weeds because weeds require this we won't have those weedy species they just plain won't grow we might want to have understory species we might want to be thinking about what should we put in under our grapevines that are going to match the microbial requirements of our grapevines so why not put in some lavender underneath your grapevine put some thyme in put marjoram what do you call it here marjoram marjoram marjoram it always makes me think of marjoram get the accent right sweetie grasses are usually in here so the earliest succession like Bermuda grasses you know couch grass are up here when we're looking at most of our poas they're in here when we're looking at the really productive grass species they're in here i'm not really sure where switchgrass actually is i think it's probably right up here have to do a little testing in the soil right now they're suggesting in most vineyards or orchard systems you would put in smother grass no no please don't do that smother grass is in here and so that's my knowledge this is where smother grass falls not what you want for trees or vines so perennial herbs have the same ratio of fungi to bacteria they have the same mycorrhizal fungi they they have the same requirement for slightly acid conditions in the soil they have the same requirement for ammonium as the predominant form of nitrogen just like your grapevines require so where do clovers fit in it depends on the kind of clover crimson clover red clover white and yellow clover yellow clovers that are not legumes so there's a bunch of different clovers please be aware of the kind of clover that you're putting in and does it match the plant species that you need why is it such a huge difference how the rainforest continues it's just what we've observed over and over again all over the world conifers old growth forests especially much more fungal dominated the food resources that conifers are putting back into the soil much more fungal foods bacteria can't grow on conifer residues at all periods will stop so the bacteria are really dependent on your understory plant species in a forest for inputs of any kind of food especially when you get into the park-like condition where the shade from the conifer trees is so intense you have no understory species growing it's almost pure fungi in that soil very little bacteria growing in that soil so to some extent this is based on pure observation it holds every place on the planet i have not seen deviation from this unless you're in a sick unhealthy forest so forests in Czechoslovakia downwind from the smelters dying forests they're on their way to here and it's really sad seeing that sort of thing happen because of the species of plants you really have to look at what exudates are being produced by those plants there can be some differences so tropical forests tend to be much more like deciduous forests well they're more deciduous kinds of plant species now the evergreen forests in Chile very fungal very very fungal the mycorrhizal fungi and in a lot of tropical systems are only the mycorrhizal fungi so you get some really really shallow soil in tropical systems but it's because the specific kinds of fungi that you have when you look at a lot of the tropical trees they're very sclerophilous they have very waxy coatings so when that leaf material falls to the surface of the soil the only thing that you can decompose that plant litter material are the mycorrhizal fungi growing on the root systems of that plant only thing that can decompose out so that plant has all of the nutrients in the entire system locked up so the mycorrhizal fungi decompose the plant litter pump those nutrients right into the plant they go right back up form more new leaves those leaves fall the fungi take them up right back into the plant I am king of my domain and there ain't nobody touching my nutrients and that's how that tree manages to survive talk about some nasty competition down that part of the world I'm going to send my aunts in to take over your mycorrhizal fungi and she would die not fun my aunts are better than your aunts you can just imagine the conversations that are going on sometimes when you're watching all of these things going on in the soil so remember this we do want to match now what is in the soils we got to remember that as well and again remember if I take a look at my soil and I want soil that has you know 400 bacteria and 200 fungi but what's in my soil is only 100 fungi and I got 800 bacteria I'm still going to put a fungal dominant dominated compost into something that is bacterial dominated because it's lacking in the fungi what if I'm looking at my grapevines and my soil is so fungal I'm coming out of a conifer forest my soil has 2,500 fungi and I have a hundred bacteria I'm up here I'm not in the right condition to grow grapevines I got to bring my bacteria up you don't kill the fungi I love that when people do it what I want for my grapevines and say 2,500 fungi 500 bacteria but what I have is 2,500 fungi but I've only got a hundred bacteria I need more bacteria I'll put a bacterial dominated compost or I'll put bacterial foods into that system I'm not going to go out and kill the fungi I've had people do that that doesn't work you improve what's lacking you don't kill what's too high because you just destroyed fertility so the ratio is 0.75 when you actually put numbers in there so if this is my fungi to bacterial ratio what if my bacteria were a hundred so 0.75 I would want 75 fungi there's a 0.75 well what if my bacteria were up at a thousand right so it's the ratio that is important to select for the plant species you just improve productivity you're not growing much of anything if we're trying to grow veggies and this is my actual fungal to bacterial biomass ratio it's balanced correctly but we don't have a lot of nutrient cycling going on here there's not a lot for the bacteria for the bacterial feeders to eat our protozoa are hurting a little bit our nematodes are hurting a little bit because they just don't have enough food so if I want to improve productivity let's get it up there or you know 500 to what would this be have that amount it's two whatever that is math in front of people is hard to do so where does where does this kind of information come from just a quick reminder we have looked at ecosystems watersheds all over the planet we have repeated this kind of work we're going going from not very productive systems through to the most productive systems within the same watershed what are the ratios fungi to bacteria what are the ratios protozoa and the nematodes we always see that kind of gradient no matter where you are in the world these principles hold the specific ratios vary some from plant to plant yeah yeah when when we want to get the calcium magnesium ratio right we got to have a fungi bacteria right yeah how do you get the nutrients available to the plant at the ratios that Albrecht was looking at you gotta have the biology right he just Albrecht happened to live in a time back in the 1930s before chemical conventional agriculture even existed the only problem Albrecht was really dealing with was people over killing going this way with their well because John Deere had started selling tractors if you hook yourself up to an animal and you are holding the plow pushing that plow through the soil how many times a year do you plow how many times a year do you till once you've got a tractor and you can hook up the disc plow or you can hook up a chisel or you can hook up your moldboard plow or you can hook up your harrow and pull that through the over your property and you can you can till you know numb quite a few acres on a daily basis now how many times do you start plowing your soil I want to get rid of those weeds so I'm going to go till how many times a year do you till it gets a little frightening recreational tillage your fields don't look very neat you've got weeds so you go and till it to keep the neighbors happy and we're slicing and dicing the organisms and that's where the problem starts to happen Albrecht was trying to look at that the only tool he had to understand it was chemistry so yeah chemistry is important but really what controls the chemistry biology what controls the biology the plants succession happens so just on that there was a farmer a couple years ago who had on a soil test a 30 cent dose of calcium in 60 months of retrofitted biopsy into biology yeah and I don't see any you know there's enough data like that coming out showing that it's the biology that controls that calcium magnesium ratio there's no reason to be adding lime into your soil there is no reason to add gypsum you're just destroying the biology in the soil when you add that much lime or gypsum you're doing yourself more damage but we have to have those kinds of data North Dakota we've been working with growers up in North Dakota where five years ago their nitrate levels were you know just unbelievable their calcium magnesium ratio one to one their soils were really tight they had lots of compaction problems we've been working with them for the last five years they've all got their biology up to where it needs to be their calcium magnesium ratio is spot on they have never added any lime any gypsum their calcium ratios calcium magnesium ratio is perfect their nitrogen levels in their soils are perfectly balanced for the crops that they're trying to grow they have not added any inorganic fertilizers the USDA people in the United States are they're all scratching their heads how could this be I just don't understand how this could be happening and the growers keep pointing out to them it's because of the biology we fixed the biology the biology works every time I just can't see how that would work what does it take to convince some of them CSIRO people can do the same way most of them are this woman's crazy soluble calcium doesn't exist in your soils calcium is not leachable it couldn't possibly leach you put three tons of lime on last year where'd it go because what's your chemistry report this year telling you three more tons of lime well where did that go you've been putting on lime every year for the last how many years has it worked and if it worked then why how come you have to put more lime on this year where'd it go don't tell me that calcium is not soluble how does your plant get calcium it can only take up soluble calcium don't tell me there are no soluble forms of calcium or your plant would be dead has to be soluble for your plant to take it up therefore will your calcium leach so where's the calcium from the calcium from the lime or the gypsum that you put on last year where'd that lime go where'd that calcium go it's in your drinking water how come we are having problems with the quality of water we are doing it to ourselves and why are we so perverse as to not recognize this who's in control of the advertising agency so you just okay back to compost sorry I went off on the high horse there a little bit okay so these are the kinds of data that we keep doing over and over again and again now what's the compost you should all be able to answer this now if it's good we're looking at biomass because numbers don't make a lot of sense we're doing direct counts not plate counts you all understand why plate counts are silly right anyone unsure of that one now we have a yeah I'm just gonna assume you all understand that move on because I'd probably beat that one to death we're looking at biomass because that's really how you compare the different kinds of organisms when you're doing plate counts of fungi and you got some petri dish and you're growing a whole bunch of fungal colonies on there most of those fungal colonies on a petri most of those fungal colonies on a petri dish actually came from the spores of the fungi when you put a filamentous fungus so where you have a nice fungal hypha and you put that on a petri dish it's not going to grow those things aren't growing on that what you pick up on a petri dish on potato dextrose agar fungal total fungal biomass got a laugh at that one if we're doing plate counts what you're assessing are the spores of the fun fungi that are present in the soil spores of the fungi in your soil are they active are they doing anything for your plant no they're in dormant stage so why do we care how many spores of fungi you've got in your soil they're not doing a blessed thing for your soil they're not doing anything for your plant why do we care they could wake up and then i want to ask them once they wake up but why even assess them will now you're looking through your soil and here's a cute little fungal spore looks like a little piece of italian bread when's it going to wake up can it wake up is it actually ever going to come back to life right conditions yeah but when will those right conditions be the reason that it's there is because this is a fungus that was growing when the glaciers covered this land and so it's going to wake up again and it's going to start growing when glaciers cover this land again how long can fungal spores survive we got linen material from an egyptian mummy from a tomb that was like six thousand years old and on that it did on that linen from that egyptian mummy had gone through the mummification process so think about the nasty nasty chemicals have been used on that linen to mummify the mummy it's been sitting in some tomb for less six thousand years but on that piece of linen were these round brown spores from the mycorrhizal venti are they still viable how do you know you got to put them into the condition where maybe they could grow so we took those spores off put them in the root system of a of a flax plant so that's what the linen was made from was from flax put the spores up against the root system of the flax plant and the spores germinated they colonized the root system of the flax how long do fungal spores stay active living capable of coming back active six thousand years possible how long has that spore been hanging around when will it wake up so do we really care because what we want to know about are the fungi that are growing and are performing a process and doing things we don't particularly care about the spores and that's what we're particularly picking up on plate cancer the spores so we want to know biomass who's performing their function who's active can we do species identification if you want to do that we can certainly help you with it but it's not easy in soil the best way to do this one is to use dna and rna and analyze the nucleic acid sequence from the genome of the organism identify whether how many different kinds of species you have it's a little spendy per gram of soil it would cost you seventy five thousand dollars to assess the bacteria in one gram so how many grams do you want to spend your money on this is maybe not a question that you and I are as growers are gonna get into yet when the price tag on doing this kind of analysis gets down to something reasonable then you and I will be doing this but this is research work this is what the CSIRO ought to be working on this is what the people in the university ought to be really figuring out is does it really matter do we have specific species that grow around this species of corn root which of those bacterial and fungal species are the most important for protecting that root system for getting nutrients back into that root system for doing all the things that bacteria and fungi do in your soil wouldn't be nice to know that because someday we'll be able to manage that in our compost and our compost teas and it'd be really useful to know that information we're not quite there yet because we rely right now on morphology when you look through the microscope how many different colors do you see how many different widths how many different kinds of fungi can you recognize how many different bacteria can you recognize and that's really what we're basing our do you have enough diversity well keep track of it when you're looking at these samples if you're putting this kind of starting material into your compost you're always seeing these kinds of bacteria when you've got those kinds of bacteria wow look at the growth you have out in your plants or every time you use this starting material you're getting those bacteria in well you know I can get really good results is there more we can know oh yeah we have only begun to understand soil this is the last frontier it's beneath your feet and we're going to work on it there's so much to know students are always coming when I say I want to have undergraduates they're always coming in they're going like we know everything what's left there's no point to living or you know we're just going to spend our time on the planet and consume and then they start to understand what we don't know I don't have to blow them away there's more than enough things for them to spend their entire life learning about we have only begun to understand get to work nutrients so what is in compost we've got all the nutrients we've got all those different kinds of organic materials who are they feeding what enzymes are being made what's being solubilized today what's in a plant not available form what's in the plant available form they're all in the compost they're all cycling so that's what's in a good compost we look at a compost this is a scanning electron micrograph of compost so we're looking there's a 10 micrometer scale mark so we're looking at about 50 micrometers by 40 micrometers of compost if I take this amount of compost stick it in my hand you can't even see the compost in my hand that's how tiny a bit of compost we're looking at what are we actually looking at where's the plant material in this picture the only plant material that you can see is right there and we've got a couple different kinds of bacteria on that surface got some little short rods right there there's another piece of plant material right there we've got a nice long skinny fungal rod we've got a couple of cocosilli they're just barely a little bit longer than they are wide round rods we got another rod right there another one a couple little cocci everything else in this picture is organisms when you pick up a handful of compost what are you really looking at organisms compost is critters it's not dead plant material it's organisms so when we're talking about compost we're really talking about the organisms that are present there and their products and what they're doing these are yeasts so these big round balloon guys are yeasts they're the anaerobic fungi so you know okay few not so wonderful well we want diversity so you know a few of them is just fine we don't want to see a lot we've got some bacteria some big round cocci these are happy little campers they're growing really fast look at how much they reproduce look at all those bacteria on that aggregate we've got a rod here a couple more kinds of bacteria another rod we've got a spiral corkscrew that's another bacterium that's not a good guy I don't want to see very many of those in my compost or in my tea they are corkscrew shaped and they're very motile so when they're going through soil they're corkscrews going through the soil or through your solution like that so when you see that motion it seems to be it's just going like that get worried hopefully you've seen some of those or we can send you some pictures of what how that motility works so you can learn to recognize those bad guys they only exist in reduced oxygen conditions they are facultative anaerobes they are pathogens so if we see those guys visual evidence that something wasn't so wonderful in this compost one you know not too bad it's it's when you start seeing hundreds of them that's when you that's when you know something really went wrong more bacteria so continue looking around here you can see bacteria with lots more slime these are different species of bacteria compared to these where they don't make as much slime and also other species we're again looking at the little rods the longer skinnier rods we're looking at chain forming bacteria that make a nice chain there so that's an actinobacterium so when you go through here and you really pick out all the different morphological bacterial you can see about 16 species of bacteria in this teeny tiny itty bitty little bit of compost 16 species per gram of this compost when you go through and you do the dna analysis or when you go through and you look at all of the different morphologies that we can pick out we're looking at 25,000 species of bacteria per gram if we look at another gram it's going to be a slightly different set of bacteria that we'd see in the second set we're being done at reuters at com cornell and duke university a lot of different universities now around the world are suggesting that in a typical gram of compost in a typical gram of soil we in fact actually have somewhere around 50,000 to 75,000 species of bacteria in a good healthy compost in a good healthy soil in good water we're probably looking at that many as well it's kind of fun huh we're going to get the diversity of organisms to put back into your soil there it is how many fungi do we see in here well look at these strands so these threads different kinds of thread is bigger and fatter so one species of fungus a second species here's a third species this hypha actually twists as it grows we've got a pretty narrow fungal hypha there we've got all of this material different color different shape different amount of slime much wider diameter hyphae here thinner diameter but you look through here and you look at all the fungal hyphae that are actually present we have about eight different species of fungi per gram of compost good per gram of good healthy soil we're looking at about 10,000 species of fungi per gram work by Tom Bruns at University of Davis in California suggests that this is probably an underestimate we've only begun to figure this one out we've got protozoa in here here's a flashlight here's a flashlight right there so they're in there too so when you start looking at compost look at the diversity let's look at so that's just a summary of the numbers for you compare to plate counts when we're looking in this compost we're looking at a thousand million bacteria per gram of soil spread amongst 25,000 actual numbers of organisms recognized by DNA analysis 25,000 species or more a thousand million individuals of bacteria spread amongst 25,000 species when you do a plate count it sends us off to other laboratories it comes back you have a million individuals based on plate count numbers and there's only 12 species is this real or is this real when we look at fungi we're looking at you know 150 to 300 micrograms spread amongst a number of species when we're doing the direct counts we saw about 5,000 DNA says 8 to 12 so about 10,000 look at plate counts we tell you you've got numbers of individuals 100 individuals up to maybe 150 individuals what do individuals mean when you look at a fungus how big is a single individual fungus you can see them in your microscope where you can see the individual fungus but if it grows out and it keeps growing what's the largest fungal individual on this planet it about occupies about 10 a radius of 10 kilometers across from side to side the single fungal individual can be as big as 10 kilometers across in that forest stand where it occupies that 10 kilometer wide area that fungal hyphae can go down from just a couple centimeters into the soil all the way down to as deep as three meters into the soil that single fungal individual is the same size as about six to seven blue whales who's the largest organism on this planet that fungal hyphae that fungal individual pretty impressive so when we're talking about fungi numbers of individuals of fungi is just an nonsensical number plate count information just this is just nuts numbers of individuals you've got to have biomass and then look on the plate counts they were only getting eight species of fungi on six different media when in fact look at the number of species that were actually present plate counts just don't mean anything if you're sending samples into a laboratory and they're giving you back plate count data ask them what it means and then point out the discrepancies between dna analysis of species and what they're coming up with on their plate counts different compost look how different it looks again where's the plant material in here everything you're looking at in this sample is biology except for these little that little bit of plant material and even so we've got bacteria on the surface of that plant material look at that fungal hyphae there's the yeast i call this the spaghetti and meatballs picture we've got some flagellates flagellate flagellate flagellate we have lots of flagellates in this picture bacteria more bacteria look how different they look another yeast different size so different species of bacteria and fungi in this picture here's another picture now this is lower mag because here's 10 micrometers so we're looking at more of the sample everything's covered with bacteria and fungi absolutely everything is covered except for a couple little pieces of plant material see the fungal hyphae another fungal hypha fungal hypha they're in there but everything's covered with bacteria but notice in this one look at all the air passageways look at all the structure you can see plenty of caverns you can see plenty of caves movement of air in and out of this material is going to be really easy good airflow the organisms built those passageways let's look at an anaerobic compost everything's covered with bacteria no fungi no filamentous fungi and uh what happened to the air passageways how could you get oxygen in there there's there's no air passageways well maybe a maybe a few that's a crack this is a it's an artifact of the way we prepared the samples i don't worry about that but can you see why an anaerobic compost is going to have trouble getting oxygen into it look at the layer of glue all over that surface and we can't get oxygen in there is this a good compost look at the air passageways woohoo look at all the fungi in there wow remember we remember we talked about the fungi being able to hold nutrients instantaneous nutrient holding ability because the fungi are there there they are the oxalate crystals these oxalate crystals can interact with any nutrient that you want to talk about and pull it right out of the soil solution want to get rid of salts in your water grow some fungi and get them make sure they're the ones with the oxalate crystals on the surface yeah some fungi don't produce oxalate crystals so you know you're not seeing them on some of the fungal but most of them do grab those nutrients hold them keep them from leaching out of your soil look at look at the lace work on this isn't that gorgeous isn't this beautiful some little hairs growing out of there so beautiful lace work and it's got little so it has to be biological it is an organism that has produced this we have no idea what organism it is that did it I can't tell you I've taken this picture to every expert that I know of and they can't figure out what organism this is someday I'll get it figured out someday one of you in the audience will know and when you see it and you'll go Elaine that's a booboo yeast bacterium more bacteria there's a fungal hypha there's an oxalate crystal so this is a little higher mag that's one micrometer so this is a little higher magnification just because I thought the the lace work was so beautiful and that wasn't um it's a compost yeah yeah somebody wants to guess it was an eyeball of an insect no no not that is this a good swap and you can tell right away can't you this is by looking at the lack of organisms and how everything's all you know slimy there's no air passageways there's no hallways in there so you got you got problems there's a compost good compost look at the air passageways look at the aggregate structure and so when you pick up a compost you want to be looking for those air passageways for all the structure where you can see that oxygen can move in there what we're really looking at here is a whole bunch of organisms even though it looks like organic matter it's really organism through compost no where the air passageways it isn't really even compost when you know the person selling this stuff said it was compost but when you picked up these you know um little globules you pick them up you open them up and it's pure manure inside the chunks the apples of manure haven't broken down at all they haven't decomposed anaerobics don't to high heaven this is a kiwi operation in New Zealand that we work with what they always do for their woody component every year they go out and buy wood chips and they bring them in and they pile them in the orchard and they leave them here every time they go off on a hike every time they go out looking every other time they well they no longer go on vacation they go on fungal collecting trips vacation no they want to be paid to go off on all of their adventures down to wherever it is they're going and when they when they're traveling around in New Zealand they're always got their bag a plastic baggie in their pocket so when they're out there in the forest system looking around when they're out there in a grassland looking around they're down in the soil and when they find some really good hyphae they just pick that up put it in a plastic bag close it up and then when they get back they come to their wood chip pile so here's the new wood chip pile that they're starting right now they dig down into that wood chip pile and they deliver that handful of really good fungal material cover it back up so keep it nice and moist inside there the next fungal um inoculum move down a little bit deliver the handful there go down a little bit more deliver the handful there so they're constantly increasing the fungal inocula in that wood chip pile there aren't any roots of plants in there so the disease causing fungi aren't going to survive all that long kept it a pretty good moisture so the only food source are the wood chips growing some really really good fungi this is last year's wood chip pile they've been using this material to make their compost all year long they're going to take handfuls of this material and inoculate that into that compost or into that wood chip pile so they're always maintaining really really good fungi as composters all of us should have a wood chip pile that we're maintaining always adding new wood chip material if we're ever chipping up new we just keep adding it to the pile but constantly inoculating the pile with really beneficial fungi as we're collecting it so as we're making our compost we're using this material that's already inoculated with a huge diversity of really good fungi up close and personal on the old wood chip pile what does that look like there's the threads I'm talking about visible with your eyeball that's Richard's front finger pointing at the fungi in that compost pile you can see the nice threads the strands they're just everywhere you pick up this wood chip and this huge amount of wood chip material comes with you you're standing there holding on to that one little wood chip and you've got a huge amount of material that just came along with because it's all connected all held by those strands of fungi that's what you want to see in your soil in your compost in your wood chip pile you want to have these things already established and growing in your wood chip pile so right now get out there and start getting your wood chip pile to look like this start working on it nice thick strands we want to be able to pick out the strands of the fungi see this material here and how there's no strands it's just a just a pile of fuzz I don't like that fungus much could be a bad guy so when I'm seeing fuzzy wuzzy like this I'm poking him I'm mixing them back up I'm selecting against the fuzzy wuzzy I want to make sure that I'm helping out the strands of nice thick beneficial fungal species now what I've showed you here are white guys well they can be lemon they can be orange they can be red they can be gold and they can be brown now it sounds like a breakfast cereal doesn't it it can be lots of different colors so white is just usually easier for you to see but don't select against other colors as long as they're colored as long as they're nice thick strands good guys so we've talked about this I'm going to just zoom because I'm running out of time this is a food web I've bounced way ahead so uh there you go what page is that 23 food web and soil here's the food web food web and soil we've talked about these guys holding on the surface here's the food web and compost the plant material we're bringing in there are three components we have to think about whether it's a worm compost static compost or thermal compost pile those are the components we have to accumulate high nitrogen we want to if we're going to keep it more than a day we have to dry it down so it doesn't continue to decompose and stink and smell while it's sitting there in the composting yard if you don't use that high nitrogen up today you have to dry it down so it's not going to cause problems with attracting rodents problems with attracting flies fruit flies all kinds of nasty things so either use it or dry it down woody material have your wood chip pile constantly be adding to the wood chip pile and improving the fungal biomass in that wood chip pile green plant material if you don't use it within a week's period of time dry it down again we don't want it decomposing and losing the good sugars and proteins and carbohydrates we don't want it decomposing all by itself we want to mix it with the other materials so that we make really good compost if it's mostly fungal foods you're going to grow mostly fungi if it's mostly bacterial foods you're going to grow mostly bacteria high nitrogen is used to develop temperature that's what that's for so the other all of those the organisms in this compost pile will come from that plant material now the sfi report you're always going to be looking at the desired range minimum desired range is it in range or not and it's kind of on the low side science okay it could be better really good way higher than the minimum desired range really good really good is this a fungal dominated pile or a bacterial dominated pile fungal oh really good fungi wide diameter really good flagellates really good amoebae this is an aerobic material has to be with the fungi looking like that with a protozoa looking like that really good nematodes it's really easy to read an sfi report you you compare it with that it is a fungal dominated material it's going to get more fungal with time really good nutrient cycling going on in here in the compost if we put this compost out we're growing this plants into your compost like this this is how much nitrogen would be evolved released in a plant available form when you put that compost into the soil you're usually mixing the compost with something that's got some other organisms in it will these organisms survive when you add them into the soil okay then you assay the soil in two weeks how many of these guys actually survived how many guys made it into the soil two nematodes we want at least six species of each of the different varieties of nematodes so we could improve that a little bit but finally darn good compost so take a look at that compost is this a good compost this be the quiz take a look uh a little wet isn't it if it were this wet if this is the only dry material and a gram of that fresh material we're looking at like 78 percent moisture what's the probability we're still aerobic way low bacteria way high bacteria this is not looking good folks no fungal activity practically no fungal biomass we're anaerobic this is not compost well a few fungi are okay but now that's pitiful compared to what we really want it to be no flagellates no amoebae to speak of these are the aerobic protozoa this compost is anaerobic and look at the ciliates ciliates are the ones that grow under anaerobic conditions life is bad this is not compost very bacterial no fungi or you got root feeding nematodes in this compost it never composted it went anaerobic it's what's the probability we've got human pathogens growing in this so compost standards the compost standards that we have if you want to put these into specs when you're specifying things for a landscaping contract or something there they are they are the minimum ranges on our sfi report so there you are you can have fun looking that over