Those are interesting observations Paul, thank you for passing them along.

You didn't mention in your posting whether any of the brassicas (cabbage, brocolli, turnips, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kale, collards, radish, bok choy, arugula) also do poorly in your garden. AFAIK none of the brassicas form mycorrhizal relationships, and thus would tend not to prosper in a fungal-dominated soil.

The observations and advice you relayed highlight the real need for diversity in compost and soil amendments. I haven't had the same issues as you describe, but most of the carbons added to my compost or soil tend to be already partly broken down -- leaf mold or crushed leaves at least six months old, chopped paper and cardboard which have been pre-mixed with high-nitrogen kitchen scraps -- and by weight, there's at least as much UCG as carbon landing on my soil.

Years back someone here or somewhere online mentioned most vegetables grow best in bacterial-dominated rather than fungal-dominated soils. The nitrogen sources your advisor suggested might also be helped out with large amounts of alfalfa meal, pellets, and/or tea. After seeing the positive results from 50lbs of alfalfa pellets last year, I'm planning on doubling that amount in 2008.

One heartening thought about a high-carbon fungal soil: all it takes is the addition of more nitrogen to make it go bacterial. :)

All the best,
-Patrick

Not really. Soybean meal is fungal food. Fish hydrolysate is fungal food. Feather meal is fungal food.

Alfalfa meal or pellets are bacterial food.

Tilling soil will help reduce fungal biomass in the soil.

You would have to go to soil food web for more information.

Thanks for sharing that. It is interesting to see what thrives in different conditions and what doesn't. All great learning.

It is also wonderful to hear that fixing such a situation should be pretty easy. (I've got lots of wood chips and leaves all over the place and fungus loves us.) So far though, most plants have been doing well but I will plan on adding alfalfa pellets where I expect to need fast Nitrogen for the quick growers.

Here is a link that might be useful: My Garden.

This person made suggestions about, and diagnosed problems, without looking at your garden and without any soil test? And you believe him?

Kimmsr, c'mon. Go easy, eh? :)

All of us who offer suggestions and advice here on this forum do so without seeing the gardens of others -- and usually without having the benefit of seeing the results of a soil test. Yourself included, sir.

From Paul's description of the problems he's been seeing in his garden, and the suggestions of the organic agriculture specialist who advised him on possible solutions, nothing in his post sounds unreasonable to me. Of course only time and some casual experimentation will prove the diagnosis of the problems (and suggested solutions) right or wrong.

We can't reasonably expect everyone here will bring an expert in to diagnose every one of their soil problems. Nor will a soil test always reveal all the problems -- or suggest appropriate solutions.

All the best,
-Patrick

"This person made suggestions about, and diagnosed problems, without looking at your garden and without any soil test? And you believe him?"

You're kidding us right? This NEVER happens on this forum! (dripping with sarcasm for those that can't tell)

HRC

Paulns: What your ag specialist said is supported by "Teaming With Microbes" by Lowenfels and Lewis. I read that book a couple of years ago, but I do remember those basic concepts about fungally dominated mulches and compost for perennials, trees, shrubs, etc, and bacterially dominated compost and mulch for annuals and vegetables.

Some other concepts I remember from the book:
Worms eat bacteria, therefor high earthworm presence indicates bacterial domination, lack of worms indicates fungal domination.
Alkaline pH generally = bacterial domination.
Acidic pH generally = fungal dominance.

Karen

Patrick - no, brassicas don't do well at all - very slow growth, pitiful. Nitrogen does seem to be the limiting factor in our garden (and soil tests don't give Nitrogen content). Alfalfa pellets would be great but we'd need a lot to do a 4000sqft garden, besides which I'm reluctant to spend money on processed feed, and the farmer's co-op that has it is two hours away. I thought we were giving the garden good-enough nitrogen fixes with the seaweed, compost, some manure-based compost, and rye/oats cover crops, but apparently not. It must be partly our climate - cool and cold, overcast a lot, long winter - like Scotland - doesn't encourage the quick breakdown of organic matter.

Lou, the Ag guy would agree with you about the tilling - he said a light tilling was a good idea, to stimulate bacterial action (even though the soil is sandy). I went to that soilfoodweb website you linked, started reading, and was all the more grateful to have somebody like the Ag guy available because the chemistry of it quickly goes over my head.

tclynx good luck and that's a great website.

kimmsr, he did visit the garden last year - he rarely comes to this remote part of the province and unfortunately we couldn't be here that day, but he remembered it. And I'd written him a complete description of our practices, and results of the last soil test.

Normally he sees vegetable growers, or grain growers, or livestock farms, but we have flowers, perennials and vegetables pretty thoroughly blended, which is not common, and calls for two kinds of soil action in the same garden, fungal and bacterial.

This guy spent a long time on the phone with me, then made a follow-up call the week after with more thoughts on our situation, on his cell phone this time, as he and his dog were walking up a long driveway on the way to another organic farm. Like an old-fashioned extension agent, in the good old days, before that program was cut. It's good to see it coming back in some form.

That's a book I'd like to sink my teeth into, Karen, thanks for suggesting it. There has often been talk of fungal/bacterial action on this forum and I'd gotten as far as undersdtanding 'brambles like fungal soil' so we always give them plenty of leaf mold and sawdust, with great results, but this is the first time I see the whole garden in this new light and I'm amazed.

Paul, from your descriptions of the soil conditions, mycorrhizal relationships might be a real key factor in the poor growth of brassicas.

In short: brassicas don't form beneficial relationships with mycorrhiza -- so the cabbage/ brocolli/ etc. all have to rely only on their own root networks to provide all their nutrients. Which means, they require plentiful nitrogen right around their roots.

It would indeed be difficult to supply plentiful nitrogen to a 4,000 square foot garden in one season. However, if you already have good growth with some of your crops, perhaps you could concentrate this spring and summer's nitrogen additions where they are most needed?

In your situation, I'd be looking closely into vermicomposting (which tends to concentrate available nitrogen) and also scrounging around for whatever other organic nitrogen sources are available locally. Fish byproducts? Livestock bedding?

Regarding the alfalfa pellets, I can appreciate the cost. A cheaper alternative might be to buy organic alfalfa seed -- often sold in bulk for sprouting -- and setting up a small in-house sprout-growing operation.

Sprouting alfalfa is dead simple, I'd be happy to provide you with full instructions. It takes less than two minutes a day, and can be done using a standard plastic-topped large instant coffee jar, or equivalent container.

One of the great things about making alfalfa sprouts is their byproducts -- the daily rinsewater used to grow them -- are themselves a potent growth stimulant and fertilizer. If you have excess sprouts, you can compost 'em, or blenderize them and pour the slurry right on the soil. Or use it for foliar feeding.

One of the most spectacular growth experiments I've ever been involved with was done by using sprout rinsewater and blender'd sprouts (from about 1/4 lb of seed) in a high-carbon 5' x 2' x 2' bed, otherwise composed of entirely organic materials (largely leaf mold) gathered in a mixed hardwood/ conifer forest environment. The soil mineral base was entirely sand, and the climate was a zone or two colder than Toronto.

That lakefront bed produced petunias which were so tall, so broad and so spectacular in blooms, people padding by regularly stopped to photograph them all summer long. They often called out to my folks "how did you grow them so big??"

Finally, more cover crops -- especially legume crops -- and mixing legumes like hairy vetch in with your oats and rye cover crops, may be a cheaper longterm solution. Or, if you have the room, maybe even a rotation of 1/3 or 1/4 of your gardens through a year-long pasture cycle?

I'm real curious to hear how your methods evolve to fix this problem over the summer, and what results you see. This is good learning.

All the best,
-Patrick

Paul,

So glad I could spark events to create light bulb moments! :O) Great info, even something I can use in my gardens.

Remembered another thing, Org-Ag guy said it's possible to get soil tested for C:N ratio, for about $20, send soil to PEI.

Patrick that makes sense, focus the nitrogen on the areas that need it and let the rest go with compost etc... We could expand our vermicomposting operation from the ~4 cubic foot lobster crate to something more capacious....Are you suggesting growing sprouts to blend and feed the garden? I suppose that would be cheap, the only input being seed and water. We do quite a bit of sprouting in winter, and for fun I've tried growing borders of fenugreek, mung beans and other sprouts. Interesting plants.

So I've started the rotation, beginning with planting red clover in a 200 sqft area. The only clover seed the farmer's co-op here offers is red clover; the only innoculant they offer is for alfalfa and sweet clover, so I used that, but wonder if the innoculant needs to match the seed exactly.

By the way, the oats I planted early last fall as a top cover layer on some new trenches, and which grew a lush 14" before winter killing - now that it's flat and dead it doesn't look like it contributed much organic matter. Better as winter cover than green manure - but people here probably aren't surprised by that.

I've read a bit online about the book Teaming with Microbes and am happy to see the authors praise 'cold composting' as more nutritious.

Tiffy, I'd been meaning to contact this guy for a long time with specific questions - you gave me the push to go ahead. We are lucky to have him in NS.

Paul, I'd suggest starting a tablespoon or two of alfalfa sprout seed every day of the week year-round, and regularly put any sprouts which you don't eat onto your garden. Given the nitrogen problem, they'd likely serve your gardens best as a blender'd slurry for surface treatment and/or foliar feed. But they'd also help improve your compost.

However, perhaps more important than the sprouts themselves, is the rinsewater used to soak them once a day. I don't have any scientific studies to point to on this, but years back some friends who were constant home sprout growers claimed that germinating sprouts developed and released all kinds of nutrients, and the nutrient mix changed from day to day.

What I'd suggest is an A/B comparison of identical varieties of plants in similar soil and sun conditions. Toss the sprout rinsewater on one group of plants and give another group the same amount of plain water. If I was a betting man, I'd bet which one would soon be healthier.

As I wrote, the results of rinsewater and a slurry of alfalfa sprouts on a carbon-heavy soil bed was spectacular. Don't have the science to back this up, but the experience was convincing. :)

All the best,
-Patrick

Paul: the most reliable source of nitrogen in my experience is peas and beans in your rotation -- every 4 or 5 years will provide quite enough. In the meantime I would use alfalfa meal and fish emulsion. I am surprised that you have 5% organic matter (if I read aright) in sandy soil; it's usually a struggle to get organic matter to stay put. Sounds super for potatoes. Lack of lambs quarters and pigweed sounds like a steady diet of manure is needed (in England one of the names of lambs quarters is midden weed). Regards, Peter.

Fascinating subject and well done, paulns. Even though I live more than 3,000 miles away in a subtropical zone, much of the advice you received from the ag agent fits with my experience of 35 years of hort landscaping and 20+ years of organic food production. We make lots of carbon- and fungal-rich compost tilled into permanent beds and augmented by organic fertilizers balanced for specific main crops. Often light tilling alone stimulates bacterial actions for quick releases of nitrates and other nutrients.

Madmagic, tell me more about use of alfalfa sprout wash and waste as soil enriching material.

Hey Marshall. :) Not much to tell, really. Just the anecdotal evidence from one casual experiment, and a few guesses.

When I grew the alfalfa sprouts (indoors) I soaked the seeds for a day then drained them, rinsed them once, then put them in a tall clean glass jar with holes drilled in the plastic lid.

Once a day thereafter, I'd fill the jar with water, let it stand for five minutes or so, then drain. After a few days of growth in indirect light, the sprouts grew big enough to eat.

Whatever sprouts didn't get eaten were put in a blender with a small amount of water and turned to mush. This slurry was poured over the garden bed soil, covered lightly, and left for the next spring.

All of the sprout soaking & rinse water was also poured on the surface of the garden bed.

Now, the following is pure speculation on my part, but it might help explain the boost in growth.

Someone I knew years ago -- a very bright and idealistic person -- actually lived for a while on a diet of various kinds of seed sprouts. This person didn't like the ways animals and plants were raised, didn't approve of the politics and economic inequalities of food distribution, and wanted to avoid contributing to those systems.

They told me it was possible to get all the necessary human nutrients, including proteins, by eating a variety of sprouted seeds. Apparently sprouts contain all that people need to survive and be healthy. However, they said it was crucial to eat a wide variety of seeds -- and eat them at different points in their sprouting cycles.

(I'm sure most people reading this have their eyebrows raised and are thinking "whatta flake" or similar. Let me quickly note this person was eccentric -- but also genuinely idealistic, hardworking, and damn smart. I worked alongside them on multiple projects and never once doubted their word. I thought what they were doing was unusual, but entirely believable.)

Anyway... back to using sprout water and sprouts in the garden.

It may be there is something in the root exudates from the sprouts which provides helpful nutrients, or in the sprouts themselves. I have no idea.

As well, alfalfa supposedly contains triacontanol which I gather is a natural growth stimulant. I don't know if this chemical is present in significant quantities in the seed/ sprouts, or not.

Finally, I wonder if there is some kind of growth stimulant or special nutrient which is released by sprouting seeds.

I haven't been curious enough to repeat this experiment with any controls. Perhaps this summer I'll try an A-B test on plants in the garden, or beds side by side. A pound or two of alfalfa seed for sprouting isn't real expensive, be interesting to see what difference it makes.

All the best,
-Patrick

Hi Madmagic,
Where do you get these alfalfa seeds for sprouting? A typical nursery,in the seed packet section or can I use alfalfa pellets from a 50# sack. I throw the pellets on my lawn and around bushes and they do not sprout. I am interested in sprouting alfalfa sprouts, pea shoot (the ones you can by in one pound plastic bags in asian markets), and corn sprouts for edibled decorations on dinner plates. This would be for small time personal use, enough for small parties of 20 or less. I am a little bit weary about the 50# sack since it is used for horse feed.
Thanks so much!

lsl33, I found alfalfa seeds (labelled as organically grown) in the sprout supplies section of a health food store. They're not the same as alfalfa meal, which as I understand it is the dried and powdered remnants of the whole alfalfa plant above ground.

The best addition I made to my garden last year was a 50lb sack of alfalfa and I gave away many small bags of it to local gardener friends. This year I'll likely pick up 100lbs of it; it was a great source of nitrogen and really helped the plants to bush up early in the season.

Personally, I wouldn't attempt to replace the benefits of 50lbs of alfalfa meal with alfalfa sprouts and rinse water alone. Perhaps this year you could test sprouts and rinsewater on one part of your garden, while relying on the pellets for another part? It would give you an idea how they compare in benefits.

All the best,
-Patrick

Madmagic,
Thanks! I have a large healthfood store close by, they sell all sorts of stuff in bulk form. I am SURE they will have the sprouts seeds there!

Peter and Marshall it's good to hear from you, your voices always inspire confidence.
By peas and beans I take it you mean heavier seeding than for a food crop? Any particular varieties? As for manure, last summer we discovered a motherlode not 2 miles from here - the man has one very large horse, and a pile that's been growing for years, which he'd be happy for us to take. We'll need to get a new truck before we can haul it though.

This new perspective on fungal/bacterial soil has me thinking back to things I studied in an organic farming course, which only really resonate now. For instance, the idea that an organic farm can't 'close the loop' re: fertilizer unless it has livestock.

So many people have recommended alfalfa pellets here that I'll see about getting some next time we're in town.

Patrick, I've got a 1-gallon jar near full of sprouted mustard and red clover...seems like a drop in the bucket for our gardens but a great idea for an urban plot.

We do need to get a soil test done, if only to have a copy of the results to send to Kimmsr. :)

I've been observing our soil some more and have a new idea about how our system works - or isn't working. It's sandy soil, which in the past few years we've covered with a mulch of compost, seaweed, eelgrass and leaves, not tilled, and left over winter, expecting worms and the microherd to do the 'tilling'. But our sandy acidic soil is not a great habitat for worms, and the climate is cool to cold, so the bacteria are not very active. So the soil stays in two layers, soil and mulch. That is why a light tilling or turning is necessary.

I've noticed that in the areas where I or the chickens turned the mulch under somewhat in the past few weeks, the mulch has disappeared - incorporated into the soil. There's also the molasses I sprayed over the mulch.

paulns: I mean regular food-cropping quantities, not heavy cover-cropping quantities. Now I do grow kind of French-intensive in narrow (4 1/2 foot) beds, so my quantities are larger than most backyard or market gardeners'. Example, I put three double rows of peas in a bed, each double row is 4" spaced in a zig zag. And I do find this provides enough N for a mixed 5-year rotation. Ah! but I also add 1/2" of compost every year or every other year depending on what I have. If I had sandy soil, I would be growing a winter rye cover as well. This seems to prevent the compost from burning up, and allows organic matter to build. Regards, Peter.