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Making own Biologicals
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madflower
Posted 7/4/2024 19:52 (#10798664 - in reply to #10798178)
Subject: RE: Making own Biologicals


It depends on what you mean by biologicals.

For soil biology, the -easy- way, is good sweet smelling vermicompost, and then just do a compost extract it and then directly apply it. Worms eat what the bacteria and fungus broke down. So a good healthy worm bin already has aerated soil and a lot of bacteria.

Even Elaine Ingham and groupies have backed off on the aerated compost and compost tea a bit. It can go anaerobic pretty quickly if you aren't paying attention. I doubt you have a microscope and do the basic microscope work to identify what is in the sample. (not that you can't learn, just that it probably isn't on the top of your agenda. It is part of her coursework.) She has some fascinating things to say and some of it is applicable but leans way over to organics and permaculture, and neither are going to work for me.

If you want a tea, the base recipe is 4oz of fish and 4oz of kelp extract for a 55 gallon barrel. The fish is basically a whole whole pulverized in a blender, and the kelp or seaweed is I think fermented. You can buy both but you can also catch a small fish. Kelp is an Algae, so I don't know if there is a nutritional difference in sea vs pond algae or not. :) I also throw in ground up 'biochar' (charcoal) in mine because I needed to do something useful with the brush pile, but I soak it in pond water which removes nutrients algae thrives on first.

They said they tested the vermicompost wash in the field in Illinois, and 5 gallons an acre was about the sweet spot for them. These guys are much bigger then what we have. https://agribiosystems.com/ and I think they have a video. There is a DIY compost extractor'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4hbd8jvndMlake

You may have to apply it several times before they all get established since they have inter-dependencies, and it is also dependent on field conditions, food, water, air, etc. In reality, you are just trying to re-innoculate the soil mainly with aerobic microbes because compaction, heavily favors anaerobic microbes and they are at war with each other. :)

If you have the good smelling worm castings/compost, you have tons of bacteria, fungus and probably protozoans.
The trifecta is azospirillium bacteria, mycorrhizal fungus and beneficial nematodes. Azospirillium bacteria fixes nitrogen, mycorrhizal fungus is the stringy fungus that also attahes to plants roots and increases root surface area by up to 20x as it trades carbon for nutrients and stores and controls water, and nematodes are like tiny worms that attack various grubs and bugs you don't want.

OF those 3, the mycorrhizal is the hardest to replicate outside a lab in the quantity you want. Bacteria are okay as long as you can maintain sterile conditions, and the easiest one is probably nematodes. They replicate in grubs like wax worms that you can get from the pet store. or depending on the species, corn earworms which I am sure can be sourced rather inexpensively. The fungi and bacteria are used ais lot for plant cuttings, and there is some research for using some biologicals as seed coatings and in furrow application. These are the ones I buy to make sure I have them, and the prices are dropping since they are used in hydroponics a lot. There are certainly others especially bacteria or fungi, that can do other things like protect the plant from infestation or root rot.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27077274/










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