Thoughts
I love getting real stoned and daydreaming about the soil. I know, wtf is wrong with you, right? But it’s fun to me.
This project has me very excited for a number of reasons and I want to take a second to jot some of them here.
Fungal dominance. One of the major ways organisms improve and age the soil is by the contribution of enzymes to the soil. Many of these likely degrade via proteases, also contained in the soil, but many become bound in the soil matrix. Although they may lose much of their efficiency by being bound, even retaining 5% of their capacity to catalyze reactions would be enormous, over time. What is lost in efficiency is gained in stability, making these sensitive molecules more resistant to heat, pH, and oxidative stressors. This means that although the organisms which make enzymes may die, the enzymes they make may persist long past their death. As these enzymes accumulate over many life cycles, the soil itself becomes enzymatic in nature, with the ability to degrade organic material.
Which brings me back to the idea of fungal dominance. The reason I believe fungal dominance is so important, and why it contributes to the growth of enormously sized trees in a way that bacteria simply can’t keep up with by themselves, is that it supplies adequate carbon release in the soil which gives the soil the ability to support higher populations of microbes which translates to a faster soil economy aka nutrient cycling.
Carbon exchange between organisms is, in a sense, a measure of how much nutrient is available in the system. Every time carbon is exchanged between organisms, there seems to be some net release of other nutrients, whether it be nitrogen or otherwise. It would seem that raising the rate that carbon is released from organic material would permit larger overall microbe populations which in turn increases the rate of release of nutrients.
I want to point out, this doesn’t mean that you would run a soil test and see some insanely high saturated paste test result. I think that’s where my thinking has been fucked up for a while. The soluble nutrient pool is fine to look at, but it’s a snapshot. I think in a well balanced, but highly biologically active soil system, I would expect to see a surprisingly slim looking nutrient pool at any given moment. The very high populations of microbes would immobilize the vast majority of the nutrient in the soil, but because the populations are so high and churning so quickly, there’s a constant release of nutrient in plant available form.
So why not just feed carbon? My theory here, is that it’s the steady release of carbon into the system that helps to fuel the microbial fire. And while molasses is fine, it isn’t nearly as complex a carbon source as what would arise from the enzymatic breakdown of carbonaceous material. There are many, many enzymes which break woody material down into many different smaller fragments, and in nature, diversity is king. Plants also contribute with exudates, which is also a complex and diverse group of carbon-based foods for microbes, but the breakdown of dense carbon material acts as a steady supply of energy for all life in the soil. So while adding carbon is important, it’s using the best form and increasing the rate of carbon release which allows for fast enough nutrient cycling to support more robust vegetation. I believe this is why people often see the application of mulch compounding its beneficial effects year over year. It seems to also be reflected by the work of Dr Ingham who has set population parameters as a way of measuring soil health for various soil organisms. These population sizes indirectly reflect the speed which nutrients change forms, and how much carbon is being released into the system from all sources. Higher speed means that over time, nutrients will spend more time in a form that plants can utilize even if those nutrients are quickly immobilized by microbes. That is to say, regardless of the mineralized nutrient pool at any given moment, plants will always have access to mineralized nutrient due to the speedy rate of nutrient exchange in the soil.
Just some stoned thoughts, and I’m constantly making mountain sized assumptions, but why not.
If I were to do this again, I’d use cheesecloth for the filter step, and I’d use a higher water:cake ratio. It was a hassle to filter. It was pretty close to 1:2 cake:water and I’d probably double the water next time, at a minimum.
I am seeing some tip burn here and there but overall pretty healthy growth. These plants put on a pretty steady and continuous stretch… if these tops fill out, I’m gonna have a lot of smoke