Forest Notes: Capturing Microbes
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- Опубліковано 14 жов 2024
- Diving into Korean Natural Farming with my first IMO, or Indigenous Microorganism collection. This is mostly documenting a walk through the steps as I've learned them, and explaining why I'm trying it in the first place.
More info!!! naturalfarming...
I’ve been binge watching your videos.
Great information that has really helped my gardening. Thank you.
Very good info. I especially appreciate you have recognized the danger of bringing in outside humus, hay, compost and straw, even from the big box store. I have been wrecked this year by aminopyralids and it looks just like the image you showed. Lots of downside and gambling with outside resources. I appreciate your experimenting, good stuff. I really enjoy your efforts.
I've never had more problems with using outside soil than I have this year. 😑 But I haven't used it in years either now, until recently. The good stuff I like is $15/bag, which at an acre of need = NOPE. (I do still buy the good stuff to top dress some though, and bulk it out with finely composted mulch I've deemed to be safe enough.)
this isn't feasible unless you have a bigger plot of land, but have you thought about getting livestock? You rotate them through fallow portions of the farm, they eat the grass, maybe you let a nitrogen fixing cover crop like trefoil grow, and then the cows poop all over the field. The soil gets a break, gets nitrogen fixed, and fertilized all at once
I've thought about it, but can't do stocking at any impactful density without supplemental feed, and looking at my neighbor's overstocked cow paddock, it honestly may result in even more compaction issues. So livestock in this space would potentially create more problems than it would solve.
@@VeronicaFlores Think chickens & moveable fencing & house on wheels with egg laying spaces 😀 . If you're vegan is less financially tenable though 🤔. 🌷
I've been offered free 1/4-inch-screened forest loam (from archeology site) to amend my suburban hardpan clay, only enough for few small beds. But I already have enough weeds & weird plants competing with my lawn. Should I turn it down 🤔? But that stuff looks & feels heavenly!
Just built a collection box and got the rice ready .. heading out to the forest today .. your video gave me assurance ! Thanks
I've been reading about less harmful farming methods too. One of the more interesting ones was basically not tilling at all, so as to not break up all the filaments / mycelium or however you spell it. That way there's already a network in your soil that your vegetable plant's roots can tap into. Can always throw down some mulch for fertilizer. I think it's worth experimenting with.
YES. No till is key to keeping soil life in place! Some of the best produce I've grown has been supported by a fungally dominant environment.
I've been researching "tillage radishes & turnups" which can bust clay and completely hoe in before spring food crop planting as in-place compost, 24-inch root thru up to frozen to death greens. Fascinating imho. Love your detailed channel!
I learn something new from everyone of your videos, thank you for sharing them!!
Keep gardening and enjoy life to the fullest!!
Thanks for watching! ❤️
OMG you're back! Hii! This is so fascinating and I cannot wait to see how everything turns out!
I'm back!!! Had to take some time to focus on my health and also researching this stuff. I feel a duty to provide the best direction I can find to other growers, and want to make sure I get it as close to "right" as humanly possible. 🙂
Hi #Veronica. Love this experiment, and your general attitude and way of doing things. We have salty soil deposits round the Scottish coast and Hebridean islands. 'Duke of Argyle's tea tree' is used traditionally with wild cabbage as herby ground cover.
The evergreen tree makes great wind breaks and takes up some salt, and wild cabbage absorbs salt from soil also. And is edible. (Chickens love it.) Thanks for posting your smiley faced permaculture adventures, your cheery smile is infectious. :)
Hi, Veronica. I’m new to your channel but I find what you are trying to achieve to be very interesting. I have a permaculture farm in the middle of the National forest in S. IL. If your aim is to create a forest soil then you ought to be concentrating on obtaining forest fungi even more than you are the forest microbes. This is because forests are fungi-dominated whereas grasslands are bacteria dominated. To increase the diversity and amount of forest fungi in the soil around my fruit trees, I go out in the forest and retrieve logs or sticks with fungi on them and then take them back and bury them in the soil around my fruit trees. I leave some of the wood sticking up to simulate an old stump. I just keep adding this fungi-inoculated wood to my soil little by little, collecting some more wood every time I go hiking, and I have used it to turn my fruit tree beds into ‘hugelkulture’ mounds. I use this trick for all my fruit trees. I have peaches, nectarines, pears, cherries, figs, etc. and all are healthy, vigorous and relatively pest and disease resistant. I works great. When I rake away the bark chip mulch and dig into the underlying soil to plant something new, I find that it’s just covered with the white mycelium from the fungi. Try it out and tell me if it works for you! One more tip, for this trick to work, your fruit tree beds have to be large - mimicking a forest edge. All to often, I see people planting a fruit tree (or any tree for that matter) in the middle of their lawn with just a small circle of wood mulch (if any) around its base. When I see that, I just shake my head and sigh. The reason that their tree grows so poorly is no surprise to me, they are planting it in an alien bacteria-dominated soil that mimics a grassland rather than planting it in a fungi-dominated soil that mimics its natural and preferred home - the forest! All the best, Eric
We love you Veronica! You remind me of my granddaughter
Keep up the good work!
❤️
I think you'll enjoy good success w/ your microbe harvesting. If you haven't already look into aerobic compost tea. Setup can be very simple & inexpensive. 55 gallon barrel w/ rainwater, cheap $5-10 Harbor Freight water pump, cheap aquarium air pump, some sort of porous container for about a gallon of well developed compost. The water just needs to gently circulate through or across the compost in a burlap bag or in a basket. I use a timer that runs for 1/2 hour 6 times daily. Air pump provides O2 for the microbes and gentle circulation. Add unsulphured molasses for microbe food.
Once inoculated you shouldn't have to add more compost but I like to just to freshen the "wildlife" swimming in it. Mosquitos don't seem to breed in it like this but if they do... pick up a few minnows at your local bait shop & viola, you just added a little fish shit microbio to the mix for your garden! Happy plants!
Omg thank you for your enthusiasm. I have been doing some of the same things this season so I will be watching and learning from your exploits. I love your joy of fungal matter and as you called them "molds" I too find them wonderful.
It's really all so exciting!
Love the channel ! Got me thinking 🤔create wood chips from your own property, (so as not to introduce outside chemicals) carry them into the forest and bury them in the forest , ( for the inoculation ) then depending on the time needed for the inoculation, transplant them back into your garden or orchard 🤷♂️🤷♂️👍
I’m down to play if anyone wants to get me an industrial chipper 😬
im so happy I stumbled across this video!
G'day Veronica, great to see you back with another video, this is really interesting can't wait to see the results from this. Keep up the great work.
Hello Veronica and GTSY! Cold up here,Sun hasnt been on a good visit in weeks,,,Great project,Don't understand to well But I have my hands full for this year but may look into this next year..STay well Your looking super
This is so interesting! We have a lot of forest on our land too, this is giving me great ideas.
wow! Sorry, I havent watched a vid by you in a year Veronica but you covered two seperate issues i'm having with my soil!! Glad you're still out here!! Happy growing & hello from Canada.
Glad to see you back now! 🙂
Really interesting stuff! Definitely something I'd be interested in experimenting with around where I live. I'm interested to see how this progresses. Thanks for sharing!
From my understanding, after taking Elaine Inghams course on soil biology, the woods are full of beneficial fungi (and mycelium) because the trees are feeding them. No food for mycelium = no mycelium even if you inoculate your soil, they will die off (unless you find a way to feed them). Tree leaves in general are about 30:1 c:n which is a bacterial food, but as the leave dries up ON THE TREE, the tree reduces the c:n ratio to say 100:1. Now it's a fungal food. Then it drops it to the ground. The leaves are cover for the insects help keep moisture and eventually become food for the beneficial fungi. The fungi then help the trees with nutrients and a million other things.
Rice is mainly a bacteria food, but the wooden basket (c:n ratio of wood can vary from 500:1 to 2000:1) is fungal food, so the beneficial fungi should start to decompose the basket, not the rice.
I'm curious about this for sure, as from my practice so far most of the fungi I've cultivated has required a higher C ratio substrate (which doesn't enter this equation until step 2.) Any idea what the C:N of hulled rice is? I can't find much info.
@@VeronicaFlores Usually nuts and seeds average around the 10:1 C:N. If it is hulled I'm guessing it will be even less. The smallest bacteria are around 5:1 C:N. They are the quickest to suck up nutrients at those kind of ratios and then they multiply. They don't poop, they multiply. Larger bacteria like an Amoeba are around 30:1 C:N and they do poop. It is their poop that is the perfect food for the plant. If none of the tiny bacteria are eaten by larger prey all the nutrients get tied up (as bacteria) but none are available for the plant. The fungi are good at decomposing woody materials, C:N 50:1 and higher. They also extract nutrients from the sand silt and clay (soil). When they get eaten by nematodes and other things the poop becomes perfect nutrients for the plant. That is why our soil is depleted. It's not depleted of nutrients, rather depleted of the organisms that create the nutrients for the plants. Sorry I kept on, but most people don't get this yet.
No worries in keeping on if you have something that actually makes sense to explain! Still learning about C:N and the materials and cycles that influence it, so all info in that space is good here. 🙂
love the information you give in videos thanks for that
You always get my wheels spinning with new ideas to explore! I'm working on a pretty heavy sandy clay and have hauled in lots of wood chips and organic material and just piled it up and planted in it. Sort of back to eden but also sort of not. I was told by plenty of people that I'd come to rue the day I decided to go with wood chips but I'm into my second year and my garden is rockin!
I've run across several people on fb and other platforms who have had terrible losses in their gardens due to using manure mixes from big box stores that was loaded with herbicides so I'm thanking my lucky stars that I'm not using it anymore. I'd be so bummed if all my plants started from seed and babied till transplant were to shrivel and die!
Yeah this is the first time I've seen it in person, was lucky at the last farm to have manure on site and know our hay sources were local and minimal or no spray.
I've learned that it's best to get bulk manure compost in fall, as animals have often been pasture fed the spring prior. We've been noticing damage with the stuff you get in winter/spring, so I'm guessing supplemental hay feed is the culprit here.
BTE is great if you have the materials! Does take a year or two to get rocking and balance that C:N ratio a bit better, but such a fantastic way to hold water and keep organic materials out of the landfill.
@@VeronicaFlores my son works for a tree company so I get all the chips I want! And I get my manure from a local company that processes chicken poo and bags it. Stuff works great!
This is so amazing!! Thanks for sharing!!!
Can't wait for the update because I've wanted to do this for quite some time...i hope it works
Girl you are a ray of sunshine
❤️🌞🌞🌞
You're doing revolutionary work. Love seeing this process unfold :) Don't stress about the dirt falling in, consider it an inoculation :) You want the soil organisms in there anyway. After collecting the IMO from an area I usually mix some of the soil from the collection site into a separate little container with some of the rice IMO to inoculate my worm bins :)
Also take some of the leaves too!! :D
Phew! That's a relief to hear. Good to see you on here too! 🙂
you are doing a great job keep "Growing On"!
Thx Veronica! I learned a lot today...
I learn so much from your videos every time i watch you. And will continue to watch all of your future videos so i can learn about nature and not just gardening. Thank you and great job well done !!!
Very informative video from a very beautiful woman ! Thanks .
Awesome video. You have given me the confidence I needed to get started on my channel.
Yay! The world needs more gardeners sharing how to grow! ✊
Curious to see what comes of this! first time im hearing about this stuff.
Where are your gloves?
Wonder if ants would eat it. Or other critters, how are you using that in your garden?...looking forward to more videos and updates.
Byez
Idk the dogs hid them from me. No issue with ants so far! Stay tuned for use case. 🙂
Exciting! curious to see how this goes, just added a bunch of wood so rotted it had hardly any weight.. and as i picked it up from the forest floor to my amazement i felt fearless in seeing the life erupt from it in my hands.. roots sprawled through it, insects running all directions and my all time biggest fear, the fungi.. but my hands continued to crumble it as i collected it in my bag..
Ahhhh that stuff is the best!!! ✊ ❤️
I was going through withdrawals since the last video. Good to see you back.
Lol
Lol had some stuff I needed to take time to work on. Will try to not disappear for a month at a time!
@@VeronicaFlores this is the busy time of year for you. No apologies needed for supplying us with great content.
Jadam is an ancient Korean gardening method composting. David the good also talks about doing that by using anaerobic metabolism
Yeah I was between jadam and knf as far as directionally, but knf had better vibes for me personally.
I kid you not, the most productive tomato plant I've ever grown was a Cuostralee that was loaded, and I mean cartoonishly loaded with fruit. It was fertilized with compost made with oak woodland leaf mold. I wonder if the microbes I harvested made the difference.
Possibly!
" Just like Ronnie said,, be my little microb, " Eddie Money sang while in the forest. ;p)
Love that song, saw him in concert back in the late 80s
When music was music!
"Be my little hyphae" 😂
Nice, I have been researching and testing some stuff as well, I watched a few videos on the relationship of bacteria and fungi. I am trying some mycorrizal fungi and molasses this year along with the compost and compost tea. I like taking some woods soil as well, great life in that soil!!
Agreed! I'm being cautious with molasses/sugar/etc in my space though, mostly because I read something about creating a "boom and bust" cycle in terms of microbial populations, and also because of ants. Still researching...
@@VeronicaFlores Agreed, I am total small scale with a garden and a bunch of pots growing in the sunniest spot of my driveway, but I can experiment better with the pots since I can use some controls....my soil has come a long way since picking up tips on UA-cam...
Was wondering why you didn't use the leaves that are composting already? Or put the on top of the rice?
I want to try the process by the book first. 🙂
I'm bummed out this is a new video, I looked at the date and realized I will have to wait a good while before you get to update us 😭
No it will be next week! Gonna check my culture tomorrow and see if we're ready to move on or not...
Glad you did not fall off the ladder clearing the canopy
Hey Veronica,
I have subscribed for a few months now and love seeing your experimentations, you even persuaded me to build my own worm bin which I now love and is really productive! I have been watching some videos on this on youtube and was interested to see how it works (the one I specifically remember the guy used a pair of tights - or pantyhoes as you would call them in the states - with the rice which he farmed the microbes with). I am interested to know though if this is different from Mycorrhizal Fungi or if this is the same thing? and if so, what is the next stage after you have harvested this to then use it in the garden? although I don't want to jump ahead of the process as I'm sure you will be showing that!
I have thought about trying this bus as I live in central London I don't really have any forests nearby so that I could try this out myself, although saying that I do have some parks nearby so I could do an experiment to try this myself there - hopefully the foxes won't get to the rice though...
I have been purchasing various Mycorrhizal Fungi products from Amazon like this: www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0117G5DWA/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_h7w-CbG68KBS4 or this one: www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01N7UYX2F/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_Hax-CbKBM2VW3 which I find very useful as you can add it to water and water established plants without having to disturb the roots. I have a balcony with outdoor plants and quite a collection of indoor plants - Including a living wall in my living room! - I'll follow your Instagram so you can have a peek if you are interested. Using the Mycorrhizal Fungi has certainly increased the growth and survival of some tricky specimens that I have had trouble growing in the past. and even helped me bring some plants back from near death which feels like quite an achievement!
In any case, loving your videos and looking forward to seeing how the process goes - I'm just about to watch part 2!
And if you are ever travelling to London ( I saw the community garden you were at in Berlin - Awesome!) let me know as there are some awesome places I think you would love!
Stu
Thanks for joining! I'll have to take a look at the pantyhose one, I'm not entirely sure if it's the same tbh, though he could just be using it as a covering.
Yes, going to show the next step soon (next week- it doesn't seem ready to go quite yet.) Basically propagating it out on substrate and then having it chill with some compost and native soil for a bit.
One of the things I've heard of people in the city doing when getting into KNF is taking a bag or bucket to their local park or woodland to collect a little leaf mold, then doing the rest of the microbe capture process at home. I'm not saying that you should take a shovel or collect like gallons of the stuff, but... a few good handfuls probably won't be too missed. ;) (Just make sure to not leave bare patches!)
Excellent presentation and very informative... I only have one question Veronica... what kind of dogs do you have ?
A lot of them! Mostly loud mutts.
@@VeronicaFlores Mutts are the best !
It may not be as effective as the process you have started, but I have for the past three years found deep humus deposits under old shaded tree falls near my house. About a coffee can worth of this is added to my compost pile every Spring and then again in the Fall as an innoculant. No research or A/B comparisons, but I thought I would bring some soil life from the woods into my garden.
That can totally help! I would just need to rake the entire forest to treat a whole acre, so I'm looking for less invasive options. 🙂
Love your knowledge
You are my spirit animal
amazing rebellious Wild hair.
i love it
😍
It does what it wants! 😂
Not knocking your method but a faster method you could do would be to make a compost tea by just grabbing dirt from right there where your baskets lay and put it into a mesh bag so the soil doesn't fall out. Then add it to "non-chlorinated" water in a 5 gallon bucket with an air bubbler using air stones. Add a few tablespoons of unsulfered molasses and within 24 hours you will had captured and created a compost tea full of the indigenous microbial life and ready to apply to your field with a pump sprayer or sprayer attachment for your garden hose. I believe I've read microbes reproduce to the 4th power every hour. So it doesn't take long to brew an army.
Not my personal method - as far as I'm aware, this method was developed to inoculate much larger areas of soil with a higher diversity of species.
Very cool! Also, crop rotation is important and split your growing area into sections and make sure each section gets "a year off" every 7 years.
Yes for the most part, and for typical gardening use cases, though I've been finding a lot of literature lately about working with self seeding and self dividing annuals in the same space to no ill effects... it really all comes down to soil quality and health.
I've missed your videos for the last month!! Glad to see you're back! Is there a reason that you don't 'seed' the rice with some of the mycelium (sp?) that's already breaking down the forest duff layer, by putting some leaves with mycelium in the basket? Or is that not the type of microbes you're looking to collect? Or would that type of mycelium completely take over and keep any other types of microbes out, thus no variety?
Thanks! I missed you guys too, and documenting the process, but needed to take a step back for just a minute as I was feeling a little burned out (this is my busy season lol.)
Tbh, I'm not sure what the reason is... perhaps some molds would take over before other things can grow? I thought about changing the method, but I'm trying to test things exactly the way I learned them and then go from there. 🙂
I would have thought putting some of the decomposing leaves directly on the rice would have helped a little more?
Great job. I always learn something. Trying to root some cuttings right now. I really hope you'll start a cooking channel someday too!!
I plan on it as soon as I finish remodeling my shack! Need more $ first.
Have you tried cutting out a block of soil from the forest that is full of mycelium and planting it in the field to help inoculate the surrounding area?
I haven't done exactly that - I prefer to try and propagate biology out, then add it, for better coverage and less disturbance to healthy soil
Thanks...I'm going to do this in SE India
I enjoy the way that you get excited by fungi... The simple things in life...lol
They're so exciting! 🤓
Hey I have a question. I am growing a bunch of peppers, bell peppers if it matters, and a load of them are doing very well. But I have 2 that are kinda turning a bit yellow. Im terrible with plants a\but im trying to learn more. What would make two plants turn yellow while the others, which are treated identically, seem happy?
FLexxxtreme Im not talking about the peppers, im talking about the leaves.
You could have a couple plants, i presume from same seed source, that just might have lost out on the genetic lottery during pollination.
Steve Hatcher Yeah, there is definitely some lottery involved. There is one plant that started practically identical to all the others but after a few weeks it is maybe 4 times the size. It hasn’t flowered yet, but it has maybe 8 times as many buds as the rest. It is the deepest deep green, and by far the healthiest. But even still, the ones going yellowish are disappointing. They were both the first to flower, too. Is that related maybe? The healthiest plants seem to be the slowest to flower.
Karen S I live in south carolina, so its much warmer here. I planted them in early april when the average daily temp started being like 80 degrees. Now the average temp is like 85-95. Today’s forecast is 95 degrees. They might be overwatered, maybe I wont water the two yellow ones for a day or two.
Peppers sometimes stress when they're hot... assuming your soil is well amended since your others are healthy, and they're getting the nutrients they need, it could possibly be over watering / water logged roots, or it could also be genetic lottery as mentioned. Lots of seed suppliers are not selecting for resilience in favor of volume to meet demand... part of growing is that we overplant so that we can identify and weed out the plants that exhibit poor tolerance and save seed from the most robust ones. (I know, it's frustrating AF.)
So happy to see one of my favorite people again! Still waiting for a labor invite to come help you grow your eden :)
Haha I'll do work days at some point! Still learning the direction that this land wants me to go with it in. 🙂
Have you tried using mycorrhizal inoculant on your cover crop seed? Presumably they are the chief “soil building” microbes, although bacteria likely plays a supporting role. The thing I like about inoculants is how efficient they are. I am trying this new one that John Kempf recommends, which is only 50 grams per acre!
You can culture local mycorrhizae to inoculate your gardens. Commercial ones may be introducing non-native species into your environment. That said, the commercial ones are easy and still very beneficial to most your plants. Most use very common species that are very widespread. So maybe not that much of an issue if local or not. Though local ones would already be well suited to your soil type as well as the populations of other microbes they interact and exchange nutrients with.
I have! I use finely a powdered mycos in my top-dressing blend, though I've backed away from rhizobacteria innoculants as my native soil seems to have those in spades (actually saw deceased assistance in inoculated legumes vs ones planted without, so it could be the "non native" thing as mentioned above.)
Hi Veronica, have you heard of a guy called Charles Dowding? He's a British market gardener of over 30 years experience and he is very big on soil structure and health.
I'm sure that you'll be familiar with a lot of what he says, but thought I'd mention it, because his data and information is good and his market garden is extremely productive from a small area, simply using sound soil healthy methods.
I enjoy your channel - thank you.
YES! LOVE HIM. I learn SO much from his Instagram feed!!! And thank you! :)
He has a UA-cam channel - just search using his name. He suggests minimal digging promotes and maintains soil structure, retention of moisture and carbon. Cutting rather than digging up or ploughing previous crops, to maintain mycorrhizal fungi and beneficial bacteria that help out-compete harmful bacteria. His results do back up his theory and he does side by side comparisons of dig / no-dig and publishes his data (crop mass in both cases).
@@VeronicaFlores - cool, that's good to hear, thought you'd be on a similar wavelength. Thanks for your time on the vid's by the way - I enjoy your work. :)
I saw I guy do this with the rice in a pantyhose he tied a stick to it with a flag at the end so he could find it again once he buried it. I really want to give it a try. Cant wait to see how it turns out.
Veronica, you shared a book in one of your instagram stories about soil. I think you were listening to it as an audiobook. What was it??
Also...this is utterly fascinating. Sort of like an ... arboreal koji-kin .. ? Somebody call René Redzepi - we need Noma to open a farm.
Yes! Noma actually does have a farm now (I was put in contact with René a few years ago about it while it was in the planning stages, but froze and dropped the proverbial ball. 😑)
The book may have been "Dirt to Soil" or "Growing A Revolution"? Both are excellent, and highly recommended.
Korean Natural Farming is the Biodynamics of Asia.
I just love watching u ❤️💙❤️💙
What too do with cucumbers plants being devoured be pest I think is beattles and slugs lost alot of starts and used organic remedy of proroxide and water thinking about neem oil and dish soap but what's your suggestion in an organic farmer's perspective..Thank you for your videos 😂
For beetles I pick them off and squish or throw into a bucket of soapy water. For slugs I add crushed eggshells around the base of the plant or DE.
Beattles attack at nite and cause a plant by one of the bites a desease in the plant.. I'm trying need oil for other things haven't worked
Lots of wood chips. That will get the soil back to shape.
I've considered it, but I'd need about 100 yards of wood chips (approx 14 dump truck loads, probably more) for the size of space I'm trying to remediate, and don't want to tie up my (limited) nitrogen for that long while the wood gets to a decent point of decomposition. Am mixing some composted mulch into my top dressing blends though, just to get the fungal cycles going again. :)
Hey veronica, i know this is off topic but i know you cook and do kitchen stuff as well. Could you do a video on how to cucumber home grown cucumbers (dill)?
I just set up cooking videos as my first goal on Patreon! So depending on how quickly support happens, they're totally on the list. 🙂 www.patreon.com/veronicaflores
Welcome back beautiful :)
I wonder, why not simply take leaves and soil to put them where you need them?
That's what they used to do and still do in the Ozarks. Walk down hill into the woods scoop up a bucket full
of black fully decomposed forest litter from under the leaves here and there then dump it up on the ridge top
closer to the house for garden purposes.
One or two buckets now and then, being mindful not over harvest from one spot and quickly over time you
have soil aplenty.
Mostly because I'm treating an acre so looking for methods at scale. 🙂
Totally agree that it's a good addition to composting for a smaller space - AFAIK, knf is about creating "microbes on demand" so to speak.
Thanks for the idea xp. I need more clean compost for my indoor garden. I hope you use bio rice btw :p. Rice absorbs all the pest and herbicides people use for growing it. Full of heavy metals and shit. Rice is pretty unhealthy from the wrong source.
For sure bio. I buy California grown organic rice, as that's the most local product I can currently get. Looking at growing my own in the future though. So much potential in that plant. 🙂
Cheers :). Stay healthy! Have you thought about growing potatoes and not harvesting? I read somewhere that its rly great for soil, have not tried that myself sinds i also read potatoes znd fruit tree's dont mix. I use somekind of russian comfrey that doesnt spread.
Well, you're looking in all the right places. Digging, rabbit holes... You're going to find microbes there. If you're lucky you may even find a Tickle Me IMO. You may want to get some tiny little ropes.
😂😂😂❤️
IMO,, Imagine My Optimism, to dig into this project : )
Love that! ❤️
First comment!! Thank you for your videos, I learn a lot
How come you don’t just grab the leafs that already have the white fungus growing in them
Thats kind of what i did, grabbed a piece of wood that had the white fungus in it already placed it in the hole where i was going plant my plant, put some dirt over it then placed the plant over it.
Not sure if i will work or no.
Possibly! I'm not doing it that way because I'm treating an acre, so I need my mixes to be bulked out and very microbially active in order to apply them without totally robbing the forest in the process.
Very exciting two and three levels beyond my imagination
Same! But that's why I have a microscope now. 🙂
@@VeronicaFlores badabook badabing so you're a scientist ie everyone has roundup poisoning tell me you're not reading my comments wo !
@@VeronicaFlores they have martial arts also
I don't even know where you're going with that lol. I avoid using Roundup because I know my weeds are generally beneficial for my ecosystem, and I'm not a control freak so I don't feel the need to operate from a scorched earth kill everything and only keep the monoculture we want mentality. 🤷🏻♀️
@@VeronicaFlores that was like a side note hope you're doing good we can talk about that later if you want so nice
Very interesting method 👍🏻
Nice
Please try to browse and identify Indonesian Natural Farming called JAKABA That have been invented by Abah Junaidi Sahidj , and have been proven . Hopefully you Will get interested.
Are you doing any ruth stout besides the hugelkulture?
To some extent... I think my methods currently are a little more forced "one straw revolution" than anything else, though I do rely on mulch as much as she does (and basically use any non-diseased plant matter to make it happen.)
The reason I ask is that several years ago I heard of a couple that used ruth stout using spoiled straw over winter.
They said this allowed inactive bacteria and fungi spores already in the soil to reactivate over winter and be ready to receive a crop in spring.
Does this make sense or was this just speculation on their part?
It makes some sense, though you do have to weigh the potential for herbicide damage when using straw these days.
Are you going the strict no herbicide route or allowing for 2,4-d? I find that smaller straw and hay providers will sometimes disclose what herbicides they use if asked.
@@bpora01Strict no herbicide route, I'm simply seeing too much damage even from digested hay in the form of manure (+ bedding I think.) There is a local farmer I'm talking with who doesn't spray, but he may need his entire harvest for his cattle. If not, I'm on the standby list. :)
👋😊😎
wouldn't it be easier to rake up some of the leaves to add to the field?
Yes but in my mind that's basically robbing Peter to pay Paul. I'm looking at amending an acre of land, and in order for the forest to keep building topsoil and stay in balance it needs its leaf litter to be kept in place.
You "started doing some digging?"
Badump-TSHH! I'll see myself out.
Joking aside, another great job. Now I need more land....
ALL THE PUNS 😂
How many month it will be dying ? I also do this method for micorhizzal fungi
Please ask my question
Regards
Sorry I don't quite understand the question?
@@VeronicaFlores how many time its need for full fermentation of beneficial fungi
I’ve seen this done before....not with wooden baskets tho I left a wooden basket in the soil under a tree one time and it actually decomposed the bottom of my basket 🧺
These will eventually break down no doubt. Was going to build cedar boxes with holes but the teacher I learned from suggested baskets would be better, and most thrift stores are loaded with them and they are CHEAP, so... starting here for now. 🙂
I understand that you did not want to disturb the soil. But it would have been even more interesting if you had transferred a soil (+ leaves) sample from the same place to a bucket - and repeated the same experiment elsewhere. My hypothesis is that there would not be so much difference. ;)
If I weren't doing an entire acre, I might have just layered leaf mold with compost and native soil for sure. I'm currently looking for things that can be scaled, as we need those answers like yesterday. 🙂
I feel like there are birds who wait for you to go in the forest so they can focus on what you're planting as their next meal, and rice is just like their perfect meal. 😂
That's why it's covered. 😬
@@VeronicaFlores I get that but birds are sneaky 🙂
If a bird can get into that crate, under the basket, and through the wire, then they're welcome to share my rice. 😂
@@VeronicaFlores you can hire them as protection birds. 🙂
They do eat a lot of insects for me!
I am super confused. What are you trying to capture?
I used to live near Santa Maria so I know you made a big change in environment oh, but you seem to be flourishing and that's awesome. But as far as biology in your soil oh, I suspect you are correct in that Forest tend to make fungal dominated compost oh, you need bacteria dominated compost. So just take and compost the leafs from the forest floor and add some boogie Brew or garden appropriate biology and let it compost. I totally agree that you don't want to add foreign compost because of the herbicide risk. David the good talks about that quite a bit. So only compost biomass that you generate on your property. Yes. You're adorable even as an adult 😀
Yes! Composting forest floor can totally help you get there... I'm just trying not to "rob Peter to pay Paul" so to speak, in terms of materials moved from the forest. 🙂
And big huge environmental change for sure! Between soil, pests, and weather, it's definitely playing in the big leagues here.
Hi this is your friend the astronaut
Oh I didn’t know I had Instagram?..I gotta follow
Interesting project 😊
I like what you've been doing....Have you checked out vids from microbiologist Elaine Ingham ?
Yes! Need to revisit a few though, as I'm just starting to feel like I can wrap my brain around all of this. Do you have a favorite?
@@VeronicaFlores not sure what to recommend. She has several vids of lectures and they vary on a theme. I'd say just pick one, can't go wrong. I'm in ontario, Canada, and there happens to be a vid where Elaine was speaking at a conference in ontario a few years ago. Her website is good too. I'm just starting out, this is basically all new to me. Feeling like it's a good way, this regen ag way
Yep! Feeling like it's the only way more and more tbh. Soils are so degraded, ecosystems are lacking in support, and the weather will only get worse... applied biology is the best way to go about trying to salvage and restore what's left.
Reading through the comments, I came across somebody talking about this for salty clay soil. Maybe the result of too much salt based commercial fertilizer. I'm working with sand. Any manures or plant based compost leaches through in a year or so....(except wood ashes accumulate, to the detriment of cucumbers.) I am also prepping for an orchard.
Since so much of your info has applied to me, I'm going to try this with the sandy forest I have available. Instead of top soil, it has wonderful black sand. But then again, in my work areas, I have to go down 3 feet before I get out of the black sand and into yellow.
You do seem determined to drag this technosauer away from his ways. I'm going to find somebody to show me how to do this "Instagram thing".
Sand seems so tough to me, but building organic matter rarely hurts!
You can also look at IG feeds on your desktop - instagram.com/flavorkit 🙂
This year hasn't been great for my garden. :(
Sorry to hear... what's going on? It's been tough on mine too. 😞
@@VeronicaFlores It's been a combination of things. The weather has been rough (dry and hot), I've been working full time (totally exhausted when I get home), tried growing multiple new plants. The lettuces have done well, carrots and beets are still doing ok, but the peppers and tomatoes are having a hard time. We are just now seeing the first rains. Hopefully things will turn around. :) ❤
You Should covered the basket from rain
I did! Just not on camera.
I had luck taking soil and putting it in a cardboard box, cutting hole in a paper plate and put rice in it. Close the box put it on my water heater and in 5 days lots of white fuzzy stuff…….
This is good for fungal but you need more microbial for veg ?
see if you can find some good bambus and do the same its better for your compost to feed veg and it works I have been doing it foryears
I wish you luck on your jouny but you are on the wright road
Thanks! Planning on doing multiple collections, just need to find more good baskets first. 🙂
#SaveSoil
Hope you get some nice beneficial colonization. Fingers crossed. ^_^
I do too! We got a ton of rain yesterday, but I covered my cultures as best I could. 🤞
I feel like the majority of gardening is trying to grow plants where they’re not supposed to grow. We try to mimic their natural habitat, but it can never be duplicated. I love your videos but I honestly feel like you’ll never do it. I’m sorry it’s not a knock against you. It’s just that no one can do what Mother Nature has done. Raised beds, fields, farms, everything in between. We’ll never pull off what nature has done.
Just because you don't believe it doesn't mean it should stop us from trying to do better! After all, it seems that many of the "wild spaces" we idealize had a hand from our ancestors, no? (Think Terra preta in the Amazon.)
so cute you are :)
Have you tried the pantyhose where you fill the pantyhose with rice?
No - that sounds like a recipe for adding more microplastics to my inputs
Thats funny not wanting basket's of rice all over the woods. I tried with no basket. It ate all the rice to nothing in 1 week. 😂
🤣