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Microbes for Soil Improvement

The benefits of using microbes as part of a soil building program or fertilization program are as follows:

The broad and diverse population of soil microorganisms will immediately begin to build an aerobic zone in the soil. The aerobic zone is the top portion of the soil that supports plant life. A healthy soil will normally have an aerobic zone 8-12 inches deep. Most soils today have an organic matter content of less than 1% and usually have very shallow aerobic zones (1-2 inches). One of the main causes of this is the lack of diverse population of beneficial soil microbes. Soils that have low organic matter and shallow aerobic zones also have a very low water holding capacity, are compacted, and have very low oxygen content. These conditions are very adverse to good root development by turf or plants and usually indicate very low microbial activity. When you apply microbes, you will see conditions in your soil begin to change quickly. Usually the first change in the soil is a reduction in cladding and crusting which leads to a mellow and well-aerated soil surface that has a nice earthy smell. The reduction of the thick crusting and cladding will allow for a quicker more uniform plant stand. This reduces the need for replanting in most cases.

As the diversity of the microbial population in the soil is improved the characteristics of the soil will begin to change. The life cycle of the microbes in the soil will begin to add organic matter (humus) from their bodies as they reproduce and die. The microbes digest and degrade many forms of salt and chemical residues in the soil. By doing this, they change the soil’s Ph and the charge of soil particles from positive to negative and negative to positive freeing many nutrients which were previously tied up to soil particles unavailable in the soil solution for plant uptake. All soil nutrients must be degraded\digested by microorganisms from either an organic or inorganic source before these nutrients can become a part of the soil solution for plant use.

Another benefit to your soil from the life cycle of microbes in our products is the rapid building of soil humus. The soil humus is the storehouse of nutrients in the soil for plants. These nutrients are in readily available forms for the plants to use, as they are needed for plant growth and health. A healthy active microbial population will add about 3000 pounds of hums material to the soil per acre, per year. This humus material is almost pure protein from the bodies of microbes that have died as a result of their reproduction cycles. This humus material provides about 40 to 50 pounds of pure nitrogen, which is stored in the humus fraction of the soil readily available to plants through the soul solution for each 1% of organic matter (humus) that the soil contains. At this stage the soil begins to aggregate and the tilth of the soil is greatly improved. This means that your soil will hold nutrients and water much better as you improve the organic matter (humus) content of your soil. On farms where the microbes have been made a part of the fertilization program annually for four to five years, the organic matter has increased from less than 1% to 3% and more. This increased the soils water holding capacity by four to five times what it could hold at a 1% organic matter or less. A 1- inch rain per acre will yield approximately 28,000 gallons of water. A 1% or less organic matter soil can hold less than 10,000 gallons of this water. The rest along with nutrients and topsoil runs off. By increasing the organic matter content to 3% and more, that 1-acre can now hold 2-3 inches of rain or more and store a greater amount of nutrients with less topsoil runoff. In areas where there is little rain and it is necessary to irrigate, utilizing water holding capacity is of utmost importance. The ability of the soil profile to store moisture, allows the plant to endure greater stress periods before going into a wilting point. In test conducted by the Texas Plant and Soil Laboratory at Edinburgh, Texas, it was found that crops grown in soils with very high amounts of minerals, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sulfur, were actually very deficient on mineral uptake. This was shown with the plant tissue and petiole test. The plants had only 20% of the necessary mineral uptake for good plant growth and health. After applications of microbes, the new plant tissue and petiole test ran showed the plant mineral uptake had increased 60% to 80% over the pre-treatment test. This was done by the microbes’ ability to digest (solubilize) the minerals in the soil into the soil solution making them available for uptake by the plant as needed for growth.

In conclusion; benefits of using microbes are:

• Digest agricultural chemical residues that have built up in the soil causing hardpan and soil compaction.
• Move the pH toward neutral whether the soil is acidic or alkaline.
• Improve caution exchange for better movement of nutrients in the rhizosphere (root zone).
• Improve biological control of soil borne pathogens, through antagonistic control and or inhibition factors.
• Reduce fertilizer-input requirements
• Increase seed germination.
• Better weed kill with applications of herbicides due to increased seed germination reducing the need for subsequent applications.