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I've been doing small backyard-scale experiments with soil-building the last few years and I've come around to the viewpoint that soil should be thought of as a

I've been doing small backyard-scale experiments with soil-building the last few years and I've come around to the viewpoint that soil should be thought of as a kind of distributed organism. (Someone once called this the "Gaia hypothesis writ small".) The soil organism is made up of myriad species of fungi, bacteria, insects, etc., but it seems to work as a whole (cf. Michael Levin's work, like "What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System - NeurIPS 2018" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg ) In any event, what I've found is that the health of the crops is most easily influenced by looking after the health of the soil (duh?) and that, if you get the soil right, the plants seem like they can't help but grow vigorously.

pohl 5y ago
Not more than a month ago I spent almost an hour trying, unsuccessfully, to google that Michael Levin talk, having forgotten his name, the title, the forum, etc. Thank you, thank you for the link!
vollmarj 5y ago
Me too! Could you say more about what kinds of experiments you've been doing and how you are measuring the results? I've been using the Haney Soil Test along with Phospholipid Fatty Acid Analysis (PLFA) to understand how my management practices have been impacting overall soil health and microbe communities. I've been thinking about how I wish I could collaborate more with others on research to help build a dataset that can be used to quantify the effects of regenerative farming.
- hazza_n_dazza 5y ago
  Measuring humus is a great start to measuring soil quality. Simply looking at the 'black' left on ones hands after feeling the soil is a great start. It is an established science (soil management), just not applied in commercial farming very often.
- carapace 5y ago
  I haven't done anything quite that sophisticated! I have only "anecdata" to contribute. We are basically on sand dunes here and our "soil" is what I call "dirty sand". I had a bunch of wood chips with some chicken manure and feathers in it and I spread that about six inches deep over a bare patch of sand. I added potatoes and kept it moist. Now, a year and a half later, there's a layer of rich living soil between the sand and the wood chips. There are lots of worms and other critters living in there, and I have plants growing well. It's January and I've got broccoli, blooming nasturtiums, fava beans, and potatoes of course, plus a lot of other things. Mushrooms appear regularly too. I don't add any fertilizer or anything.
mythrwy 5y ago
Deep topsoil takes a long time to build. Generations. Centuries. Like the Midwestern US with buffalo herds moving about and fire for thousands of years. Or old fields that have been properly manured and cultivated for generations. But an improvement, however small, is still an improvement.
- goda90 5y ago
  Gabe Brown claims that they increased the amount of organic matter in their soil nearly 10x in two decades, and that's while discovering what worked over the years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPjoh9YJMk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPjoh9YJMk
  - hinkley 5y ago
    Elaine Ingham also has some things to say on the subject. Part of forest soil creation is the life and death cycles of trees. We haven’t let many trees alone for the sort of time frame this takes, and we haven’t tried to speed things along by accelerating tree deaths a bit (we clear a forest, which is very, very different than making trees fall down and then leaving them where they lay).
- hinkley 5y ago
  If you don’t know anything about fruit trees, it can take an awful long time to get an apple. If you do, then a handful of years can accomplish a lot. We definitely need to reevaluate this idea of how long it takes to build topsoil, if you actually want to make it instead of waiting for it to just happen.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  The volume of topsoil when you multiply it out at x feet deep by y millions of acres is truly staggering, but you can certainly build rich soil very quickly (single digit years) if you only need a small farms-worth. Occasional grazing and fire is not the most efficient method. I can't help but recommend the book "farmers of forty centuries" by FH King for a look at what it takes to produce 3 seasons of crops per year to feed the populations of China/Japan/Korea on very slim, mountainous real estate circa 1900. Spoiler alert: it's a lot of hu-manure and manual labor.
yeetaccount4 5y ago
Easy to test with raised beds.

pohl 5y ago

Not more than a month ago I spent almost an hour trying, unsuccessfully, to google that Michael Levin talk, having forgotten his name, the title, the forum, etc. Thank you, thank you for the link!

vollmarj 5y ago

Me too! Could you say more about what kinds of experiments you've been doing and how you are measuring the results? I've been using the Haney Soil Test along with Phospholipid Fatty Acid Analysis (PLFA) to understand how my management practices have been impacting overall soil health and microbe communities. I've been thinking about how I wish I could collaborate more with others on research to help build a dataset that can be used to quantify the effects of regenerative farming.

hazza_n_dazza 5y ago
Measuring humus is a great start to measuring soil quality. Simply looking at the 'black' left on ones hands after feeling the soil is a great start. It is an established science (soil management), just not applied in commercial farming very often.
carapace 5y ago
I haven't done anything quite that sophisticated! I have only "anecdata" to contribute. We are basically on sand dunes here and our "soil" is what I call "dirty sand". I had a bunch of wood chips with some chicken manure and feathers in it and I spread that about six inches deep over a bare patch of sand. I added potatoes and kept it moist. Now, a year and a half later, there's a layer of rich living soil between the sand and the wood chips. There are lots of worms and other critters living in there, and I have plants growing well. It's January and I've got broccoli, blooming nasturtiums, fava beans, and potatoes of course, plus a lot of other things. Mushrooms appear regularly too. I don't add any fertilizer or anything.

mythrwy 5y ago

Deep topsoil takes a long time to build. Generations. Centuries. Like the Midwestern US with buffalo herds moving about and fire for thousands of years. Or old fields that have been properly manured and cultivated for generations. But an improvement, however small, is still an improvement.

goda90 5y ago
Gabe Brown claims that they increased the amount of organic matter in their soil nearly 10x in two decades, and that's while discovering what worked over the years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPjoh9YJMk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPjoh9YJMk
- hinkley 5y ago
  Elaine Ingham also has some things to say on the subject. Part of forest soil creation is the life and death cycles of trees. We haven’t let many trees alone for the sort of time frame this takes, and we haven’t tried to speed things along by accelerating tree deaths a bit (we clear a forest, which is very, very different than making trees fall down and then leaving them where they lay).
hinkley 5y ago
If you don’t know anything about fruit trees, it can take an awful long time to get an apple. If you do, then a handful of years can accomplish a lot. We definitely need to reevaluate this idea of how long it takes to build topsoil, if you actually want to make it instead of waiting for it to just happen.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
The volume of topsoil when you multiply it out at x feet deep by y millions of acres is truly staggering, but you can certainly build rich soil very quickly (single digit years) if you only need a small farms-worth. Occasional grazing and fire is not the most efficient method. I can't help but recommend the book "farmers of forty centuries" by FH King for a look at what it takes to produce 3 seasons of crops per year to feed the populations of China/Japan/Korea on very slim, mountainous real estate circa 1900. Spoiler alert: it's a lot of hu-manure and manual labor.

yeetaccount4 5y ago

Easy to test with raised beds.