soil testing Archives - Page 5 of 6

Austin testing soil testing at a hemp farm with microBIOMETER®

PLANT Group is a team of designers, engineers, and ecologists. The company is building systems to connect humans and nature. In the process, they are soil testing at a hemp farm in Iowa, Honeysuckle Hops & Hemp.

First, through their partnership with Blue Forest Farms, the team at PLANT Group is using microBIOMETER®. They are utilizing the tool to research soil health and carbon sequestration implications of growing hemp.

Furthermore, Austin has an interest in publishing research on their alternate organic hemp production methods. microBIOMETER® is assisting them in collecting some “pretty cool data on microbial biomass and fungal ratios in the soil in response to these strategies.”

Meanwhile, the company recently launched a new line of hemp food products, Hemp Hearts. They grow each plant regeneratively. This includes a focus on soil carbon, biodiversity, and ecosystem health.

Did you know one hectare of hemp can absorb 15 tons of CO2 per hectare? Hemp’s rapid growth makes it one of the fastest CO2-to-biomass conversion tools available. Therefore, let’s stop cutting down our forests. Plant some hemp instead!

Lastly, please visit the PLANT Group website to meet the rest of the team and learn more about their business. And follow them on Instagram to keep up to date on their progress!

Informal science education is a key for community engagement and healthy gardening. Community gardening brings numerous benefits such as fresh produce, therapy, physical exercise, reduction in grocery bills, improvement of mood among many others.

“Last weekend I had the privilege to teach community gardeners on the importance of soil testing side by side with my very first student at NYBG Adult Education program (class 2015). Dr. Joan Basile is a clinical psychologist who has developed her own horticulture therapy program incorporating soil knowledge brining therapy & soil science & gardening together.” – Dr. Anna Paltseva, soil_expert.
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“While the microBIOMETER® results showed there is room for improvement, the result from last year’s beds also proved that composting and mulching practices are paying off in increased soil life. This means that sandy soil will gradually be able to hold nutrients better and better!” – Dr. Basile

The Biospheres, working through the CDA*, accompanies and trains farmers/agricultural companies in the agroecological transition based on a soil conservation approach. The group is also working on applied research projects and therefore on trials under real farming conditions in which they evaluate the impact of certain changes in practices on different indicators (biological, chemical, physical, economic).

“One of our primary objectives is that farmers succeed in putting biology back into their soils to ensure their natural fertility. We are therefore very interested in everything that lives in the soil, from earthworms and microarthropods to microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, nematodes). For us, microbial biomass is one of the most important indicators that help us understand soil biology. Fungal to bacterial ratio, which is a less documented indicator for the moment, remains interesting to observe in certain situations and is the object of real research by our R&D team to understand how best to interpret it.

We have been using microBIOMETER® for 8 months now to test the soil in different projects in our panel of biological indicators. microBIOMETER® provides us with quick and easy results on microbial biomass and F:B ratio which is a real plus for us. We can perform tests directly in the field and present the results to the farmers. Moreover, the affordable price of the analysis allows us to perform soil biology tests in projects where we had no affordable way to do so before.”

*CDA, Centre de Développement de l’Agroécologie, are affiliates dedicated to R&D and advisory.

Ariel White; Post-Wildfire Forest Reboot Kit

The project was awarded first place at their high school and chosen to compete at the Simcoe County Regional Science Fair. At the regional fair, Ariel was awarded a gold medal, Best of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Best of Fair, The Dufferin Simcoe Land Stewardship Network Award, and was one of seven students selected to represent their county in the Canada Wide Science Fair where they won a silver medal!

About the project: Forest fires have increased due to climate change, causing forests to burn down at an unbelievable rate. Now we need forests more than ever, yet they have been taking years if at all to regrow. This project explores the question “how can we boost the speed of forest regrowth after forest fires?”. For phase one of this experiment, each plant was graded for performance using tests such as success-rate, growth-rate, compost-value, and self-propagation. For the second phase, it was seen what effect this plant had on the soil microbiome; which is key to healthy, speedy plant growth and isn’t evident after fires. It was concluded that the morning glory substantially increased the microbiome health from inevident to healthy, and had an almost perfect performance score. These results are very important to our world’s future as they could help to deter climate change and repair our forests and their diverse ecosystems.

Ralph Lett, head of product development at Acterra, was kind enough to share his microBIOMETER® experience with us. We love hearing the different ways our customers are using our soil test! Please contact us if you would like to share your soil testing story.

Acterra is a bio stimulant company. We work closely with our sales partner, Bio-Active. Together we capture and solubilize diesel emissions in a fusion tank and then add a beneficial consortium of facultative microbes . This is revolutionary as it allows the farmer to make his own biological fertilizers while he is seeding and/or harvesting.

microBIOMETER® is a handy tool for us to measure the microbial weight of our bio fertilizers when we come in off the fields to refill our tanks . The microbes in our fusion tank reproduce incredibly quickly, much faster than a regular brewing process. If the microbial populations grow too quickly things can get plugged up and can cause problems. This is where microBIOMETER® is incredibly useful. We use it to keep an eye on the populations in our tanks so that if over populations occur we can quickly drain the tank and start over .

We plan to continue working with microBIOMETER® in the future. Our hope is that one day farmers will be able to sit in their tractors and know exactly the microbial bio weight of their biological fertilizers while they are farming their fields.

University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Last semester Soil Science and Environmental Pedology students under a supervision of Dr. Anna Paltseva [annapaltseva.com] conducted a soil microbial experiment on campus of University of Louisiana at Lafayette. First, each of the group of students collected different samples. Samples were collected from lawn, vegetable containers, around tree pits, and a native plants garden. The soil samples were analyzed in accordance with the provided procedure, which is simple and fast. The microBIOMETER® app tested the samples and gave each of the readings. The readings were in microbial biomass expressed in microbial-carbon per gram of soil (ug/g) and fungal to bacteria ratio F:B, F% and B%.

The vegetable container and samples from the tree pits showed the highest range of 400 – 800 ug/g. This is due to high organic matter content. The low results from the lawns may have been due to limited microbiological diversity due to monoculture of grasses grown. The areas close to the water bodies (culvert, pond, etc.) may have been lower due to organic matter washing away over time. All the samples were predominantly rich in bacterial population over fungal.

“microBIOMETER® is a very efficient and time saving tool. It can be used by scientists, farmers, or a gardener in learning the microbial health of their soil. This testing process is also very non-invasive, and thus having a lesser negative environmental impact compared to traditional testing. One of the students said, It was pretty cool using an app to analyze soil. I want to know how it works since it all felt like magic.” – Dr. Anna Paltseva

If you are interested in Dr. Paltseva’s research or would like to learn more about urban soils, please follow her on Instagram.

Microbial Biomass Chart

Source: Ben Taylor-Davies Twitter

Ben Taylor-Davies, also known as Regen Ben, is a farmer and bioagri-ecologist working from Herefordshire in the UK. His farm is based in Ross-on-Wye and has been focused on environmental improvements for the past 22 years. His work includes creating 12km of new hedges with 6m of pollen and nectar or ground bird nesting margins around every field as well as working on river meadow restoration.

Following a Nuffield scholarship in 2016 and the opportunity to travel the world (USA, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Peru, South Africa, France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Mongolia, China, Singapore and Australia), Ben was intrigued by the regenerative agriculture movement which very much complimented the environmental work he was doing back on his own farm. When discussing these soil health focused farming methods with clients as an agronomist, it struck a chord with many of them too; the future of agriculture and real farm sustainability.

Ben came across microBIOMETER® in 2019 and found it an incredibly useful tool in benchmarking clients farms in order to start monitoring change in what they were doing. The real time results offered by microBIOMETER® provides Ben with full control over how, where and when he takes readings. Ben uses his microBIOMETER® readings in conjunction with the What3words app which allows him to accurately repeat measurements in subsequent years in order to build a picture of successes and failures.

In the spring and early summer of 2020, the Nutrient Management Spear Program at Cornell University conducted a soil survey of yield-stability based management zones on a New York dairy farm.

Ben utilized microBIOMETER® in his research to determine the microbial biomass of the soil samples.

Often, we are asked about variance – different results when you test the same sample. Our answer is that nature produces most of this variance. To explain, when you measure out 0.5 cc of soil, you have on average about 0.6 grams of soil. If your microBIOMETER® results read 300ugMBC/gram of soil, that means you have 600ug of microbial biomass – we divide the number we get by ½ because the literature tells us that 50% of the dried MB is carbon. As dried bacteria is estimated to weigh 1pg, if this were all bacteria, it constitutes 600,000,000pg or 600 million bacteria.

Now imagine that I have 600 apartment buildings in NYC that each contain 1 million people, and I decide to check 10 apartments in 10 buildings at 4 p.m. to estimate the number of people actually in the building. Obviously, it would vary because people are not always in their apartment and different apartments have different numbers of inhabitants – the same is true for soil.

Soil contains microscopic aggregates of different sizes and the number and type of inhabitants in each varies on the physical and chemical composition of the space as well as the nutrient, pH and hydration level. Each sample you take is like looking at a number of different apartments in a number of apartment buildings.

For this reason, when conducting research, soil and medical researchers run duplicates or triplicates. Because of cost, soil labs generally do not run duplicates and they see 10- 25% variation. We are recommending running duplicates when using microBIOMETER® unless you are doing academic research. Generally, we see <10% variation for a given sample, and for a field that looks homogeneous. Pastures can have much higher variation because the nutrients level across the area varies tremendously.

Healthy soil is brimming with beneficial microbes, and those microbes are one of the important keys to ensuring the health of your plants. Along with breaking down key nutrients for your plants, they’ll aerate the soil so nutrients are evenly distributed, and fend off parasitic microbes so your garden can grow in peace.

Considering the wealth of benefits, it’s no surprise that it is recommended that you do everything you can to maximize the microbial biomass in your soil. While there’s complicated science behind it, nourishing and increasing the amount of microbes in your soil is simple, and can be accomplished with a few tried and true methods. And thanks to the microBIOMETER® soil test, even amateur gardeners can track their microbial biomass levels.

First, let’s detail how you can take care of those important microbes and enhance their numbers. It’ll involve shedding some old gardening habits, along with taking on some new ones, but we promise the end results will be worth it.

Before you start taking extra steps to care for and increase your microbial biomass, you should ensure you’re avoiding certain tactics that are known to hinder their growth.

While you might think avoiding pesticides wouldn’t enhance plant health, a close look at the ingredients of most pesticides will show you they do far more harm than good. Amongst a variety of issues, one of the most harmful is the fact they decimate microbial populations in the soil. If you want to ensure pests will stay away in the absence of pesticides, try utilizing companion plants instead.

While pesticides are bad, fungicides are even more of a threat. Some of the most vital microbes in your soil, being fungi, would be directly targeted by these treatments. The harshness of these chemicals would also wreak havoc on the non-fungi microbes, all but eliminating any trace of a microbial biomass. Even if you can’t do everything on this list, ensure you at least abide by this particular rule.

Lastly, while many gardeners and farmers consider tilling a standard gardening process, you’ll want to abstain from it if you’re focusing on your soil’s microbes. That, of course, is due to the level of soil disturbance that occurs during the process. The process leads to lost microbes (especially fungi), and any benefits gained from additions made to the soil end up being cancelled out. By avoiding tilling, you’ll allow the delicate environment in your soil to function undisturbed and, in turn, at full capacity.

Now that you’ve cut those bad habits out of your gardening routine, you have room for a few that’ll greatly benefit your soil in the long run.

Nothing gets microbes into the soil like a nice big pile of compost! All that food breaking down in one big pile is basically a feast for all the helpful microbes you want around your plants. Once you add it onto your soil, then turn it to make sure air hits every part of it, you’ll be ensuring the microbes have plenty of energy to break down nutrients. To ensure the best compost possible, make sure you add in natural components like grass clippings, fruits, vegetables, wood chips, and straw. There’s no need to exclude other foods, even processed ones, but a healthy blend of green and brown material is a must.

Following the same logic, compost teas can do wonders for the microbes in your soil. All you have to do is take some compost and put it in a water permeable pouch, add some microbe feeding nutrients (perhaps like molasses), and let it brew (bubbling air into it) until the microbes in the compost have multiplied and the tea is full of microbes. Once done, pour it all around the base of your plants. One round will do your plants good, but repeating this process a few times during your growing process will really make a difference.

This last step is actually three steps and if these conditions aren’t met, virtually nothing else on this list will have a noticeable effect. To start, making sure you have adequate moisture is as simple as regularly watering your plants. You may also want to consider purchasing a moisture meter to assure your levels are ideal. Next, the ideal pH range for soil is between 6.0 and 7.0, so you’ll have to test your soil to see where you’re at. If your soil pH is too low try adding limestone and if your pH is too high you can add aluminum sulfate and sulfur to get things balanced. Lastly, mulching is a great way to help your soil maintain an even temperature.

Incorporating these simple tactics into your crop management is an important first step to building the microbial biomass in your soil. Another critical step is testing and quantifying the results of these inputs since decision making without data is like driving blindfolded. microBIOMETER® is a rapid, on-site soil test for microbial biomass. Microbes respond very quickly to any changes in the soil, therefore, you can set a baseline then retest within a week to see if you are heading in the right direction.