Harvesting Microbes

This oak tree on my property is around 120 years old in my estimation and I chose it also because of the overall health is very high and the ground below is soft and rich (as soft and rich as Maine soil can be).

So I took this 2x4 box which has hardware cloth on the bottom (I use it to sift rocks out of my soil.)

I cooked down some white rice and layered the bottom of this box with a brown paper bag and put the rice on top and then covered with some leaf litter.
I then dug a small hole (6 inches deep) at the base of the tree and placed the box inside the hole.



Then I waited.....................for two weeks. You can see the blue and red bacteria growing at about that point as well as the webs of mycelium.




You can see the microbes have been attracted to the starch in the rice. (Wet and Warmer conditions will speed this up). I then transferred the rice/leaves/dirt to a 5 gallon bucket and added water 1:1. Seal the top and then wait...................
Burp every other day and you will see that it is a living breathing bucket. The bubbles will percolate and you can see currents of activity.


Once the microbes have the smell of baked bread, then you want to hit a 1:1 ratio of brown sugar. The sugars will put the microbes in a state of dormancy and allow you to keep in a cool dark place for the year.

Microbes work well but they only do so if you have the correct food in your soil mix. I believe bone char is the ticket to feeding and keeping them doing the work your plants need.
This batch ran a little short, and I will be making double this year once the weather warms. I used too high of a concentration at first but think a few tablespoons every once in awhile would be best.

I stole this from @calliandra. Whoever made this chart has very little understanding of roots (Tree roots do not grow this way) but aside from that it does describe very well how older growth trees are sinks for populations of microbes.

NaturalFarmer said:

I stole this from @calliandra. Whoever made this chart has very little understanding of roots (Tree roots do not grow this way) but aside from that it does describe very well how older growth trees are sinks for populations of microbes.

Click to expand...

But now I'm intrigued, what is wrong with those roots from your perspective?

And as for the graphic, it's from a little book that otherwise wasn't especially noteworthy, possibly because it seemed targetted at people who had an established chemical-based regimen in their gardens, and I've never tried that, so...

Cheers!

Most tree roots only reach a depth of 18 inches but expand outwardly beyond the drip line or what they call below as the critical protection zone

Several species have heart roots or tap roots that can reach down beyond ten feet in the correct soil but they still expand outwardly more so.

NaturalFarmer said:

Most tree roots only reach a depth of 18 inches but expand outwardly beyond the drip line or what they call below as the critical protection zoneView attachment 3920009 View attachment 3920015
Several species have heart roots or tap roots that can reach down beyond ten feet in the correct soil but they still expand outwardly more so.

Click to expand...

What I notice about the graphic is that the far right says old growth forest a much more general term.

Are aspens considered differently than other things? (Is it a tree, is it grass?)

Any healthy tree is going to possess microbes (probably unhealthy ones too) so I don't think you necessarily need an old growth. Aspens are certainly trees though and very cool ones at that. Aspens are really really cool because the network of roots makes up a singular organism in stands called clones. Each clone or stand is a genetic copy of itself. The oldest thing on earth is an Aspen stand in Utah that is estimated at 80,000 years old. I'm thinking harvesting microbes using this technique would be very cool to see and grow with.



https://www.nationalforests.org/blog/tree-profile-aspen-so-much-more-than-a-tree

calliandra said:

But now I'm intrigued, what is wrong with those roots from your perspective?

And as for the graphic, it's from a little book that otherwise wasn't especially noteworthy, possibly because it seemed targetted at people who had an established chemical-based regimen in their gardens, and I've never tried that, so...

Cheers!

Click to expand...

well, the thing is, that trees roots work similar to how cannabis and most root systems work, meaning under perfect conditions the roots will dive fairly deep (one of the reasons why supersoil's technique is so flawed), but the issue is most conditions aren't conducive to that, for many reasons, soil compaction, the availability of water, nutrients,, etc
Like anything the plant will only work as hard as it needs to, and in most case it's gotta work hard for those things, so a broader, more shallow root system is typically the best way to do all those things.
but even the deepest roots on trees doesn't go much more than maybe 20 ft deep, but that's a helluva root system.
I suppose the thing to remember is the roots will grow where they need to, akin to how a plants photosynthetic response works. The plant will adjust to what it needs.
One of the many things i find fascinating about botany, from the root exudates adjusting the rootzone ph, to the attraction of specific microbes, to the plant growing towards the optimal light, to hermaphrodites being produced more in all female environments, etc
Amazing when you think of it

NaturalFarmer said:

Any healthy tree is going to possess microbes (probably unhealthy ones too) so I don't think you necessarily need an old growth. Aspens are certainly trees though and very cool ones at that. Aspens are really really cool because the network of roots makes up a singular organism in stands called clones. Each clone or stand is a genetic copy of itself. The oldest thing on earth is an Aspen stand in Utah that is estimated at 80,000 years old. I'm thinking harvesting microbes using this technique would be very cool to see and grow with.



https://www.nationalforests.org/blog/tree-profile-aspen-so-much-more-than-a-tree

Click to expand...

I mention them bc as I "understand" their reproductive cycle is fungal in nature or triggered by fungal activity?, they grow like a grass, have rings like a tree. Seems to me the aspen is as confused about what it is as I am! They are also a shallow rooted and I get sense are highly dependent on the soil food web simply because I heard a landscape arborist say "You don't buy aspen, you rent them", and have seen it to be true, they just don't seem to last very long when planted. Indecently if you want to improve the health of a grove, one way is to cut the tallest one down, stimulates all the shorter ones.

NaturalFarmer said:

Most tree roots only reach a depth of 18 inches but expand outwardly beyond the drip line or what they call below as the critical protection zoneView attachment 3920009 View attachment 3920015

Several species have heart roots or tap roots that can reach down beyond ten feet in the correct soil but they still expand outwardly more so.

Click to expand...

Cite your sources please
The reason I keep saying this is that from the content you share it's easy to tell that you have been very much educated
The only problem about that being that with the rampant Liebig-think and environmental destruction of the past 100 years or so, we have gained a very erroneous view of nature in many respects.

One of these is the characteristic rooting habits of trees.
Around the beginning of the 20th century, roots were taken to form structures that mirror the branching of a tree above ground. Then, this new view, of trees actually not digging very deep into the ground at all.
Looking out the window at the spruce forests we have on the surrounding mountains (in example):
Funnily, that was the time where in tree plantations, these shallow rooting creatures started falling over in massive amounts, something that hadn't happened in earlier times. But back then, there wasn't a monoculture of inadequate tree types being harvested by heavy machinery. Instead, there was a mixed forest where in the wintertime, men on foot would walk up into the woods and selectively cut out this tree or that and letting them slide along gullies into the valley below, or where the landscape was flatter, take a horse or two to pull those trunks out of the otherwise undisturbed ecosystem.

So this is why nowadays we may be led to believe that trees don't root deeply at all, more often than not, we have this situation:

(random image picked from the web)

See that black layer there? It's the compaction zone, the soil is so dense there that water pools up and forms an anaerobic layer.

Tree roots can push through amazingly difficult terrain, given they find the smallest cranny to work on. Best, aided by their little mycorrhizal friends whose hyphal tips, besides secreting enzymes that break down nutrients outside the hypha, before being ingested, can exert a force of 1200 pounds per square inch (or 218 kilos per centimeter --- man, per centimeter, isn't that mind-boggling!) on whatever it's growing into, according to Jeff Lowenfels (Teaming with Fungi, p.26). So good healthy roots can go places, that's for sure

But when they hit that anaerobic wall, there are too many adversaries for them to be able to progress. Hence, they grow sideways, and with the massive disturbances we have wreaked unto the soils of our planet, this spread-out rooting behaviour has become way more common, so much so that is has been taken to be the standard.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be any flat-rooting trees in the whole wide world!

I AM saying that the illustration, length of roots and all, is an accurate, if very simplified, schematic of the way things actually are.

There's a publication from 1991 in which data has been collected that shows living roots at depths of 60 meters (nods to @greasemonkeymann ), in this case it was Eucalyptus roots hanging from cave ceilings that far underground.
The general drift of the study being:
trees have the capability to form very deep root systems, depending on substrate and climate.

Here's a copy of the whole study:
https://www.barchampro.co.uk/sites/default/files/stone_and_kalisz_1991_tree_roots.pdf

And for those who prefer storytelling mode, a nice article about it:
http://www.deeproot.com/blog/blog-entries/how-deep-do-tree-roots-really-grow

Cheers!

I always enjoy the intelligent responses from you and @greasemonkeymann, so thank you for that.

@calliandra
Couple questions first before I try to dive in.
Rampant Liebig thing? I just don't understand what this means. I assume you are referring to balancing nutrients?
Are you sure that is a compaction zone in your picture? Or is an illuviation zone where all the dissolved minerals settle?


Giant Sequioas are a great starting point. They are 200ft+ tall and some 2000+ of years old, yet possess short depth of roots still of 6-10 feet.

In regards to the trees that have found depths of 200 feet, Did they push through or find cracks and fissures to source water? Both are desert dwelling if I'm not mistaken and certainly not the norm IMO but very great examples none the less.

We have old forests here if you know where to find them. I personally have touched an estimated 600 year old yellow birch in New England which is almost unheard of. I don't however believe that they grow much differently.

Sorry my kids are preventing me from getting more in depth right now.........

IMO sometimes our egos as humans think we influence more than we do when in fact we are just observers in many things.

Most of the logging where I'm from is done in the winter. When there are no leaves and the ground is hard as steel. You can damage the surface but you aint doing nothing underground. Hard to see how forest compaction happens. Plenty of wind blown trees in the forest show a shallow root system.

I think they cut in the winter with certain species because the moisture is lowest and warping is less but i'm curious.

Believe what you like

NaturalFarmer said:

Rampant Liebig thing?

Click to expand...

Yes sorry I tend to cut things too short sometimes.
With that I meant the chemical mindset that has blinded us to other aspects that however are essential for any sort of sustainable approach to agriculture.
In fact, Liebig himself revised his theory and used organic methods only in his own gardens. But by then it had been recognized what a cash cow the chemical bandwagon could become...

Sequoias depend on each other for protection against the wind. United they stand, divided they fall. Probably true for most forests I imagine.

@calliandra I never even heard of a plant reaching 20 meters down let alone 200 ft. Didnt mean to minimalize that. Very cool

Wouldn't the activity be in the root zone because of the synergistic relation between the roots and the micro organisms ?

It is a problem for isolated stands of old growth. Being taller they get harder winds. Saw a whole stand go down in a fierce windstorm.

NaturalFarmer said:

@calliandra I never even heard of a plant reaching 20 meters down let alone 200 ft. Didnt mean to minimalize that. Very cool

Click to expand...

it is! And I didn't want to derail your thread, it was just because I believe the graphic is accurate and you don't hehe

NaturalFarmer said:

This oak tree on my property is around 120 years old in my estimation and I chose it also because of the overall health is very high and the ground below is soft and rich (as soft and rich as Maine soil can be).
View attachment 3919939
So I took this 2x4 box which has hardware cloth on the bottom (I use it to sift rocks out of my soil.)

I cooked down some white rice and layered the bottom of this box with a brown paper bag and put the rice on top and then covered with some leaf litter.
I then dug a small hole (6 inches deep) at the base of the tree and placed the box inside the hole.

View attachment 3919936

Then I waited.....................for two weeks. You can see the blue and red bacteria growing at about that point as well as the webs of mycelium.

View attachment 3919938 View attachment 3919937


You can see the microbes have been attracted to the starch in the rice. (Wet and Warmer conditions will speed this up). I then transferred the rice/leaves/dirt to a 5 gallon bucket and added water 1:1. Seal the top and then wait...................
Burp every other day and you will see that it is a living breathing bucket. The bubbles will percolate and you can see currents of activity.
View attachment 3919934

Once the microbes have the smell of baked bread, then you want to hit a 1:1 ratio of brown sugar. The sugars will put the microbes in a state of dormancy and allow you to keep in a cool dark place for the year.

Click to expand...

You know, I used to be all enthusiastic about this method, as it seemed so unintrusive.
Taking small handsful of that forest soil, as mindfully as it can be done, is more intrusive than that...

But I have also heard, from different sides, that the thing with the rice as medium is to be taken with a grain of salt?
A certain kind of microbes will attach to that starchy rice, maybe a different set than what you may need or want in your soils, or what would be representative of that forest soil?
What's your take on that?
I'm sorry I have no sources on this, it just keeps cropping up