Making Dollars And Sense

Column By: Jim Barlow

Published in Grape Grower magazine, January, 2001   

 Seven ways to make money with soil microbes

     Hey, the price of fuel these days is something growers can live without!  It’s a serious and sudden addition to the cost/price squeeze that will keep profits down another year despite all the best management and marketing skills growers can muster.  If there are any ways to get ahead in the game, now would be a good time to hear some of them!   The fact is, recent science has shed light on an ace that all growers have up their sleeve that few are aware of or using to best advantage.   

     Let’s say you have gotten the best results and service from the products and materials you normally use in your programs and you bring in good crops but need more profit.  Where can you find profit makers that you have not yet enlisted?  New science says you can activate and support common types of microbe helpers in your soil that do seven jobs in the root zone that will either save you money or make you money—either way it means more profit.

      These seven jobs are the way Nature brings nutrients, water, protection from root diseases and parasitic nematodes, stimulation of root growth and stimulation of productive growth to plants in the wild, like in forests, prairies, wetlands, deserts and to plants in general where they get no husbandry or help from growers.  The Weyerhaeuser and Georgia-Pacific corporations plant out millions of trees a year and then let them grow on their own, often in thin mountain soils, with no regular doses of fertilizers and chemicals for years.  It is these same groups of microbe helpers in the soil that cause those trees to become profitable, merchantable logs and pulpwood.  You can tune up the microbe helpers in your soil to get the same kind of help from Nature.  Here is what you get when you do that: 

1. It is a known fact that some kinds of bacteria and other microbes can break apart and eat herbicide and other chemicals that you don’t want to carryover and adversely affect your yields.  High populations of active microbes are what you need to clean up your soils each year.
    

2. Crop residues are decomposed by the fungi and bacteria that like to get their food energy from spent plant matter in the soil.  Crop residues simply stay intact in a soil that is low in microbial activity.  You want your crop residues to decompose, to get out of the way and reduce down to valuable humus.  As this happens, the microbes recover the nutrients like potassium, calcium and trace elements that are trapped in those materials and make them available to the next crop.
    

3. It is a proven fact that seeds germinate stronger and emerge a day earlier for a better stand when they are planted into a soil that is alive with helper bacteria.    These bacteria give off the kinds of hormones or plant growth regulators (PGRs) that accelerate the development of the germ and root growth.  The result is a pop up effect for the best stand, even in colder soils.
    

4. When you buy and apply nitrogen and other fertilizers, you want every unit to stay put and be available to the crop.  The nature of nitrogen and calcium is to be easily mobile in the soil and be lost to leaching.  As bacteria and fungi multiply in your soil, they take in the nitrogen that your crops are not yet ready to consume.  This held nitrogen (and other nutrients) stays put and is in reserve for later.
    

5. As the crop develops and the nitrogen demand increases, you should have a high biomass of the bacteria and fungi that are reservoirs of your reserve nitrogen.  As these die off, they give up the nutrients they contain in a slow release fashion.  You can get an extra twenty units or more of N this way that is released some each day at the time of year when it is needed most.
    

6. Just as beneficial insects like lacewings and predatory wasps are a natural check on destructive insects and mites, there are beneficial types of microbes that attack the kinds of fungi that cause root rot and damp off, and the kinds of nematodes that attack roots.  The best way to have this very real biological control below ground is to promote high populations of many kinds of microbes in your soil.
    

7. Beneficial microbes are known to be the natural source of plant growth regulator (PGR) substances that stimulate root branching, rate of growth, size of plant and fruitfulness during the growing season.  The fertilizers you apply do not contain these PGRs.  You get the most from supplying your crop with fertilizer nutrients when your soils are also alive with microbial life to contribute good doses of PGRs at the right time in the crop cycle as well. 

     Hundreds of soil samples from US farms, vineyards, orchards and groves that we analyzed through a soil microbiology lab service that I co-founded in Oregon showed that the abundance and balance of desired soil microbes is depressed in virtually all intensively farmed soils. This means that there is a latent opportunity to realize more of the above seven money makers if you will simply tune them up.  How do you do it?  Keep your soil well structured, return all the crop residues you can, and include a modern biological soil activator product in your program that works well and gives a return in the soils in your area.  If a source of good compost is available in your area, give that material a try.  Ask your local soil labs and neighbors if they know of good products.  Used properly, and matched to your type of soil, some of the modern biological products that stimulate desirable microbes in the soil can be a great tool to take you up the seven roads to profit.