Allan Balliett wrote: > Elaine, you asked the poster to make their questions about OSU more focused: > > >What I would like to know is: > > > >1) What bacterium is applied to the soil to breakup the hardpan ? > > > >2) What medium is the carrier for the bacteria ? (water, sawdust, granules) > > > >3) What are the equipment requirements to apply the bacteruim to the soil ? > > (sprayer, spreader, field broadcaster or a cannon) > > > >4) Which department at "THE" Ohio State University was the sponsor of the > >study. (microbiology, plant and soil chemistry, the football team) > > > >Thank You in advance for your kind indulgence.
Thank you for being more specific. These are more answerable questions! There are several single species of bacteria that can be used as inocula to do any specific job. But go back to first principles. Each bacteiral species has been selected to function best in a specific set of conditions. There are almost no "universal" bacteria that function at all temperatures, all moistures, etc. Soil always has some set of bacterial species functioning, so people may miss-conclude that there are just a few species functioning all the time, but this is not the case. Ask any microbiologist. As you go through the course of a day, much less a week, much less a month, certain species of bacteria (applies to fungi, and protozoa as well, maybe daily for nematodes, but certainly weekly for nematodes and microarthropods) wake up, do their thing by being most able to out-compete everything else, and then go back to sleep because conditions are not right for it to compete. So, there is NO SINGLE SPECIES of bacteria that you can apply that will be successful at performing any function through the whole summer. A single species inoculum might be beneficial for a day, or a week, or a month, until other bacteria arrive and start competing with it. Therefore, what we need to do is apply the FULL spectrum of species of bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes that the soil needs to break up hardpan. What is it that supplies this full spectrum? Well, back up a second, how many species in the full spectrum? Work by Jim Tiedje, Michael Klug, their graduate students (Michgan State, Center for Microbial Ecology), work by Janice Thies (Cornell), and others show that, using DNA analysis, there are probably over 25,000 species of bacteria in a teaspoon of soil - ah, healthy soil. Important distinction there. If you've hammered your soil with toxic chemicals (i.e., pesticides), salts (otherwise known as inorganic fertilizers), and constant plowing, you've destroyed the health of your soil. How do you know? Because the species of bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes have been severely reduced, and the species that are left are the pests and pathogens. Why? Becasue pests and pathogens have been selected for the boom and bust life style common to the majority of pathogens and pests. Get the normal organisms back in the soil that compete with the pathogens and pests, and disease is reduced. How many species are required? Thousands. Probably more than 25,000 species of bactera, but it's a good place to start. Then you probably have MOST of the species needed. But do you have ALL the species needed? That's where isolations become important. Send a soil, or compost, or compsot tea into BBC Labs to do the pathogen inhibition test. If for some reason you don't have the species needed to take out the pathogen in a lab incubation, it is likely (but not guaranteed) that you lack the important species in the field. Good indication that you need to add more compost, or tea, or even buy the critter in an inoculum off the shelf. The same logic applies to breaking up hardpan. Do you have the bacterial species that make the glues to bind the clays, sand, silt, OM, roots, etc? The fungi that make the foundation walls for soil structure, commonly called macroaggregates. Do you have the engineers in your soil that make pores? Hold water? Allow oxygen to diffuse into the soil? You may need to add some of these organisms. How do you add this huge diversity required? Are you going to buy single species inocula in order to do this? You don't have enough money to buy 25,000 single species, much less we don't have that many of the species isolated and grown in lab media to be able to make them to sell to you! So how do you get that diversity? It's called compost. Locally made, with the species of bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes already adapted to your soil. If you buy bacteria from Japan, guess what? They are not going to survive. What I like to say is, Japanese bacteria require sushi, and there is no sushi in American soils. So, you want the same functional groups, but you want those species adapted to your soils, your climate, your plant cultivars. Now, what about the case where most of the "good guys" have been killed in your soil? If you add "foreign" species, can you see a good response? Of course. There are no better-adapted species already present. So, in really poor soil, addition of any organism is going to help. But, they won't survive. Why not add, from the very beginning, the whole diversity of good guys that will survive and grow? You may need to come back and add more compost from time-to-time to maintain food resources for that diversity, to add in species that didn't survive the first time around that the compost was applied. If the compost available is too far away, or too expensive, and making your own compost is too much trouble, then making compost tea becomes very reasonable. It will have the same species as in your compost, only much more transportable. You only need 15 pounds of compost to make 500 gallons of great tea (ok, given a good tea making machine as well - see the Compost Tea Brewing Manual for all the details). Apply at 5 gallons to the acre. Easy. But, you don't get the long term food resources with a composttea that you get in solid compost. The way I think of it is that compost tea supplies the organisms and the food to maintain those organisms for 3 to 4 months. Compost supplies the organisms and the food to maintain those organisms for 4 to 5 years. So, what bacterium is supplied to break up hardpan? There are about 8,000 species of bacteria that you need. What are their names? They don't have names, just ID numbers, for the most part. I don't think most people would find me the DNA sequences for those bacteria very useful, and I'm not absolutely sure that those bacteria are the right ones for your soil, climate, plants species, etc. So, I'll pass on giving you that info, ok? Maybe in 20 years we'll have that data. And realize, it's not just me doing that work. The folks at Duke University are probably actually the ones in the forefront on that right now. And Cornell. And maybe UC Berkeley. Medium to carry the inoculum? Compost, or compost tea. Mix the compost about 30% with sand (70%) and as you deep rip (to get to 4 feet for example), add the mix into the crack. Over apply compost tea in a drip line behind the blades. If you can't rip, then do cores as deep as you can go and re-fill with the mix of compost and sand, or inject the tea into the soil at teh right depth. The trick there is to make sure there's good aeration that deep. Leave an "air line" down into the soil. Oh-h-h-h, getting nasty, "THE" Ohio State University. You mean "the OTHER OSU"? Please realize you are speaking to someone from Oregon State University. The other guys are doing a good job, but just can't really compete with us! OK, enough ribbing. If you go to the Ohio State University's website, you should be able to locate Harry Hoitink's department. I don't have that information memorized, sorry, it just isn't as important to me as remembering the work that he's contributed over the years. His department is probably something like Plant Pathology, or Horticulture. If you go to the ATTRA website, and look up their page on COMPOST, Harry's name comes up all over the place. From those references you should be able to find his department at the other OSU. So, go have fun. Hope this answers your questions! Elaine Ingham
