CHEMISTRY
Nutrient availability and how plants get their energy from the sun and uptake minerals from the soil to grow involves a complex network of symbiotic organisms and processes. Without even getting into organic chemistry, microbiology, biochemistry, and physics just the chemistry of farming can be overwhelming. This blog is for farmers and growers not scientists and is meant to simplify these topics so everyone can understand. The scientific method of observation and experimentation in chemistry berthed the chemical fertilizer industry, so clearly this information is powerful. I will help break down the scientific jargon into models and definitions that are easily understood for the grower. The goal of this blog is to help you understand these processes and improve upon the health of your soil, not to confuse you with scientific jargon.
A soil test is a great place to get started, which can tell you lots of valuable information such as soil consistency, Ph, Cation exchange capacity, organic matter/mineral percentages and ratio’s. Agronomist are able to use this information to tailor mineral and fertilizer regimens accordingly. However this is just a snapshot (in time and space) of your soil profile and applying additional minerals often doesn’t solve the imbalances, make the minerals available to be uptaken or produce more organic matter. Also taking information from a fertilizer salesmen is often difficult for most folks. Mineral availability is a factor for plant growth, however plants need microbes to break these down into available forms. A majority of soil tests will give you a tremendous amount of information about the chemical or physical properties but have no measurement of the biology.
Organic matter percentages may be the most valuable metric when measuring the health and vitality of our soils for reasons we will discuss later. Most soil tests fail to tell us the biological diversity present. Microbiology is responsible for converting all minerals and nutrients into plant available forms so this is a giant blind spot of most soil mineral tests. Fortunately there are age old methods for improving your soil’s organic matter by applying compost or manures. However, not all compost is equal and results will vary drastically depending on where you source your materials. The Johnson Sue bioreactor compost has proven to be one of the most effective ways to make “biologically complete” compost. Dr. Elaine Ingham is also a pioneer in the field of microbiology and her soilfoodweb.com is an amazing resource if you can afford the courses. She also has free video’s teaching you how to make compost for annual crops vs perennial crops.
Plants with different lifecycles require different forms of nitrogen to grow. Plants that have yearly life cycle’s build mostly bacterial relationships to get their food, while tree’s, shrubs and bushes need to establish more fungal dominate relationships. The enzymes that bacteria and fungi excrete to mineralize and decompose matter dictates the soil pH and in turn nutrient availability. Nitrogen and carbon are two of the most abundant elements on earth, so naturally plants have evolved with organisms that recycle these elements. This is a topic that just keeps going and we have to stop this post before it gets too much longer. But to recap Bacterial enzymes have the capability of breaking down simple sugars(mineralization) and raising the pH, while fungi’s organic acids can break down longer, more complex carbon chains(humification) such as found in wood, lowering pH. This is where the world’s of chemistry and biology collide.