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New Hampshire

My soil has a organic % of about 10 and I have been adding manure and compost to my soil for years. Would it be a benefit to add a bio-starter to my soil or is there already enough bio activity already?

1/5/2004 8:31:20 PM

[email protected]

Good question.

For years many have argued against the need to supplement an organically balanced soil with beneficial bacteria or mycorrizhae because if the biology wasn't already active, there had to be a reason. If the cause was corrected, biology would happen without help. If the cause wasn't corrected, the newly added spores would fail. All this is 100% true.

But there is no good reason to object to inoculating soils with beneficials so long as the inoculant is of known integrity.

Good inoculants can cause no harm at labeled rates. If surplus populations did arise, they would be short lived. Soils are dynamic all by themselves & assuming no extraneous negative issues, would soon seek their own balanced levels.

I think that heat or chemically sterilized soils would *really* benefit from inoculants once they've "cooled off".

Steve

1/5/2004 9:41:47 PM

Montoursville, PA

With a humus level of 10% and no stated known problems there are a number of well proven starters of boosters.
Agro-K has Symbex 4 which can be supported to an even higher level than it's own value by fish-kelp-molasses.

The Joel Holland product called BioGrow Endo Plus is a great basic package of supports to your natural healthy patch. You may read about it on his web site Holland's Land of Giants. I choose to use this one because it is one of the best.

With your regular addition of manures and humus content I see no reason what so ever to purchase humates or humus from any outside source.

You might consider half a bag or twenty five pounds of a low number organic fertilizer like 5-2-2 or even lower as a long term slow release additive just to spit and polish your natural healthy patch. 25lbs. to a 500 sq. ft. patch.

You might consider ten whole pounds of Green Sand or other product offering trace elements.

You can help a whole lot by offering the patch 500 sq. ft. five pounds of corn meal....Two applications Spring and Fall and then stop. You get all the good you can get working from just two applications.

At 10% humus or better your efforts are just tweaking what you alread have working anyway. Keep the manure and leaf material flowing. You will only get better and better. However do the major additions in the fall for the best settled down ready to go patch in the spring.

1/6/2004 11:32:49 AM