i have done 10 trials with nothing but microbe teas and rock dust and/or some other small amount of mineral supplement on more than 40 acres (meaning all together the plots totaled 40+ acres). the soils were extremely poor, compacted soil, soil stripped of top soil, one with a long history of chemical fertilizer and all but one had been tilled repeatedly. the results in all but one where there was almost no water (1 inch a month) were immediate and spectacular. there were results on the less water one but much slower. it is NOT a long term process. the microbe partners are the quickest way to get great results on any soil, including poor and depleted soils. they have for eons taken the nutrients out of the soil and turned them into fantastic plants.
people in our current paradigm enforced in our mindset by agribusiness and colonialism believe that you cannot restore poor soils without adding something (usually a lot of somethings). they do not believe that nature knows how to do it. it ain’t true and we need to open up our minds.
this paradigm was initially named for me by toby hemenway in his video why agriculture will never be sustainable.
elaine ingham has done soil analyses around the world including saudi arabia and found every soil has what plants need to thrive. indeed, whatever soil analyses you have done show you what is available. (you can ask for the analysis which shows what is actually there). everything in the soil becomes available with the plants microbe partners.
the question is how to get the microbe partners of the plants to go to work. my observations show (from digging on more than 30 pieces of land where i consult) that when you use compost, a lot of amendments of any kind, especially chemical fertilizer, the microbe partners do not do their job as they are not needed.
what does work according to me is microbe teas, along with a great deal of respect for our microbe friends who have been turning earth into paradise for 4 billion years. microbe teas can be made on the farm with little expense. see korean natural farming on facebook and on google. you can also use compost teas. in permaculture people have been using mulch and this does work, it is a slower process and on large acreage until your chop and drop get big enough is very expensive to bring in large amounts of mulch. cover crops also work, but tilling them in takes away the biological advantage (meaning after the huge input of oxygen the available microbes digest all the materials and then die). what many people in permaculture do, however, is add soil amendments to their mulch, again this is topping the microbe partners. feeding the plants and not the soil as m. fukuoka san would say.
