Near the end of a class I recently taught, a student expressed that spraying on microbes would not work without organic matter. This is what a lot of people say. please watch the podcast with John kempf and David C. Johnson. They are getting great results with putting on microbe teas and tiny amounts of compost. John Kempf teachess farmers how to spread microbe teas. they are doubling their yield while halving the cost of inputs.
We do need to use mulch and it can be green mulch. One place in India it was pure sand, of sand, maybe I should say small stones of sand. Iput on the microbes. One month later we had great growth, (we had planted about 14 different plants). when we dug in the soil, there was new black friable top soil down about 3 inches, . We did have an area where we put some compost on the row. This area initially grew taller corn after 10 days. The other rows soon caught up. (I put the microbes on the compost row as well, so much for comparative trials).
This was in 120 degrees with a missing monsoon. We were planting 1/2 way between the coconut trees, about 15 feet, so there was some shade. There was very little rain, maybe 1 inch during the whole growing time of months. I cannot explain how all the seeds germinated with so little water. The soil we planted in had been came from digging out a trench about 2 feet deep and 2 feet wide for watering the coconut trees. The digging machine left mounds on both sides of the trench which we spread out 4 to 6 feet for planting. Water from the cow pads was put in these channels about 2 feet below ground. The capillary action other water movement methods allowed the water to feed the plants. We did not put on mycorhhizal fungi. The plants did very well. I went back several months later. There was magnificent corn, everything growing well. we had put on maybe 3 sprays when we were there. We did throw maybe 1 inch of weeds on top of the planted areas.
According to the podcast mentioned above, photosynthesis from the plants feeds the soil microbes. When there are enough soil microbes by the plants definition, they begin to use their photosynthesis to increase plant growth including fruit of course. So with these methods there can be as much as 5 times the productivity.
Elaine Ingham says to cut the weeds and leave the roots for the microbes. We do not have to have mulch. I am often in situations where I have little help with large acerages so i cannot add mulch. I do like Elaine Ingham’s idea to plant perennials in the beds of annuals, so maybe 3 rows of something short, maybe nitrogen fixing and 3 rows of annuals. As you take out the annals you leave whatever you do not eat on the bed so it feeds the microbes.
Another thing that many people forget is that a large proportion of the organic matter is actually the microbe bodies as they die. This is one way microbe applications alone, without organic matter, can result in creating soil–microbe bodies and localized plant wastes.