A Ghost Town in your Soil?

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A Ghost Town in your Soil?

OK, so how can soil be like a ghost town?

You may hear it said that “The people before us used nothing but chemical fertilizer and now the soil is dead”. But is it really devoid of life or just a bit like a Ghost Town, with a few tough old hermits hanging on and everyone else just “waiting for the mine to re-open” (so to speak).

This may sound a bit silly, but it reveals an important thing about improving soil. If we want to treat the soil as a Living System, but find that it is really dead, then how can we ever hope to make any improvements?

Of course, there are many people who promote the solution to this dilemma being in the miraculous properties to this product they just happen to be selling. Usually, these products claim to be packed with ‘Good Bacteria’ that will restore beneficial life to the soil. This seems to make good sense – if the bacteria that were there have died off, why not put some more back in?

Unfortunately, there are two important ways in which the logic of this really doesn’t hold up:

Firstly, soil is highly biodiverse and biomassive. So much so that it would rival the most pristine rain forest or coral reef. Research has repeatedly shown that even so-called “dead” soils actually contain more life than we give them credit for. It is the 'activity' of these soil organisms (or lack of it) that can make the soil resemble a ghost town.

Secondly, the track record of attempts to introduce new species into existing ecosystems is not a pretty one. Australia has the dubious honor of being the best example of this, with so many pest, weed and vermin species that were introduced expressly to ‘improve’ the place – including Rabbits, Foxes, Cats, Prickly Pear, Blackberry – species that subsequently ran rampant, causing enormous environmental damage! Can it really be so disastrous to casually introduce new species into ‘macro’ ecosystems and yet beneficial to do the same with ‘micro’ ones like soil?

Luckily, there is plenty of research to show that most additions of new organisms to the soil simply result in their rapid disappearance. The system is just so full of life (even when it gives the appearance of a ‘ghost town’) that there is just no room for anything else.

So what is actually going on?

The key is not so much the numbers of various species present, but rather in their activity (or the lack of it) that can make the soil resemble a ghost town.

Research carried out at SWEP Laboratories has clearly shown a strong link between biological activity and aspects of the physical environment within the soil. This seems hardly surprising. Yet again, we see the same in other Living Systems, so that what is true for a ‘macro’ ecosystem like a rain forest is also equally true in the soil.

This research also showed that the total population of soil organisms was proportional to the Adjusted Cation Exchange Capacity. Put simply, you will find more organisms in a Clay soil than Sand – again, nothing too surprising. However, what was perhaps even more important was that – when looking at only the active component of this population (estimated to be between 7% and 10% of the total) – biodiversity peaked when the physical properties of the soil (not just nutrients) were optimized.

So, what are these physical properties that we need to improve? Well this is where it gets a bit confusing. Originally it was believed that the physical character of any soil was determined by the proportions of sand, silt and clay it contained, however, since development of the Mikhail System it is clear that this actually depends on the balance of a number of elements in the soil.

Termed “Cations” (pronounced “Cat-iron”), these elements are also essential plant nutrients. So it is that confusion between their two different roles has hindered acceptance of there real importance. In other words, people have made the mistake of speaking about them as “nutrients” and using terms like “deficiency” and “excess”, which seems to prevent us thinking of anything more than just a fertilizer requirement for them.

The elements in question are Calcium, Magnesium, Sodium, Potassium and Hydrogen and they need to be present in the soil in very particular proportions – relative to the capacity of the soil to hold them (the Cation Exchange Capacity). Put simply, you need more of them in a Clay soil than Sand (but always in the same proportions).

It is an imbalance in these proportions that first causes the soil to become a ghost town. However, once the properties of the physical environment have been improved, it then takes on more of the function of a large apartment building, in that when functioning properly, it provides many places to house living things. After all, soil could hardly be called a Living System, a ghost town or even considered to be "dead" if it was just an inanimate medium that kept plants standing up on windy days and into which we poured fertilizer like gasoline into the fuel tank of a car.

However, when the balance of soil cations is less than optimal, some curious things happen. Often the total population of active organisms goes up!

This seems to fly in the face of what we would normally expect – that more biological activity is always better. What appears to happen is that under less than ideal conditions, the population of one or two types of soil organism skyrocket and they then suppress the activity of the others.

You could imagine this being like a high Crime rate in the City – the ‘good people’ become reluctant to leave home and go to work – their activity is suppressed. Some may move out to find better living conditions elsewhere and then squatters occupy their homes. So the overall population goes up, but the city becomes over-occupied by too many people of the wrong sort.

Of course, here we are interested in situations where the active population falls and the soil looks like a ghost town. In situations like this, occupancy is low and is mostly made up of ‘hermits’ who scratch out a living on very little. The streets are full of potholes and tumbleweeds, the living conditions (physical environment) so undesirable that only the toughest can remain active. This “Ghost town” soil needs only to have its physical environment improved in order for the activity of all the other occupants to return.

But remember, the soil is not dead! You can change it from a ghost town to a bustling metropolis in as little as one season just by getting the balance right.

A Ghost Town in your Soil?

Further Reading