humus, humic substances and humic acid in our soil and compost

Great read about the soil. different links required to put it all in one place. have fun.

Humus - It's The Dirt !

HUMIC SUBSTANCES – 1-overview

HUMIC SUBSTANCES – 2-WHAT THEY ARE, AND CAN DO

HUMIC SUBSTANCES - 3 THE ENVIRONMENT

HUMIC ACID

Humus ~ Technical1

That stuff is worth the price of admission. Good for veggies, and particularly good for helping to get clay soils to unlock. It worked miracles on my water repellent lawn. The original sod had been planted in 3 inches of clay at the sod farm and delivered in rolls. The lawn was a bear to water if the soil base dried out too much, and the humic granules did the trick. Word of warning: use a mask- stuffs nasty on the respiratory system.

I glad to hear that because the lawn is my next experiment to get it more pourous with compost. This will increase earthworm foraging, tunneling and verimi-poop . Do you remember what was the formula you use for your lawn?

I broadcast the stuff with a hand broadcaster (wish I cous remember the setting). and watered it in with daily sprinkle.

thank you.

Thanks for these links, has55.  I have read the home Pae of the Soil Guy  and I have bookmarked it.  Lots to learn there.

Very interesting thread! I was doing a search to see if there any threads on Humic DG, and came across this one.  I have been researching Humic Acid to up my game in gardening as well as landscaping, and this info is very useful.  One of the things I like about the Humic DG is that it is not only dustless, but it disperses the humic as soon as it gets wet.

Andersons Humic DG

OhioGardener wrote:Very interesting thread! I was doing a search to see if there any threads on Humic DG, and came across this one.  I have been researching Humic Acid to up my game in gardening as well as landscaping, and this info is very useful.  One of the things I like about the Humic DG is that it is not only dustless, but it disperses the humic as soon as it gets wet.

Andersons Humic DG

I planned to make the liquid type humic acid from my Bioreactor when it mature. It almost time.It seem like it was yesterday when I made the bioreactor. This will cost pennies and will go a longgggg way.



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I don't know if I am going to explain this in a coherent way but humic acid and fulvic acid are components of humus and only exist in the lab when extracted by alkaline 13. It takes about a year to make good compost and 5 years for good compost to become humus. It is a forever process of decomposition and the reason why it takes time to build soil. After the first year or compost at its maturity you do have a percentage of humus but it will take time for the compost to be totally turned into humus. You have what the plant and the soil need to survive and thrive. If you compost and you compost for awhile and have learned to make good compost than there is no need to go out and buy it. You already possess it in a ready to use form.

I think if good things come from biodiversity and treating your soil as if it is a treasured family pet, alive and loved. Then it maybe time to have A Compost Party. This is when you either host or go to someone's house with bags of finished compost and swap with other composters while consuming your favorite beverage and talk composting. Here are a few links to maybe explain better and in further detail.

https://www.gardenmyths.com/humus-does-not-exist-says-new-study/

https://themarea.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Lehmann-and-Kebbler-2015.pdf

We are in the process of understanding soil and that it is alive and its processes are constant and never ending. Dirt is when these processes stop and you are basically left with the geological and some chemical with most of the biological either dead or dormant. And if new discoveries in the soil sciences change what I just said, then the best thing would be just forget it.

It is my belief to remain sustainable, little as possible needs to be bought.

Dan, let me re-word to see if I have it correct. Compost, over the years, will turn into "humus". However, humus can only be identified in the laboratory after treating with 13pH alkaline. So, "humus" is still a mystery but it does have a lot of carbon.

Summary, for vegetable gardens, keep adding quality compost and keep it moist. Not soggy, as oxygen and air pockets are necessary to prevent anaerobic conditions.

From "Teaming with Microbes", veggies thrive in bacterial dominated environment. Perennials such as shrubs and trees thrive in fungal dominated environment. But, that's a different topic than veggie gardens.

Dan I used to get envious at what I used to see daily  .. It was what over 90 years of father & 84 year old son did to two vey big veg plots that had not only been fed almost annually with composted veg matter in a five year cycle.

 They also got  fed in the fourth winter  with well composted animal  poops & their beddings all being composted for several years, well turned and aeriated  .

 The beds were almost level as a pool table and some two feet taller than the rest of the local authority owned garden allotments . What was amazing was that the quality soil was a good four feet deep as the old son practiced double trench digging on the fifth plot as he fed it .
 
 He grew nine inch dia four foot long parsnips  with ease , his carrots were similar too . 
 I'm now in my 10 year of using Mel's soilless method , have been adding four year old mulched in a trash bag hedgecuttings for a more coarse bitty  additive as  well as spent tomato tub fills & pure veg matter composts & composted dungs  to keep the beds open & being fed these last three years .

 I've managed to fully service about 1/3 of the beds with this well composted mix of different rate rotting out materials and it's very noticeable something is much better .
 
 Tonight I pulled a 10 inch long carrot with a girth for much of it's length similar to two stacked up 330ml coke cans .  They are fantastic , as crunchy & sweet as fresh pulled baby carrots .. we only needed 1/2 of the carrot  tonight for the three of us .

 Feeding your bed annually or as soon as you harvest a single plant  with a compost that has different rate material rotting away times  happening over a long time period is certainly the way to go . 


 In some of the old gardening books I used to have in my little library of useful books , some going back to 1910 & earlier   it was always stated that you must use  a four or five crop rotation with the fallow part being double dug and fed one wheel barrow of well composted manure  every yard dug before winter arrived  . then if you wanted to grow  ground vines celery or tomatoes outdoors  add in another wheel barrow of well rotted composted animal manures to the same square yard you grow them .
I Most of them often stated that by using a good well composted  animal manure bed feeding regime  would still have plenty of valuable nutrients left in the compost after seven years but a lot of the phosphates would have leached out so re-manure at least once every seven years. 

 Made me understand why my dad (general  farm hand )   used to often finish his digging at home in moonlight ( 1955 ) just before the first frost came .

Plantoid

Hello folks .. I've got a bit more free time in my busy life so might be visiting ANSFG a little bit more in the winter months .

Lovely to see more of you, Plantoid.