has55's R & D Journey

Texas is certainly different from British Columbia.

I flew to Texas from bC in somewhere around 1982 in April.  I left a late fall of snow to a 72F in San Antonio.  I sure noticed the difference.

I, too, would fill the lower level of my bed with biomass and then would expect the top layer to inoculate the lower level given time.

I'm a huge proponent of building the soil food web every way I can.  My hubby thinks I'm a little "off my rocker" sometimes - I take black trash bags with us when we go camping and gather a wide assortment of forest floor material (a little bit from here and there in a non-national forest area).  I bring it home for the microbial life stored in it so that I can increase my soil health and variety of fungal life.

I'm with you, Audrey-Jeanne. Most times I have a folded-up bag with, just in case.

Sometimes I have picked up horse droppings. Once we had a horseman touring with his horse and he asked permission to tether his horse outside in the car park under some trees. After he left I took my plastic bag and picked everything up to add to my compost pile.  Sadly, we seldom see any horses around now.

When we had to use a ferry to cross the Columbia River I always remember the notices telling one to be in control of their horse.  Now we have a $25 Million Bridge to connect the two communities and it certainly is not for the benefit of pedestrians but for the paper mill as it crosses the river in the opposite angle for us so that it takes about an hour to walk instead of the 15 minute ferry ride.  Such is progress.

Some people rather read than watch a video. these are the notes from the 
The Roots of Your Profits - Dr Elaine Ingham, Soil Microbiologist, Founder of Soil Foodweb Inc
 Dr. Ingham was the keynote speaker at the Oxford Real Farming Conference in 2015.  she discussed …what is going on down there in the life of the soil? Who is eating who? Who is releasing and who is locking up nutrients? How can you put these organisms to work and reduce your own workload?    She explained why inorganic fertilisers kill the organisms that would allow you to not use inorganic fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides and not to have to cultivate your soil so often.  She talked about “how to enhance the beneficial organisms in your soil” together with some comments on how to making compost, compost tea and extracts.  Good start is the book,"Teaming with microbes,". This lecture goes to another level. You can learn more from her website (http://www.soilfoodweb.com)    You can find the slides from that talk below:
Elaine Ingham ORFC 2015 Presentation
Here's a sample pictures of the bacterial fungal ratio in the soil from on of the pages-working toward a fungal dominated compost.











here's the video that goes with the notes.. It posted earlier in the thread. 

I think all these figures are assuming that everything is perfect.

Fourteen bell peppers of every plant?

I really do not believe this.

Interesting, but you have to have a market. And, electricity for hydroponics, and grow lights if you go that way. California electricity costs $$$$. I wish it didn't have the "political" slant, though, but I do like the part of sharing bounty with the less fortunate.

Got distracted from going to bed when I started reading some of her articles!

These fully automated sow ,grow ,weed & harvest  hydroponics do work , The investment is tremendous for some of the really big set up but once it's set up within four or five years you should be breaking even .

 There is a new style set up initially costing well over $ 100,000 USD using 3 foot high raised beds  with precision capacitor measuring scales on each side of the bed . It's a full computer programmable obby and works a bit like a laser printer or a CNC machine 
 You buy the programmes select which one foot square planting pattern you want and fill the hopper with pelleted seeds . They are then sown precisely in place ,  after that they get regular fine spray watering at set intervals .

 Wedding & pests ,a scanner  head looks for things growing out of the precise pattern line , it zaps anything not sown so weeding is easy .

 Initially the price was thought to be well out the pocket of most people but the take up was amazing so prices have tumbled I think it says they are about  about 1800 dollars these days .. they may well drop even further when the Chinese bring out their version of it  .

Here is the information site

http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/farmbot-intends-to-revolutionize-home-gardening/

sanderson wrote:Got distracted from going to bed when I started reading some of her articles!

LOL. I did the same thing, but since I work nights, I end up going to bed late in the daytime. I have to work on this.

AWAMZING INFO!

Very interesting. It uses raised beds, real "soil" with it's microorganisms, sun, etc. How many of us would use it, to what extent, if it was affordable?

I forsee that commercial growers will be using the vertical racks hundreds of feet long in 25 yard wide poly tunnels and using one or more fully robotic machines to sow   , tend the crop , pick ,  pack & put it on drop side semi the trailers .

 One or two people will be able to control millions of plants

 We've already seen the advent of Hydroponically produced strawberries being grown on hundreds of  columns. There are machines that pick apples , plums & pears etc.  So how long before vertical hydroponics are mainstream with countries such as Israel , Australia , China & the USA ...... two or three years?

The four acre indoor hydroponic operation in the following links is not far from where I live.

https://www.realagriculture.com/2015/05/these-cucumbers-glow-pink-a-tour-of-suntech-greenhouse/

http://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/suntech-greenhouses-using-led-lights-to-mimic-sun-1.2778785

Lynn Gillespie, is giving away a free download of soil building. You have to recheck your email for confirmation to get it. It's all in color. here's the email. She also ask for you answer a survey on what challenges you're having in your email. You don't have to do it, The download is really free. 
here's an example :

Soil Secret #3
MAINTAINING A LIVING SOIL
1. Never putting anything chemical on the garden or the plants.
2. Feeding the soil to keep the microbes thriving with organic compost and organic natural fertilizers.
3. Turning the soil as little as possible to prevent damage to the microbes.
4. Mulching the garden to give the microbes a cozy home and a source of food. 
Here's the email, I received.the link is within it.

Hello Friend, For some time now, many of you have had plenty of questions about our secret soil mix. It is the key to the High Performance Garden’s success!  You asked, and now it’s time to deliver. Over the past couple of months I have been writing a soil guide to help new gardeners as they create the garden of their dreams.   The soil recipes and advice contained in this PDF are priceless. For the next couple of weeks I am giving it away for free! Why would I do such a thing? Because I understand the many frustrations that came with your last gardening season, and I don’t want you to have another year like that. By putting in a little bit of time into your garden’s soil today, you will reap the rewards for decades later. I’m going on 30 years of garden success because of the soil recipe I used 30 years ago in my garden.  >> Click Here to Download the Gardener’s Guide to Perfect Soil Go on ahead and get started! I look forward to seeing how your garden flourishes!  All you need to do is click on the link below.  >> Click Here to Download the Gardener’s Guide to Perfect Soil May your garden be easy, fun, productive, and always organic! Lynn

Got it, did the survey and was then invited to pay for a course. The download is good and I like her videos that I have seen in the past.

I had trouble downloading so I quit. I'll try again.

Got it downloaded.  This is just my take:  It looks like you choose at least one item from each box.  From Box 1, I chose vermiculite, Box 2 peat moss, and Box 3 compost with a side dressing of worm castings.  Mix and put in some type of container or raised beds.  All that's needed to make it a SFG is a grid.  Mel got it right, maybe without even knowing what is going on underground.  Yeah Mel!!  

sanderson wrote:Got it downloaded.  This is just my take:  It looks like you choose at least one item from each box.  From Box 1,  I chose vermiculite, Box 2 peat moss, and Box 3 compost with a side dressing of worm castings.  Mix and put in some type of container or raised beds.  All that's needed to make it a SFG is a grid.  Mel got it right, maybe without even knowing what is going on underground.  Yeah Mel!!  

+1

I read th SFG book in one nights reading. I knew from the get go that was for me. No hesitation, it was the formula I have been dreaming about.
Here's my take on Mel's Mix....learn your composting, go way over the five ingredients. Even if you can't....do it.
Follow Mel's recipe to the T...and you'll have the finest growing medium on the planet.

I enjoyed these videos. They did a great job of introducing more knowledge about the soil. The first video is fun.
 I'm doing some plant cover crops within my beds, but it limited as I learned how to do it. I'm going to plant daikon , Austrian winter peas and probably rye cereal in my peepers and tomatoes beds. I plan to cut down the daikon plants at the surface and plant tomatoes, etc next to the root in the spring. this root will decompose by fungi activity and should give a great boost to the tomato plant. the peas and rye is for the nitrogen and increasing soil tilth. 
I will be adding the recommendation for soil improvement Dr. Elaine Ingham recommended to increase my fungi and nematodes level for the vegetables. see below. 

Two possible ways to improve life in these beds would be to 1) improve protozoa, which eat bacteria and then release nutrients to feed your plants.  Additionally, actinobacteria often do very well in protozoan infusions, and would increase the actinobacterial biomass at the same time, and 2) add fungal inocula and foods to the soil to increase fungal biomass.  
To improve protozoa, as protozoan infusion can be made.  Apply 1 to 10 gallons of the following per acre (irrigation systems are fine for doing this):
1)    On the bottom of a tank that can hold water and which has a mixing or aeration system (a compost tea brewer works great for this purpose), place a layer (about ¼ to ½ inch thick) of chopped hay, grass clippings, or other plant material, which preferably has not been treated with pesticide.
2)    Add water to the half to ¾ full mark.  Treat the water with humic acid to deal with any chlorine, or chloramine or sulfur or salts BEFORE adding the water to the tank with the plant material.  No contaminants in the water that could kill the protozoa, please.
3)    Let aerate or mix gently for about 48 hours, at which time protozoan numbers should be teeming in the water. 
4)    Strain to remove the plant residue, and apply the water, containing billions of protozoa to the alfalfa.  If the water hits the alfalfa surfaces, that is good, as the alfalfa can probably use the increased nutrient cycling that can happen on the leaf surfaces. 
Beneficial nematode numbers need to be improved as well, to increase nutrient availability for the plants.  Add fungal foods to improve fungal biomass, and this may attract the fungal-feeding nematodes.     
 
Fungal biomass can be improved by adding some additional fungal foods, which are materials such as humic acids, fish hydrolysate with chitin and chitosan (insect exoskeletons), insect frass (high in chitin), rice hulls, steel ground oats (mostly the seed coat of the oat), or other high-cellulose or lignin containing materials which beneficial fungi enjoy.   

In the first video, They mention a plot with organic matter at 6%.It look great.  My soil tested  at 12.5%. see below. 

Interesting. I watched 2 and will probably watch the rest as time allows.

sanderson wrote:Interesting.  I watched 2 and will probably watch the rest as time allows.

I thought the first one was a lot of fun. I'm still going through the last one. they are outdoor and seeing a lot visually.

this is were I'm going with this project. Base on what I'm seeing , the seed mixed diversity simply put manual composting to the back burner, I think. It a work in progress, so don't go blow your top. It a project. What I'm seeing they are rebuilding the soil with the soil diversity with seed mixed s a living mulched, then terminated by rolling , not cutting, allowing it to break down by the soil food web. these seed mixes break down fast, thus providing the new active compost material. You decide what you want your seed mix do do, ex. scavenge nitrogen, produce nitrogen, break up the soil, produce long root to mined micro minerals and create deep tunnels for our garden vegetable roots, kill bad nematodes,bring in bees and other pollinators, etc...  We SFG's don't need to break up the soil, prevent weeds, but we could benefit from the other problem solvers.
I'm going to test part of the idea out on 4 of my long beds for the spring crops. they won't be growing anything , but the cover crop of diverse seed mixed. You can cut it, because you will end up pushing the material into the seed hole when planting seeds. this may decrease your seed germination rate according to the videos. You have to push the crop over somehow. haven't figure that one out yet. I'll let some of the mad scientist , I mean engineers on this forum help solve that problems. I hope you have time to view the videos. i'm taking the concept from the farm to small 4 x 4 SFG's beds. . A tall order, but I think it can be done. I'll keep composting the other beds
I know my ideas can get wild, but gardening is always evolving.that's the fun of it. It's still the wild ,wild west, a bucking horse, but has been tame significantly by SFG. Whoa, there boy. I said whoa!! Them darn earthworm, they keep digging under my vegetables.

Has, You sure have a lot of fun experimenting. I know I am biased towards SFG because it eliminates so many problems, as long as the compost is premium. However, I think the video series you posted is critical viewing for farmers to change commercial agriculture in CA. We are losing our topsoil with all the bare fields.

Regarding pushing seeds into the bed, I though in one of the videos they used a small combo disker/planter to make a small trench down a row and insert the seeds. I did not see any implement that covers the tiny trench??