Episode 2: Interview with Jeff Lowenfels

www.kisorganic...
In this episode, we talk to Jeff Lowenfels about the Soil Food Web, mycorrhizal fungi, no-till, and how plants uptake nutrients.
Jeff is the co-author of Teaming with Microbes The Organic Gardeners Guide to the Soil Food Web published by Timber Press in August 2006 to great acclaim and revised in 2011; it is touted as the most important gardening book published in the past twenty five years and won the prestigious garden Writers of America Gold Award for gardening books. It’s been translated into Korean, French and soon Slovenian. Jeff is also the author of Teaming with Nutrients, the Organic Gardeners Guide to Optimizing Plant Nutrition published by Timber Press in May 2013, and the shorthand title is How Plants Eat and What To Feed Them. It is sure to make you appreciate the beauty of how plants operate as well as make you a better gardener and steward of the earth. 
His latest book Teaming with Fungi was just released at the end of 2016 and is all about mycorrhizal fungus. Jeff is an extremely respected and popular national garden writer; he is the former president of the garden Writers of America, was made at G.W.A fellow in 1999 and inducted into the G.W.A Hall of Fame, the highest honor a garden writer can achieve in 2005. Most important, Jeff is the founder of a now national program that started this Plant a Row for Beans the soup kitchen getting an Anchorage and is now Plant a Row for the Hungry; the program is active in forty eight states and result in over a million pounds of produce being donated to feed the hungry every year. Jeff has been a good friend now for over a decade and is a wonderful advocate for organic gardening compost tea and the microbes in our soil.

[@garafraxagoodies9768]

glad I found this pod

[@caseG80]

We need a yearly update with Jeff? Love listening to these a number of times especially after the outdoor season always find something new or understand a little better thanks for all you do. 🤙

[@kisorganics]

I'll try and get him back on at some point. At the very least, when his new book on Autoflowers that he's writing right now comes out!

[@MICHGANDER9]

Great information

[@GreenGrowSpaces]

Great stuff Tad. Jeff mentions irregularis by name as being the most effective species to link with cannabis. I was under the impression that it was glomus intraradices. Ultimately I would imagine diversity is ideal, but I did find that to be an interesting point.

[@kisorganics]

Green Grow Spaces good question. It's the same species, they keep reclassifying the name. You may also see rhizophagus intraradices on the label. Check out my blog post on kisorganics on myco if you want a reference for species and names. Thanks!

[@GreenGrowSpaces]

Right on - thanks for the heads up, will do. I'm in the middle of the Coot, er, Jim interview. He's quite the resource as well.

[@rickyg2003]

Any episode or book I can get that goes over the basic soil recipes for living soil

[@kisorganics]

We have some other podcast episodes where we talk about this more in depth, but also some posts on our blog. If you go to the KIS Organics website and click on "learn" and then "blog" you can see some articles that will give you some recipes.

[@patmerrick6377]

My soil test showed high phosphorous which I think came from the compost I amended with so with that said how high is to high to get a relationship with mycorrhizae ? And what can I do to get it to where it will ?

[@gillenzfluff8380]

Get some pseudomonas putida to solubilize the phosphate and chelate iron among other things.

[@kevincleary2863]

Thank you for hosting these podcasts! I love listening to them while working in the garden. Jeff mentions that you need to give mycorrhizae colonies up to 14 days to fully colonize and you shouldn't apply any nitrogen or phosphorous within those first 14 days. Does that apply to top dressing with containers, using cover crops such as clover or does it mainly just apply to liquid synthetic or organic fertilizer solutions? Thank you so much!

[@ForagersGarden]

Kevin Cleary i would say that only applies to water soluble bottled nutrients unless you just cut down your cover crop and there is a lot of nutrient cycling going on, but definitely living organic matter is going to be much safer and more gentle on the soil food web and ultimately mycelium growth whether its mycorrhizae or endophytic etc

[@CostasHoneyBees]

I will be listening to all of these. Thank you 👍

[@pataniki8034]

yes we enjoy and learn and at times laugh and say wish i heard that last week before i pulled those sunflower roots from my garden-is jeff just into the growing aspects or does he find interests in experimenting with medicinal aspects of roots and stems-but agree with him intuitively and know each year closer to best ever in soil and them there microbiomes-whats interesting heard another of his later lectures first and his mentioning of the fungal better in canna growth cycle-and went out to my garden and viola there they were-little shrooms all i needed were the fairies and elves but they probably were hiding-his books sound pivital and long winter reads so will save up and invest-nice to deep dive into soil and all that makes it us happy-manythxsgr8interview

[@auraglasswerks4900]

Can’t listen cuz WAY TOO MANY ADS!

[@kisorganics]

apologies let me see if there's a way to adjust the settings. Also, none of the other podcast platforms like apple podcasts or google play or spotify have ads.

[@derrickpitter8340]

Jeff mentions why wouldn't you recycle soil? As a micro greens grower who grows in controlled conditions indoors, my spent soil has tested positive for pathogens in the past. Yeah I could sterile the soil, but that takes time and space and isn't worth the risk imo. I'm not sure if this concern is applicable to cannabis production as the pathogens likely come from the micros seed, but still seems like a risk to me.

[@kisorganics]

Erich, pathogens are a concern and can certainly be a challenge in controlled environment agriculture, which is why most people do throw out their media. That being said, I think through proper soil management, these issues can be controlled or managed at a threshold below what would be considered economically damaging.

[@alfplanetx689]

Lord of the Roots

[@jasonthomas240]

ridiculous amount of long ads. sorry but there are others sharing this knowledge without the ads.

[@kisorganics]

Sorry Jason, feel free to skip the ads. There are no ads on the podcasts themselves and no ads if you listen on another platform like Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Hope that helps!

[@dperezc88]

how do you spell the 11:27 name?

[@kisorganics]

rhizophagus irregularis

[@dperezc88]

@@kisorganics thank you

[@gillenzfluff8380]

No one is fertilizing the giant redwoods except for birds and animals that's why I use urine in the garden.

[@pastrie42]

I have to be honest and say that this interview was all over the place. I don't really feel like I understood the topic very well after listening to this. You didn't progressed to the topic in any sort of linear way as far as I could tell, and you didn't relate the science down to the base level of actually growing so it doesn't really connect. I really enjoyed the knowledge given here.

[@kisorganics]

thank you for the feedback

[@gillenzfluff8380]

If you have good soil you don't need to buy mycorrhizal fungi or struvite.

[@sevensurvival]

Good info But, get some pictures!

[@kisorganics]

it's actually a podcast that publishes to youtube so there are no photos, sorry.

[@hachmejo]

Podcasts are audio. Not everything has to be pictures.