Soil Food Web School Case Study: Sweden Market Garden | Soil Microbiology

Renald Flores shows how he used the Soil Food Web method & Soil Microbiology to help a market garden in Sweden get an average 72% increase of crop yields in the first growing season!
✅ Find out more about Soil Food Web 👉 bit.ly/3arA9iC
In this case study, Soil Food Web Consultant Renald Flores, worked on a market garden near Stockholm, Sweden. They made biologically complete compost on-site, using organic matter from the local area, and the results were amazing: An average increase in yields of 72% across 8 different types of crop, in the first growing season! Renald came from a background in finance and is now dedicated to the cause. He is working on multiple soil regeneration projects in 3 European countries and is about to start a PhD. Way to go Renald!
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The Soil Food Web School’s mission is to empower individuals and organizations to regenerate the soils in their communities. The Soil Food Web Approach can dramatically accelerate soil regeneration projects by focussing on the soil biome. This can boost the productivity of farms, provide super-nutritious foods, protect and purify waterways, and reduce the effects of Climate Change. No background in farming or biology is required for our Foundation Courses. Classes are online & self-paced, and students are supported by highly-trained Soil Food Web School mentors.
Over the last four decades, Dr. Elaine Ingham has advanced our knowledge of the Soil Food Web. An internationally-recognized leader in soil microbiology, Dr. Ingham has collaborated with other scientists and with farmers around the world to further our understanding of how soil organisms work together and with plants. Dr. Ingham is an author of the USDA's Soil Biology Primer and a founder of the Soil Food Web School.
00:00 The key to your soil health is soil microbiology
02:50 Who Flor.ès.Sens is
09:26 Insights1
9:33 Scientific Background
37:04 Applying Science
42:24 Results and Outcomes
#SoilFoodWebSchool #SoilMicroBiology #MarketGarden

[@soilfoodwebschool]

✅ Find out more about Soil Food Web 👉 bit.ly/3arA9iC

[@manjunath7497]

Thanks a lot🙏. Please do provide information about how to practice it so that anyone around the world can. Follow it.

[@fieldbee3211]

While farming near Philadelphia - We are so happy to hear this discussion of the down to earth aspects of building soil health. It's just wonderful that there's a huge growing community that's working to become more familiar with the variety and interactions of all the many soil organisms. Our species success here and the prospect for our responsibly increasing the chances for all the species here with us - seems improved by these ongoing discussions.

[@fieldbee3211]

We try to be open to the fall/winter prospects of visiting regenerative and organic farms during our seasonal "down time". We're seeking to reward our top personnel with a travel "assist" and networking connection to working organic farm visits. Can any attendees here today suggest the names and addresses ( pls without links that'd get your comments scrubbed). May our regenerative community globally please help host our best people. Grateful too for "Save Soil" organic farms.

[@agdayem]

So the big question is what is the microbial inoculant? It is something we can produce ourselves to free or another commodity you want to sell to the poor farmer? Where is your research paper? Is it even published in a journal?

[@boubacarmoustapha]

Thanks for those valuables data

[@silverrose7554]

Thank you 🙏

[@undefined3248]

Hi, where can I get some more concrete literature on compost tea only? I'm looking to use compost tea as a means to improve my paddocks, but most of these studies include the use of compost in combination with compost tea, I have seen none (positive supporting evidence) that exclusively highlights the results of compost tea only use.

[@undefined3248]

Due to the fact that I want to cover large areas where compost isn't really viable.

[@soilfoodwebschool]

you might enjoy watching this new video of a Case Study in Peru, where the farmer reported increasing yields by over 100% in the first year and nearly 100% in the 2nd year: promo.soilfoodweb.com/jan23s-consultant-va/#case-peru

[@thenextpoetician6328]

Academics ... This probably could have been a 5 minute video. I made it to 7:26 by reading a few comments. It's simple. Compost everything you can, and supplement with wood chips.

[@laracamp2627]

🕊🕊🕊🔬🔬🔬💚💚💚

[@dertythegrower]

🎯🌱👋

[@nicolasbertin8552]

Sadly you're already a few decades behind, when people were saying back in the late 90s early 2000s that compost will restore soils. You need to bring in a caveat : the REAL compost, IE mature compost, cannot be applied alone on soils. It's too black, too draining, and doesn't feed soil life. Its problem is its nature : it's been digested by soil life already. It will feed plants very well, but not the soil (or barely). Where's the food for mushrooms and worms ? It's not there anymore because they need lignin, wood. So what people do more than compost is wood chips. If you're afraid of nitrogen depletion, you can complete with a bit of compost, manure or grass clippings. But wood chips or straw should be your number one priority in veggie farming, this is what they do in "Maraîchage Sol Vivant" in France (IE "living soil veggie farming"). More than 95% of the new farms being created in France today use that technique. And they know that compost alone is not the best. They only use it if they don't have anything else. But luckily in France, there's a lot of wood chips available from the railroad companies, the electricity companies, cutting trees, or from tree surgeons. Landfills also collect green waste from private gardens. So in the end farmers have access to free wood chips or cheap wood chips very easily, and build up their humus layer like that, it works insanely well. Compost wouldn't work in France without irrigation. It's too dry. Why bother with composting material when you can put what makes compost already right on your soil ? It's way better. Cut down the middle man. If we're talking crops however, cereals, you can't of course put wood chips or compost on hectares of land, it's too expensive. So they use varied cover crops, the more varied the mix, the more biomass you produce, coz different families of plants are good at different nutrient intake, and they share those nutrients through the rhizosphere (see Christine Jones web conferences).

[@billiebruv]

Man, if you have the skills to grow awsome produce, you should be out there documenting it with vids, field days and publications, share your success, and make floressens systems envious, and check out Di and Ian Haggerty, large scale in an inhospitipal growing environment

[@nicolasbertin8552]

@@billiebruv It's already the case. There's an organisation called "Ver de Terre Production" which shares all this knowledge with farmers. Sadly it's all in French, but if you want to have a veggie farm in France nowadays, it's super easy. Videos shared are farm visits, training in farming techniques, soil biology, mycology, cover crops, agronomy, etc... Exactly like John Kempf's channel, or the channel "Green Cover Seed". They've tested the "pure compost" method, it's not as good as wood chips because it doesn't feed worms. Worms are the key to veggie farming. They give you free natural tilling and immense quantities of nitrogen with their mucus. And their population is multiplied by 10 every year when fed with wood chips. But if you put pure compost, they don't feed worms so you don't get that boost in population. So in the end over years and years of pure compost, you get compacted soil, farmers have tried. That's why I'm saying that seeing this video feels like they are decades behind. Coz research and practical trials have showed pure compost doesn't work on the long run. However, some farmers do fine with "compost", like Charles Dowding and people emulating his method in the UK or US. So why ? The issue is in what they call "compost". Their compost is mostly half done compost, it's not fully mature (real compost has the texture of potting mix). So it still has some twigs and stuff left to eat for soil life, that's why it works. But it's still better to get the fresh wood chips, or only composted for 6 months or so. Dowding's stuff is probably 70% composted, something like that. I don't have a farm, but I take care of a 1800 m² shared community garden with about 2 thirds dedicated to veggies. And we do use those techniques (it's been 4 years now I think), other community gardens in the region do as well. It works superbly. I tried compost alone, a disaster on our clay soil that would get compacted, and in our rather dry climate (600 mm of rain per year) with that black hot dry compost. We get wood chips from the town landscape gardeners, we put it everywhere, and in winter we do cover crops to really break down that clay soil. For hungry crops, we get spent barley from a local brewery, it's full of nitrogen and phosphorous, it's superb stuff. We put some under the wood chip mulch. It replaces compost or grass clippings fine. In France, wood chips are much easier to find, and cheaper than compost. It doesn't take 200 IQ to understand why it's cheaper : it's fresh, you don't need to wait a year or two to compost it down. It's also obvious why it's better : soil and soil life are the ultimate recycling machine. They will do better than what happens in a big pile of compost, at a landfill or anywhere else. If you do big piles of compost, it heats up, and it mostly involves bacteria to create that compost. You lose 30-50% of the carbon in your compost pile as CO2 due to heating. Put as mulch on the ground, it is MUCH more efficient, because you can't beat nature... You remove a long step, and it works better, it's just a win-win, there's no reason to use compost instead of the fresh stuff.

[@billiebruv]

@@nicolasbertin8552 well, you need to check a few things here. 1) do a little bit of homework on Dr E, and the american/australian ag system. 2)Dr E uses a microscope to see what beneficial biology is in the compost, and maybe this is where the french are failing with soil biology and composting, as it is common in america and australia also, hence why she developed the SFW. 3) back to eden is quite a common practice in america. maybe you could research that practice to see if there is similar beneficial biology occuring. And yes, chips wont have an impact on the the industrial scale 4) how long does it take to create functional plant production under the french woodchip method? 5)600mm of rain is considered a great drop, the Haggertys have around 200mm or so, depends on the year We need to hear more of these productions methods from europe, as you have a longer history with varied climate, heritage, and cultures, etc, and don't have the NRA/bayermonsanto style of control and 'influence' over production, non gmo, and reduced glyphosate use, for example

[@nicolasbertin8552]

@@billiebruv I've already quoted Christine Jones who's Australian, not a fan of your pretentious tone "do a little bit of homework". I've looked at the Haggerty farm but it's much different, it's grazing and grain, in that case you use cover crops and native plants. Totally different from a veggie farm, you wouldn't use wood chips on a large scale. And yeah I know the Back To Eden method. The issue is that they haven't done the science behind why it works, they haven't done worm population survey. In France, Marcel Bouché is one of the top scientists on worms, he studied the nitrogen cycle with isotopes etc... proving a huge proportion of nitrogen passes through worms before getting into plants, he really went far with it. 600 mm a year is quite dry (second dryest region in France), 200 mm is semi-desertic climate (Egypt) so I don't know what you're talking about. I don't care what biology is in the compost or not, any compost is full of bacteria. That's the issue : it's just bacteria. No worms or mushrooms. The time it takes to create functional plant production depends on your soil. If you have a normal meadow with 4-5 % organic matter, the first year is productive : put tarps to kill the weed, plant easy stuff like potatoes and squashes. Otherwise, if you got 1 or 2 % only (badly treated soil), since it takes a year to multiply your worm population by 10, it takes a year of wood chip to have a nice productive system, and 3 years for maximum production. But in these cases, you don't have to use pure wood chips, you complete your lack of nitrogen in the soil with manure, compost, grass clippings... so that you're productive the first year. The issues with low organic matter and low soil life in general is that you'll get more diseases and pests. I know that in the US they have access to a lot of wood chips very easily, even more easily than in France. So there's 0 reason over there to use compost alone. In Australia, it would be a disaster to use compost in the dryer areas. It's black, it's dry, it would heat the soil to insane temperatures and require constant irrigation. Maybe in the wettest parts of Tasmania, like the West half, would it work, and in the Otways in Victoria, where they have like 1000 mm a year, but that's about it. And finally your "Dr. E" thing is just a brand of compost/compost tea. Inoculation of bacteria is becoming a big business nowadays. What do the experts actually say ? That it's not needed at all. By growing cover crops, using regular wood chips, compost, manure etc... you get plenty of bacteria, mushrooms etc... Those mycorhizae powders, and biotone mixes and whatever BS they sell these days are useless. They might work on a dead soil that's been tilled to oblivion if you need to bring back microbes, but that's never the case in a home garden, a veggie farm, and most grain farms. You may see soils with 0.5 % organic matter in Spain, or in some vineyards in France, but even then your best bet isn't to inocculate your soil or whatever, especially with so expensive products, it's to sow cover crops, or let native plants grow, or find big quantities of mulch and other organic materials. Then you'll see soil life bounce back. My big issues with these products is that they recommend putting it on everything, like a cureall... It is not, it feels a very small niche, but most farmers don't need it at all.

[@billiebruv]

@@nicolasbertin8552 We're working with areas much larger than one acre, woodchips are a budget killer on anything larger, not to mention the slow time frame to wait for them to begin working, what, a minimum of 6 months? Look at Richard Perkins, seems quite successful on the small scale with compost etc. Yep, well familiar with Dr CJ, I'm from southern Australia. And my statement still stands, do some homework before banging on with an unarmed argument, you are just ranting ignorance without even looking at some basic detail of the people you're dissing. But thanks for the Marcel Douche, some more homework on these cold wintery days

[@fieldbee3211]

While farming near Philadelphia - We are so happy to hear this discussion of the down to earth aspects of building soil health. It's just wonderful that there's a huge growing community that's working to become more familiar with the variety and interactions of all the many soil organisms. Our species success here and the prospect for our responsibly increasing the chances for all the species here with us - seems improved by these ongoing discussions.

[@dertythegrower]

They have a lot of labor on kensington.. they should turn the concrete zombie jungle into a tinyhome garden village with bike trails and bioag engineered green lanscapes with canals.. philly is falling apart, be safe