This interview is with Robin Jameson and Spero Latchis, who run the non-profit Living Soil Network, with its mission “to transform unhealthy soils into living fertile ecosystems.“
Q: What is living soil?
Spero: I think the word “living soil” is chosen because it indicates the truth that soil is full of living organisms – healthy soil, real soil – as opposed to something maybe we might call “dirt” that has no life in it.
And further distinction is actually extremely important. Just because there are living things in the soil doesn’t make it “living soil”. Our definition of living soil – and I think the best definition of living soil – is soil that has a full, complete ecosystem of all the micro-organisms that plants work in symbiotic relationship with.
So, to have really fully living soil you need micro-arthropods, you need nematodes, you need amoebae, you need flagellates, and many, many thousands of species of fungus as well as tens of thousands of species of bacteria.
Q: Your business is called Living Soil Network, right? Why the “network”?
Robin: The nonprofit is called the Network. [Living Soil Network]. Not that many people understand living soil so the nonprofit’s job is to educate people, get people talking about it, and spread awareness.
We chose “network” because in a healthy thriving ecosystem, it is a network of symbiotic relationships. And, um, and that is how we see change actually happening in the world.
When we first started off with the Network we tried to work with municipalities and cities. We thought, Ohh let’s go to the people that have power, then we will be able to make broad change…
Q: When you went to municipalities or cities what was – what were you hoping for? Because there’s not a lot of soil or dirt in a municipality or city.
Robin: No, there is, actually, because they have a lot of city parks, and they have golf courses and they have the grounds that the city offices are on.
Spero: There’s a huge, enormous misunderstanding about soil ecology. It is rampant, and a lot of it has to do with the organic agriculture movement which has promoted the idea that adding organic matter to your soil makes it healthy. That that’s all you need to do: add enough organic matter, and that creates healthy soil. This couldn’t be further from the truth. You need to have all those organisms, not only organic matter.
The other misconception is if you add enough compost you’re going to have living soil. Not necessarily, because most compost is heavily bacterial and has very few of the other organisms.
Q: What do you mean by “organic matter” in this context?
Spero: Organic matter would be plant residue, …biochar would be [an] example of organic matter, manured compost, leaves; anything that was once a plant or was once a living substance and is now decaying. If you have enough of that in your soil, you have, supposedly, healthy soil. Not true.
OK. So what is the process you undertake to get the small creatures [laughing] that you listed?
Spero: [some silent space here] I’m thinking…
Now, nature has a way of doing this on its own but it may take a thousand years in soil that is disturbed or ecosystems that are heavily disturbed, it may take a long time to restore it; it doesn’t just happen. What we do is make compost in a very particular, very, very particular way with a lot of care and a lot of detail, a lot of attention to detail, very specific recipes, so that we bring about that full ecosystem during the composting process. So that our finished compost has the right amount of diverse fungal species, the right amount of diverse bacterial species, it has nematodes, it has micro-arthropods, and it has the right types of protozoans.
So there’s a whole complete ecosystem in the compost that we make. We place that compost into the soil and let the plants interact with it. So it’s really ecosystem restoration. As opposed to buying commercial compost which is typically 95%, or 100% bacteria and adding that to your soil which reinforces the cycle of unhealthy, over bacterial, imbalanced soils.
Robin: Which grows weeds.
Spero: Grow weeds. Weeds love bacterial soils.
Robin: And also you’re getting diminished nutrient output.
I’d like to talk about all the benefits of living soil.
Think of an ecosystem where there are predator / prey relationships and nutrient cycling. Basically, a predator eats its prey and then poos out all those nutrients. Those nutrients are then absorbed by other creatures in the ecosystem, and on and on and on…. In the same way, microbes eat sand, silt and clay particles and excrete them in a plant soluble form right next to the plant roots. Those rocks, which are full of minerals, are not in a plant soluble form. The microbes turn rocks into plant food.
And …one other misconception is that our soils are depleted of minerals and nutrients and that’s not true; actually our soils are depleted of biology. If the microbes were there, they would be breaking up all those rocks and turning them into plant soluble nutrients. They would be breaking them up and feeding them to the plants.
So when you get the microbes happening in a diverse ecosystem you’re going to get so many different micro-nutrients, you’re going to get such a full and rich amount of vitamins and nutrition into your plant that you’re, if you’re eating that plant, then you’re getting all of that into yourself. When the plant is getting that level of varied nutrition, their immune systems are much stronger and so they are not attacked by pests and the whole ecosystem becomes stronger. Plants with strong immune systems produce phytochemicals that humans need for their own immune system strength.
If you wanted to make your lawn living soil – …once it was established and thriving you would not have to water it very much, and you wouldn’t need any of the chemical fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides. The microbes are feeding your grass a vast array of nutrients, and so their immune systems are strong. When there’s a drought, you would have lush green grass when everybody else’s lawn is dead.
This is because the microbes turn the soil into a kind of sponge. They can’t live in a hard rock of compacted earth. So, they break up that compaction and create soil structure. The micro and macro aggregates, that they create, make tiny air pockets. They create an aerobic environment that they can actually live in. Those air pockets allow the plant’s roots to grow down deep and gain access to ground water reserves. Grass roots, in the right soil conditions, can grow down four feet but your average lawn’s grass roots are only two to six inches deep.
Water moves through these air pockets. So this soil sponge is moist and protects us from droughts, wildfires and floods. Water no longer runs across the top of compacted earth, washing top soil and chemicals into nearby streams. Living soil will clean up our watersheds. It will clean up our streams and protect all the wildlife that depend upon them. Living soil will greatly benefit the environment.
Besides grass, besides agriculture, living soil can also help our forests. Trees direly need a diverse community of fungi in the soil. When you spend time in the forest, I’d like to invite you to look around and see what the trees look like. Late fall and winter is a really good time of year to do this, because when they’re covered in leaves you can’t tell as much. If you look closely, you will see that the trees are pest-ridden, and lichen-ridden. The trees do not look healthy at all. That’s a big deal. That’s our oxygen source. We could do something about that.
Spero: I just want to go back and finish one thing that I didn’t say. Robin touched on this but… I want to say more about why it’s important that our plants have healthy immune systems. Obviously we want our plants to be healthy so that they’ll grow well, but a healthy plant produces phytonutrients in much greater complexity than an unhealthy plant. You may have a plant that looks big and bushy, and green; but that doesn’t at all mean that the plant is healthy or producing the phytonutrients that you want to put into your body.
No, the appearance of the plant does not tell the story. That plant is only going to produce the complex phytonutrients necessary for a strong immune system when it’s grown in a diverse, microbial ecosystem of living soil. Looks can be deceiving.
Q: OK. We have this field in back that we’re working with you to transform, it’s an old horse pasture. Tell us what the status is and how, how we’re working on it…
Spero: Basically, you have an evolutionary hierarchy of plants, called plant succession, from weeds to old growth forest. There’s a continuum. When you have bare soil, or the very early succession weeds that come in and quickly cover that bare soil, we call that Ground Zero. Ground Zero soil is 99% bacteria. Old growth forests have 99.9% fungus in their soils. So, along that continuum from Ground Zero to old growth forest, the soil will have different fungal/bacterial ratios at each stage of plant succession. We can see this with our microscopes.
This field is pretty – I don’t want to say bad because there’s no “bad”, but it’s mostly bacteria, with very little fungus. This means that weeds have been really, really liking that environment, right?
And then it gets – I’m making it very simple. It’s actually much more complicated. You get all different types of fungus: you get the relationship between the plants that have developed that are feeding that ecosystem of the soil. It’s always in relationship. You can’t just isolate the soil; it’s always, what are the plants in that soil, and what plants have been nurturing that ecosystem.
In this case weeds have been nurturing that soil ecosystem over and over again for a long time. Because the weeds got established because it was a horse farm and it had lots of horse manure in there –
Robin: Manure is bacteria food. So you have a lot of bacteria in your soil. It becomes a combination of two questions: What is it that you want that field to be? And where, on the continuum of plant succession, are you starting from? The answers to those two questions determine what actions we take.
Spero: Do you want to make an orchard, for example, which, orchards, fruit trees really require to be really healthy is a fungal to bacterial ratio of ten parts fungus to one part bacteria.
That field fungal to bacterial ratio was probably .005 to 1. Ideal for row crops if you want to grow like wheat or something would be about 1:1.
Brassicas are – see, it’s a little different, brassicas are closer to the weeds on the spectrum, so they like about .3 to one, .3 fungus to 1 bacteria. So three times as much bacteria. But you still got .005, right?
Q: Year one we did this process [on the old horse pasture.] Will you describe it?
Spero: What I suggested you do was to drill down into the soil with the, use a hammer drill or a water drill? [A: Water drill. We built a water drill.] Water drill. Make some holes, pour microbes into the holes and try to break up the compaction layer.
What happens with traditional agricultural soils is because of the plowing and the methods that people use, the tillage over and over again, it sets in a layer of compaction. Usually eight inches you find one [layer] – six to eight inches, and another one like 12 to 14 inches and then, but different layers down. That prevents the roots from going deep into the soil. The roots hit that compaction layer, the water hits the compaction layer, creates an anaerobic environment for anaerobic microbes which produce toxins for plant roots. I’m talking very generally here now.
Q: And is another word for compaction “hardpan”?
Spero: That’s extreme compaction. And that gets created because people add fertilizers which are basically a salt, a kind of salt, right? So you take salt and you put it in, in addition, in a really wet humid weather, attracts water, right? Then it kind of all pools and sticks together? When that dries out the salt is like a clump of crust. That’s what happens on your soils. That’s what fertilizers do.
Robin: Once you get the compaction layer the water pools up on top of the compaction, that water creates an anaerobic environment. The microbes that can live in an anaerobic environment produce toxins. Those toxins kill plant roots. So plant roots cannot go through the compaction layer because, “Oop! Toxins! I’m gonna die. OK, I’m not going there.”
Spero: So we wanted to break up that- to begin to get some microbes beneath the compaction layers. To start to break that up. Basically soften the soil a little bit. You make something called a compost extract, which is essentially extracting microbes from the compost into water.
Q: Like a little tincture? That’s what went into those holes?
Spero: Yeah. And that’s really the solution for any organic garden that has a lot of organic matter already, like 8 to 10%, and lots of bacteria. You don’t want to add more compost; you want to add just the microbes. You have plenty of organic matter; you don’t need more. Compost has mostly organic matter, right? You don’t need to add any more of that. You just extract the microbes and repeatedly add them into the gardens.
Robin: It takes lots of repetition for it to take hold.
Q: so how many years do you think we’ll have to work on that field like this?
Spero: This is the real um question, the unknown. I’ve seen things change really quickly and I’ve seen things that I would expect to change quickly take time. It’s you’re working with nature and you’re working with natural systems; it’s not always cookie cutter a+b=c.
Q: What is quickly, in this context?
Spero: Quickly could be one season.
Our soil in South Portland, we turned that around in one season.