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How to use our own biological diversity to replenish poor quality soils

ONfungi is an organic compost which contains many varieties and strains of Arbuscular Mychorrizae (AM). In poor quality soil, there is often a lack of micro biomass. This means that critical fungi or bacteria strains intended to ensure a diverse balance within the soil is disturbed, and remediation is needed. By adding spores of robust and healthy fungi from our own ecosystems, the risk of pathogenic fungi attacking plants becomes lower and lower. If symbiotic AM fungi are available to colonize the roots of plants, there is a far less chance of an infection from a pathogenic variety, as there are less resources available to support it. A similar concept of adding diversity to create more disease resistance is something human medical doctors have been encouraging more and more. As evidence indicates a healthy and diverse gut microbiome is ever more important, using products like probiotics can be an easy way to add more diversity to your gut microbes. This can help in cases of illness, where there are plenty of healthy bacteria within your gut to help fight off pathogenic bacteria, keeping you from experiencing illness at all. In this way, humans and plants are very similar and require the support of various symbiotic life-forms to perform our daily functions.

2 Comments

  • Peter Baril

    Due to health and family related issues, I was unable to follow up with Scott on experiments with FDC he gave me in Spring of 2021, but I remain fiercely determined to do so ASAP. Question: given the F:B ratios cited in one of your recent posts for forest floor soil, what do you guess would be the results from tea brewed from such soil gathered directly from the floor of our own bush by those of us lucky enough to have some?

    • admin

      Hi Peter, FDC and forest soil are very different. FDC is a “probiotic” soil enhancement. It supports the fungi already in the soil, seemingly regardless of forest, field or garden. Forest soil is typically rich in fungi specifically for trees but not a soil enhancement per se. These fungi may enhance your soil. We don’t know. I imagine you could make your tea and compare it to FDC in a citizen science experiment. We look forward to your results.

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