Mother Knows Best

Healthy, undisturbed soil is so much more than just dirt!

It’s a living, breathing mass of organisms and fungal networks that, together with the minerals, sunlight, CO2 and roots of plants, forms a complex system that has sustained life on this planet for eons!

So, whether we’re trying to grow nutrient-dense veggies, grass-fed animals, a chemical-free golf green or plants to regenerate large tracts of degraded, drought-stricken land, it’s all about creating a web of living soil… what I’ve come to think of as Savvy Soil!

Paul Stamets, Elaine Ingham, Suzanne Simard (and so many others) have passionately devoted their lives to helping us understand what this amazing and magical web of life is all about, how it works and why its the most important system on the planet.

It’s the biology in these savvy soils that feeds us, clothes us, cleans our water, cleans our air, sequesters carbon, eats methane and converts carbon dioxide to oxygen. It supports the production of everything from pencils and building materials to advanced, life-saving medicines and nutriceuticals.  It decomposes wastes, and, through mycoremediation, it biodegrades toxic wastes (like crude oil) and can even bioaccumulate radioactive particles from contaminated soils into a mushroom that can then be disposed of more easily.

“Pests, diseases and lack of fertility don’t exist anymore if you get the biology correct in your soil.”   –Dr. Elaine Ingham

One of the most amazing things we’re learning is that trying to “feed” plants destroys their natural ability to feed themselves. You see, at the heart of this brilliantly sustainable system is nature’s very savvy way of cycling nutrients. For those of us who are not scientists, it basically goes like this:

Plant roots exude compounds that attract bacteria that have bioaccumulated the specific elements the plant needs at that moment. Then, bacteria-feeding organisms chomp on the bacteria, releasing those elements in just the right, plant-available form, right where they’re needed by the plant… at the rootzone. 

Thanks to the amazing work of world renowned National Geographic photographer, Michael “Nick” Nichols, below is his portrait of The President, one of Mother Nature’s finest examples of this brilliant “nutrient cycling system”… still working perfectly after three thousand years, feeding its billions of leaves (with no chemical inputs) while supporting other nearby trees through its vast, underground, soil food web.

Forest systems like this were once thought to be just a survival-of-the-fittest group of individual trees. But, science now knows that these are more like communities with the largest, oldest trees serving as “Mother Trees” that communicate with all the other trees and even feed and support the weaker and younger trees.

In the video below, Dr. Suzanne Simard explains how this is done through underground networks of mycorrhizal fungal mycelium that connect the roots of trees and facilitate the sharing of resources, thereby bolstering their resilience against disturbance or stress and facilitating the establishment of new regeneration.