Farming with Fungi
Dear CSA Members, This week our focus has been on the many re-plants we have to do this coming winter. We’ll replant 1500-2000 trees in January, but now, in the fall, when the ground is dry, is when we prepare the soil. There is a problem with ‘re-plants”. It actually has a name in the scientific community of Ag research…they call it the “replant syndrome”. I think they use the word “syndrome” because no one actually knows what causes it. I’ve experienced it here many times over the years; a well-established tree dies for some reason, (usually gopher damage), so we remove it and re-plant a tree of the same variety the following winter but no matter how much TLC we give it (watering, fertilizing and weed control) it just sits there and will not grow. So this year, especially since we have so many trees to re-plant, I decided on a new approach. I got together with Christophe, our “mad-about-compost” guy, to come up with a plan. We came up with a three-pronged approach; apply thermophilic compost, vermicompost and compost tea directly into the re-plant holes. This long, costly process began with me identifying and flagging which trees are to be removed, which I did weeks ago. Then I called in our amazing back hoe operator, Ron, who drove up and down the rows removing the trees by digging them up, roots and all. This took over two weeks because the trees are scattered throughout all 120 cares of our orchards. So finally, we now had open spaces of freshly dug soil to replant into. Christophe and I decided to put 2, full, 5 gallon buckets (about 30 lbs per bucket) of thermophilic compost, then, a half bucket of vermicompost, followed by a drenching of compost tea into each hole. We had to spring into action, and as this required lots of manpower. I enlisted the tree-team, led by Antonio, to help the ground team haul heavy buckets up and down each row with our harvest carts and dumping compost in the exact space to be planted. This dusty work was done this week with temperatures soaring into the 90’s, but everyman was up to the task, with Antonio shouting out orders and directing traffic, and coordinating by cell-phone with Humberto, our tractor driver, where to drop the next load of compost. I want to give a special word of thanks to my amazing team of men for the accomplishing this monumental task of spreading 60 tons of dusty compost by hand, precisely where it was needed! Meanwhile, the compost tea was brewing from Thursday morning in order to be used immediately after the vermicompost would be applied. The tea needs to be used within hours of having finished brewing, which is its most biologically active stage of life. Christophe analyzed it to determine its quality before announcing, “It’s ready!” and this time he added, “…And use it quickly; it’s full of protozoa!” And so Friday, we concluded the week long process by applying the 1⁄2 bucket of vermicompost onto the thermophilic compost and directly after that, the freshly made compost tea, to saturate the compost and pull the nutrients of all into the soil. Why all this extra work? This detailed hard labor? It’s all about the soil; there’s a whole community of biology in the soil supporting tree roots capacity to absorb water, and nutrients, while fending off pathogenic microbes. We believe that the fungi and the rest of the microbes, are key to overcoming the replant syndrome. The soil will have a good 4 months before we re-plant in the winter and it will be another 9 months to a year before we will see if our plan works. We’ll keep you posted!