Soil makes you happy!

Ann

Most text books treat soil as if it is dead. Defined as silt, loam and clay and rocks. Where have you seen it defined as having an enormous amount of living organisms? I only know of one source. Its great that you pointed out that soil is alive as well as daed. A duality of living and dead both. Just as wood is alive and dead.

It is flowering, The cut duckweed at the roadside, In the evening rain.

- Buson (1716-1784)

"symplastless" expounded:

You must read the wrong books, I've never, ever read that soil is dead! Try Teaming with Microbes, to start, or any good book on composting, etc. .

Webster online

Nothing about living organisms. BTW, soil is dead and alive both. A duality just as trees are alive and dead both. We have no word for a substance that is both living and dead - wood, soil.

John, I know that you are just responding to an attack. Don't fall into the same hole as Clinton when he used the dictionary to define sex (legally I agreed with him on this but condemn him for his stance on East Timore and Bosnia). Following the same logic we are just a couple of dollars worth of inanimate chemicals, whose form, matrix if you will, conjures up the phenomenon of life. As much as it grieves me to agree with the Bush supporting witch from Massachusetts, read "Teaming with Microbes". Some of it is a little lame but by and large it is a good book. This news group isn't rec.hydroponics. Gardening implies fecund soil, that can nurture phototrophic creatures. Life begets life.

Peace

Billy expounded:

WTF are you talking about? I am not attacking anyone. But, as usual, you are. Troll.

Obsessed troll.

You are so off the mark it isn't funny, but that's your agenda isn't it, troll?

Which is all I was saying to him in the first place, without the vitriolic attacks and political bullshit. Really, troll, people can and do thing of things other than what you think of.

What a sad little man you are.

"symplastless" expounded:

John, nothing is as cut and dry as you seem to see it. Soil is a community consisting of what you've definied above and the organisms that live in it. Without the organisms that live within the soil nothing will grow. I don't care what a piece of paper says; nailing down a dry definition isn't going to help our plants grow. Feed your soil with organic matter and your plants will grow (my definition of plants: anything that photosynthesizes, so that includes your beloved trees). :o)

Beware of so-called tree experts who think Webster was a gardener.

By weight we are made up of 98% of the same chemicals as trees. What makes us different is the way the chemicals are connected. (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus) Life is a journey powered by the sun. We are made up of chemicals borrowed from the earth. In death, those chemicals are returned. The theme of life appears to be buildup and breakdown.

All analogies breakdown at some point, but I prefer to think of it as a relay race for survival with the baton of life being passed on to the next participant.

The evidence that comes from rocks is that life was once very simple, by modern standards, but the struggle to survive gave rise to new forms of life that adapted to local conditions for survival. From mass one cell reproduction, to exploiting dry land, to sexual reproduction, to sheer mass in size, to conceptual thinking, it is all about survival, not of the individual or even the species, but life itself.

Reminds me, I need breakfast:-)

And I think I'll go out and turn over a spade of dirt next to the compost pile and see how the fishing worms are doing!! Afraid of the import fish anymore, so maybe I'll try fresh caught this week!

Tom J

Thanks, Ann, for the mention of Teaming WIth Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web. The reason I wrote it and the reason Timber Press published it, is because so darn few books every talk about what make soil soil. Read most composting books, even, and they dont acknowledge the soil food web. Heck, even most organic gardeners still talk about fertilizing.....when they are actually feeding the microbes who in turn feed the plants. The book is now in its third printing, being translated into French and all essentially within one year of publication. It isn't the writing that has caused this book to be a barn burner.....it is the subject matter...so lacking in the literature....

Thanks again. and may the microbes be with you and your soil where ever you go!

Jeff Lowenfels

And may everyones intestinal flora prosper too. Now if we can only give the bovine respect so we can respect ourselves. Health that elusive word that suggests more not less. Not the absence of complaints but the joy of life.

Bill Waxing as I cook a tomato and Onion. Gearing up for family and in one way we don¹t have time but in another extra hands and mind can do more than dance.

What about the ghost flower?

Soil is a substance made up of sands, silts, clays, decaying organic matter, air, water and an enormous number of living organisms. Is it alive or dead? Yes, is the answer. We have no word for a substance that is both living and dead - wood, soil.

I think people who call beautiful soil dirt need help.

LOL

John

when they are actually feeding the

Most plants are autotrophs. The ghost flower is a heterotrophs. Trees manufacture their own food and share it with others or associates. The associates do not feed the trees. They (trees) feed themselves. What the microbes do is alter chemical elements in the soil so that they can be absorbed by the plant, most of the time. Elements are absorbed in a water soluble form. Trees only absorb water when the roots are growing. Some, such as the mycorrhizal fungi, infect non-woody roots of most trees forming a composite organ called a mycorrhiza. Greek for root fungus. Mycorrhizae plural, facilitate the absorption process. Root hairs (on trees non-woody roots) which are extensions of a single cell, also help absorb water and elements dissolved in it. There is more but thats enough for now.

Hey! There's no need for language like that here. There might be kids reading these messages.

"symplastless" expounded:

I agree!

Billy expounded:

Ya, so you were calling Don staples a 'Bush supporting witch from Massachusetts'. Ya.

No, you were trying to instigate John into thinking I was attacking him. Anyone with a modicum of reading comprehension can see that.

You are the one with a one-track mind, and a very narrow track it is, too.

My feelings for Bush have nothing to do with this thread, only to do with your own twisted hate-filled mind. Bush-hating has blinded you. Poor little singlle-minded man.