What you describe sounds very close to the Indigenous Microorganism (IMO) harvesting principles that can be found in the KNF realm. I’m fairly interested in that world, as closed circuit farming and locally harvested natural garden amendments is a pretty important long range goal for me. Nigel Palmer wrote a very good, very concise book about it. Master Cho and Jadam are worth looking at. Gerry Gillespie gives some good talks about it, and also the term “Zymogenic” that I mentioned in that other thread comes from a paper by a Japanese researcher named Dr. Higa. He did a study with a USDA researcher named (James?) Parr that is pretty interesting.

The general idea behind that is to use rice or any grain and milk, or realistically just a broad base of nutrients that microbes of many kinds can use and then culture them through fermentation.

I think it’s generally probably a good thing to do, though much like compost and compost extracts, it’s a little bit of a dice roll on what you will get. I suppose one would want a microbial community that is within the same realm successionally to what you are growing- maybe. I’m fuzzy on that. I have question marks about introducing some disease organisms that way. I’m planning to do it and run some tests on it for sure.

I think it probably captures a different cross section of biology than a Johnson-Su material. Particularly the vermicast component of Johnson-Su is one of the major benefits that I don’t think you get to nearly the same degree with IMO harvesting. I have a ” put in all the things” theory, lol. I am doing Johnson Su BEAM inoculant on quite a few acres later this month. I’ll keep you posted.

I haven’t dug deep on harvesting myccorhizae or other root dependent microbes- but I know that root cuttings are a way it is done. I understand that it is actually quite difficult to do. As far as trichoderma, my understanding is that there are thousands of trichoderma species, but only a very small handful of them are agriculturally useful. There is a facebook page called “DIY mycorrhizzae” or something to that effect that is solely about that topic. I haven’t given that a look in awhile. I would anticipate there are a one or two people who might know what they are talking about there.