I completely agree with Stephen.

I have seen big surprises this year with the reproduction of “low succession” annuals. I never had problems to reproduce brassicas, beets and spinach. This year the vegetative stage looked very fine (yes, the one with the rhizosheath!), but as soon as they were heading into reproduction microbiology has decided against them. The flowers were stunted, some plants could not set seeds. For lettuce I have not seen that at all, here I can safely recommend working with thick rhizosheath also for seed saving. but with “low succession” guys, I am not sure. I will focus on AM fungi in the next year and see how things change.

I see usually boron and molybdenum, sometimes calcium, magnesium and iron issues in the morphology since years (what I can not figure out yet is what pattern is causative as some years plants of various b:f stages just take off and grow like crazy), but there was never a gross reproductive failure before, this is why I think of microbiology. I have seen certain weeds go down in the preceding years (which made me quite happy), but now I am at a stage, where I feel like copying my mother, digging in a good load horse manure and throwing back some beds in succession for a couple of years :-).

I feel that the handling of microbiology is like trying to surf on a wave if I try to make single-crop beds – either it works really well or something goes wrong and since the system develops and the target shifts with the trials, I need to find out where the equilibrium is every year anew. This is causing excitement and a good amount of discomfort at the same time. If I had to make a living selling my crop, I would be far less daring in experimenting and go for the safe bet – soil testing, mineral foliars, inoculation with bacteria (biodyn, Bruce or bought) and AM fungi. There is so many things we do not know, esp. in long term and large quantity applications of biolgically active material. There was the question why bother and hot compost – I think this is one point, you add lignin-encased rather durable humic material, only a fraction of microbes that should be not harmful, while breaking the cycle for many pathogens.

If you look into indian literature, they are quite experienced with “vermi-tech” – but they will not care about weeding as labour is cheap.

I still do not know what to make of EM. I have seen some Bokashi/charcoal mixes produce fabulous crops (high brix, great taste), but I feel that the use of EM outside this setting is probably interfering with the indigenous microbes. My dream is to establish a lithobiont team so I am kind of reluctant to work with EM. What are your experiences?

I do not really understand how this works, but if I intercrop with annual flowers and herbs (my trials are in infancy), I see to my surprise that annuals and perennials get along quite well (despite their supposedly different needs in terms of soil biology) and also get along with an overall smaller spacing. Here I have many many open question marks about rotation and companions and microbiology. I think that the flowers are far less demanding and feed soil life continuously.

best h