Fungal-dominated compost tea, applied at 150L per hectare for approximately $20, can effectively control weeds by shifting soil biology from bacterial to fungal domination, changing nitrogen availability from nitrate to ammonium form, and restoring soil health without the $800-2,000 per hectare costs of conventional chemical inputs, making regenerative soil management both economically viable and environmentally sustainable.
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Fungal Compost Tea: Regenerative Soil Science SecretsAdded:
Now, if we put out our compost tea at 150 L per hectare, we're looking at you know, $20.
If we put it out on our vegetable patches at $250 per liter, we're looking at maybe what? $30 or $40?
Compared with between $800 and $2,000 for the conventional.
>> Hello everyone.
Welcome back to the Soil Food Web.
Today's conversation is bridging the gap, real-world case studies and the future of regenerative soil science with Dr. Mary Cole. I'm joined by my co-host, Dr. Carla Portugal. We're so happy to have you here today.
Uh please let us know in the chat where you're calling in from. Always a joy to see uh how far these these transmissions reach around the world. Uh Mary is it's just such an honor to have you here and and we're really excited for today's conversation.
>> Thank you.
>> is a a continuation of of the series that we've been running over the past few weeks. Uh last week we had uh from chemicals to biology, a real orchard transition story uh tracking in I think over 6 years a transition from conventional orchard to regenerative using the Soil Food Web approach. All of these replays are available on our website and on YouTube if you want to go find them. Before that, we had a conversation from compost to AI all about growing and tracking the microbes your soil needs, which was a a fascinating conversation looking a lot at fungi and a lot at how technology can enhance the work that uh folks have been doing to use microscopy to understand soil ecology. Before that, we were talking about water and landscaping and grow more with less water, a commercial landscape case study. Uh so please check those out if you're curious, if you haven't seen them already.
Uh and with that uh yeah, this this webinar series is is all about practical steps towards regenerative resilient systems. We're here convening people who've been really doing the work, doing the heavy lifting, showing people how uh to transition systems away from dependency on synthetic chemicals towards regenerative resilient approaches using biology as a way to accelerate and enhance productivity and all the forms that happens all over the world.
So, Carla, would I'll pass it off to you.
>> Thank you, Evan. It's my honor and pleasure to introduce Dr. Mary Cole, an internationally recognized expert in mycology, plant pathology, and soil microbiology.
Dr. Cole has dedicated her career to advocating for biological farming practices that regenerate soil health, reduce synthetic chemical use, and improve the long-term sustainability of Australian agriculture and the planet as well.
Dr. Mary, welcome here. It's an honor to have you back. We're going to hear from you, but in a few words, who is Dr. Mary Cole by Dr. Mary Cole?
>> [laughter] >> Well, Mary Cole is um was born in Far North Queensland.
Uh has lived most of her life in and around uh southeast of Melbourne in Australia in uh Bunurong Wurundjeri country of our great Kulin nation.
Uh I have had a passion since a 4-year-old when I was introduced to the soil by my dad and a dear old Aboriginal elder.
And so, it was it was absolutely there was nothing else for me to do except to work with the soil through microbiology through my career.
Um PhD in plant pathology, uh Monash University, University of Melbourne, Charles Charles Sturt University. And working with farmers, I was never interested in an academic career per se.
I was interested in its ability to allow me to work with people who would then go out and become soil scientists or scientists in some way um with a passion for the biological paradigm. Uh I'm still doing that. I'm still doing it with my lab. I will continue to do that. And I see these people around the world as my disciples because I run across them or I hear from them and they say, "Mary, it's working.
I'm doing it. I'm still doing it. You know, do you remember me?" And I Well, when were you my student? Well, in 1994.
I said, "Well, do you mind if I don't remember you?" Um but I'm absolutely delighted you remembered what I've told you. I will continue to do that until like Elaine, we're compost in the sky.
>> Thank you so much, Mary. I'm Dr. Carlo Portugal, your co-host for today.
Uh I'm currently director of science instructor at the Soil Food Web Foundation and also have my consultancy and I work mainly in Oregon and few projects in Brazil. And I'm delighted that you co-host this with Evan. Evan, tell us a little bit about you.
>> Hey everyone. I am the executive director of the Soil Food Web Foundation. I grew up in Connecticut on a a farm that uh was a or a land that used to be my family's dairy farm back in in the day. So, I'm excited to talk about pasture grasses a a little bit later today.
Uh but I spent my career uh meandering between the worlds of of human health and planetary health through uh permaculture and regenerative ag and looking at food as medicine and and supply chains and working with farmers uh in a consulting capacity and and developing, you know, biological amendments and and finding ways to bring fertility and and vitality to living systems. And it was that drop journey that brought me to Elaine and the Soil Food Web School. And I'm just uh deeply honored to to carry forward this legacy and and to have the great privilege to meet folks like like you, Mary, and and to work with incredible beings like Carla uh who just are are brilliant lights uh teaching others how to how to do this work.
>> Thank you, Evan. Uh and today's topic, just to recap, uh we are finishing up the introductions. We're going to from Dr. Mary Cole for about 30 minutes, then briefly uh we're going to recap the Soil Food Web Foundation offerings. There are amazing uh new things there for you guys. And diving in in discussion and audience Q&A. So, please uh while you listen from Mary, click on the Q&A to put your questions to her.
Uh Sam is here. Thank you, Sammy, to helping us collecting all these questions to bring to the discussion later. And as always, interacting within the chat with your peers. I see you guys there. People from all around the globe.
And Jean, you emailed me. I see you.
Uh let's keep talking, interacting, and that's how we build this beautiful community we have. Thank you so much everyone for being here.
>> Well, we wanted to kick it off just by honoring and and celebrating you, Mary, for the award that you won last year.
And wanted to to ask you to share a little bit about with everyone about what that award was about and and um yeah, how that came to be. And and I also wanted to ask you you shared such beautiful stories earlier when we were preparing for this about uh your relationship with Elaine and some of your history with the the Soil Food Web School. And so we would love to to hear anything you had to share about um some of that history. And And it's been a little while since we had you on the the platform. So it's great to have you back sharing your wisdom with the community.
>> Thank you.
Well, yeah, 2025.
Um I um AgriFutures is a peak body in Australia for um basically anything agricultural. And they have these rural women's awards uh that one can apply for.
However, I am not one that applies for awards. And so it was quite a surprise when I found that my name had been put up by a colleague uh for this particular award. And then to go through the process uh of interviews, etc. And then to to win was a a real um it was an honor.
Uh but it also was an indication for the sort of 45 years of work that I had done in soil. And you call it soil stewardship. And it really is because our first nation people always talk about caring for country.
And and getting rid of that arrogance of the human race and saying, you know, we are just another animal on the planet.
And we have we don't have the right to destroy, but we do have the right to preserve. Uh and so it to have that work recognized for me was a vindication of what I had done. And so it was really important to me.
Um because over the years, when I first met Elaine, oh back in I don't know, I can't remember, 2010, 2011, or thereabouts. She was in Australia.
And uh Gherhad Grassa, who is a a consultant down here in Victoria, he felt that Elaine and I, given that we were a similar age, and we were doing similar things on the opposite sides of the planet, we really should get together and see if we could we could collaborate.
And so, Elaine had a lab up in northern New South Wales, and so she came down to Victoria.
And she was brought here to my lab, and what she didn't realize she was blown away because she was using an old house up in Lismore. What she didn't realize that this is a full research laboratory here.
It's a fully set up research laboratory.
And so, she was really impressed, and also enjoyed the fact that we were on a farm.
And so, she actually stayed with us, and we made compost, but we didn't make compost in the rings in her particular way.
And so, by by by staying here, she and Allan she was teaching Allan how to make a ring, so that I can remember their very first ring they made.
They did it chat chat chat through the day, and then Allan was sitting over dinner, and Allan said, "Oh gosh, you know, the temperature's going up.
And do we have to turn it if it's in the middle of the night?" And Elaine said, "Well, if it goes over 70, we're actually going to damage the the the biology, so yes, we're going to have to turn it." So, Allan was up and down up and down all night, and about 2:30 he said, "The the the ring is up to 65°."
And I said, "Well, I don't want to know about it. You better go and get Elaine out of bed and go and turn your ring.
I'm not going to help you. It's your problem."
So, then I did get up, and here's Elaine and Allan in their pajamas with wellies gumboots on and coats on turning this compost ring about 2:30 in the morning.
So, I quickly went back to bed so they didn't know that I had seen them. And then we got up, and I was doing breakfast, and I said, "How did it go?"
And Elaine said, "Now, Alan, what you must remember is you set up your compost ring so it doesn't come to 70° in the middle of the night."
So, so now Alan's compost rings are all turned during the day. He's got it all worked out. But, um here's Elaine, these two these two people, you know, in the middle of the night in pajamas turning a compost ring.
So, so the thing about the compost ring, we now do it We've done thousands of compost rings. But, all of the visits with Elaine, uh some of them she and I She stayed here, or some of them it was when we were talking uh up at Lismore or up at uh Dookie College, which is an agricultural college part of Melbourne University.
We had week-long um courses that we were running.
The days were always good and informative, and the students were wonderful. But, the best parts of it for me were at night when we when we would go back to the staff motel, and Elaine would say, "Your room or mine?" And I said, "Well, you've got the Shiraz this night It's It's must be your room. I've got the nuts." So, we'd get ready, go into our bedroom, and we'd sit on the bed, have the first glass of Shiraz, made on made on the on the property as it as it so happened Melbourne University had their own vineyard, so it was local wine.
Sit down there, and then we'd talk through the day. And then we'd talk through things that had come up or questions that we had that were not always um microbiological. Some of them were quite philosophical.
Because if you think about nature, nature is philosophical. If you really get into nature, there's a philosophy there that transcends all of these religions and things that are all man-made, there's a philosophy there that nature is eternal and that we have absolute right to care for it.
So, we would have these, but then we would have these discussions usually at about the second bottle of Shiraz because by this time we were lying on the bed.
Um and we had these disagreements about the fungal kingdom.
Now, Elaine conceded after many, many discussions that I probably more knew a little bit more about fungi than she did.
And so, we had the There was never an argument. It was really deep discussion.
And this is what I miss most about Elaine not being with us now. We had We're similar age. Uh we're both left-handers and as I said earlier, you know, left-handers are the most brilliant people on the planet. So, it was right that Elaine and I were leading the leading the the forefront of of soil biology around the world. Um it was it was I miss her now because I don't have that person to to talk with anymore.
Uh and I have all of you young people who are who are are now, you know, disciples of Elaine and of mine who are doing all the right thing. Uh but my kind of soulmate of my age has has gone.
But that But that doesn't mean to say that what we're wanting to do is going to change. It's going to go on and on because more and more young people are now understanding and believing and have done the courses with me and with the soil food web. Um and and and and and there's now a a a grassroots movement with mothers and families saying, you know, why are my children so unwell? It's because they're in a toxic environment and we have to change that. But the thing about it is that we can change it.
It can be changed. But how do we fight the chemical companies? How do we find fight the inertia of the governments?
So, we do we can change it, and there's lots and lots of examples all the way around the world of of how it can be done, and it's not difficult to do. And then you have people saying, "Oh, well, you know, it can be done in a veggie garden. How can I do it on 10,000 hectares?" Well, I've got farmers up in the Murchison area who are who are making compost tea in 30,000 L. That's old vats from the wine industry.
Uh so so recycle, circular economy, it can be done at scale, and I think that's I think that's what's important, that it can be done at scale, and it can be done in a short time uh if you consider um biological time is is in millions of years. But we actually can recover damaged land in a couple of years.
So, do you want me to go on with the slides?
>> Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank thank you for that. What a uh lovely way to kick us off today. And yeah, you want to tell everyone about what you plan to present uh today. You mentioned some case studies. I know you have a few to share.
>> Yes, well, what I what I've done is I mean, there there are a lot, but I I think one of one of the things that that keeps coming up all the time for me here in Australia with the farmers is weed management.
And how can we could could control weeds if we don't use herbicides?
Uh how can we control weeds if if um we don't cultivate?
Well, herbicides particularly glyphosate, which is still allowed in Australia, which absolutely breaks my heart.
Uh it has an effect on the soil microbiology. So, we're doing more damage than good.
Plowing has a major effect on the soil microbiology, but particularly on the mycorrhizal fungi.
And mycorrhizal fungi have such an important role. I see them as the future biofertilizer to save the planet.
Um so, what I what I decided to do is to show a few slides of weed management and why I think it's important and how both in in a vegetable garden and also in a broadacre a broadacre fields, whatever grains or whatever happens to be soybeans or whatever happens to be grown, how you actually can uh manage a weedy species um by by just basically looking after the soil. So, that's basically what I would like to I would like to um talk about today.
So, if we go to the next slide, this this is this is interesting. This is our property and it's it's one of the south paddocks on our property and we have them all um we have them all up up all our property is surrounded by the the tree belts that you can see in that bottom right-hand uh photograph.
So, in this big project that I had with Sustainability Victoria, um we brought in two waste streams that at the at the present time are going to to landfill. One is feedlot manure from the big from the big commercial feedlots and the other was what we call FOGO, which is the food organic green organic that comes from the urban uh council like the urban street side uh collections.
This was all dumped at our place and and we put it into mixes of sort of getting trying to get the right carbon to nitrogen ratio. And you can see on the left-hand side as some of the the leftover residue of the of the compost piles.
But if you have a look in the foreground, um we have we don't have there's a particular flat weed in in our in our area called cape weed.
And it's it's a flat weed. Uh it grows very close to the to the soil surface.
It has a yellow flower.
It it proliferates with huge seed very viable seed bank.
But when you kill it off because what the what the the government department say, "Oh, if you've got um cape weed, use glyphosate. You'll get rid of it." Yes, you do. Uh and it leaves a great big bare patch because there's no grass growing under it. And so what comes back in? But weedy species because they're they're they're easy to grow. Well, we have we don't have any cape weed on our farm. And then we got rid of one of these or used up one of these um uh stacks of of compost.
And Alan came in and he said, "Come out and have a look at this. All of this cape weed has come out of the feedlot manure."
And you can see that in that bottom left-hand the the left-hand side photograph.
And so I said, "Wow, well, you know, we don't want that." So, what he did was make up a very fungal dominated compost tea.
And he made it up in a thousand liter a thousand liter vat.
And he put a really heavy drench just onto that circle where you can see the cape weed.
Now, if you come across to the to the to the bottom right-hand side, you can actually see the area where the cape weed was. There's a sort of a depression there. Uh and there's kind of yellowing.
Uh and that area would be probably about um if I do it in feet um uh 30 ft about 10 m wide 30 ft wide in in diameter.
That was 6 weeks after two applications of compost tea.
Now, if you have a look at the the the the top photo photograph where you're looking where you can see the house, that's that's about 10 or 12 weeks after two applications of compost tea.
Now, what we what we noticed when we through the years when we've been working with our farm and clearing getting rid of weedy species, very early we noticed very clearly that where there was a lot of weedy species, there was a there was a there was two things. There was a predominate um uh bacterial population and there was also a higher nitrogen in the form of nitrate as opposed to mo- nitrogen in the form of ammonia in these areas where there were weedy species.
Now, I have other farms that uh farmers that have they have uh a bracken fern and they have blackberries, which is introduced into Australia.
And these these cover these cover dozens of of you know, almost half acre areas.
They're huge. What can we do about them?
Well, they they they get told to spray them out with with Garland and Grazon and and and glyphosate.
No, you don't. What you do is you cut them down or you burn them out in the first instance if you've got to in desperation.
Then you get a whole lot of good hay or mulch or compost and you spread it all over and then you get your cattle and you put a hot wire around it and you and you put molasses on the on the on the on the on the the the the compost or the or the or the hay.
And you get your cattle or sheep to just eat all of that hay.
Poop and pee where they are.
And then you take them off. And then if you've got to seed to grass, you may have to. But you'll probably find your perennial species will come through.
Now, a weed or any plant for it to be able to survive must photosynthesize.
So with these things like blackberries and and cape weed and bracken or or any sort of plant that you wanting to get rid of, if you stop it from photosynthesizing, then the only energy it's got to grow has to come from the roots.
And that's a limited store of energy.
So on the in these places where I have where we have where I have farmers who've got uh blackberries, I say as soon as they come through, just pull [snorts] it out or cut it off.
And then that plant has to then go back to the roots and get more energy from the roots to then get a leaf above the ground to photosynthesize. Cut it off.
Same thing in your vegetable garden. As soon as it comes through, cut it off.
And so what we found, we have really great success in getting rid of weeds weedy species like brambles and and blackberries and and some of those woody species simply by not letting them photosynthesize.
And and using the cattle to poop and pee and break up the surface. And so over a couple of years, we can get rid of brambles that are covering half an acre of soil half half half an acre of land in a couple of years. And all you do is just keep the little ones that come through.
With the with with other other species uh of uh other other Well, let's let's go back to vegetable gardens. With the vegetable garden, the weedy species come through.
But if you have a look at those weedy species, many of those are forage plants. They're actually edible.
So, they're not problems at all. Harvest them and use them as as forage plants.
If you have a a If you have a system where there's no chemicals, you can actually pick those so-called weeds and eat them. We use them in stir-fries and salads. They're not a problem.
And so, the other thing, if you've got these things and you don't want to eat your weedy species that are in your vegetable garden, don't let them flower.
Don't let them self-seed.
Don't let them photosynthesize.
You'll get rid of them. They'll go by themselves.
The other thing that I want people to understand is what What's a weed? A defic- definition of a weed is usually Oh, it's a plant in the wrong place is the is the most simple definition of a weed.
Well, who said it's in the wrong place?
No, nature's saying that that plant is in the right place because you've got to look at look at these weedy species that grow really rapidly.
They are primary colonizers.
Nature has put them there to have cover a bare space because nature doesn't have bare land.
Only human beings have bare land.
So, a bare space, what nature does is very rapidly quick-growing weeds come up and they protect the land surface. They protect the soil surface. Um they stop it from blowing away. They'd stop it from washing away.
They're not problems. They are absolutely beneficial.
The other thing that weedy species do, often they're very deep rooted. Some of them are deep rooted. And what they're doing is they're saying, "Oh, there's an element deficiency in your plant root zone.
So, I'm going to grow here and I'm going to bring those elements up from deep in the soil up into your root zone."
So, what do people do? They go and glyphosate them out, instead of saying, "Oh my gosh, let's make a weed tea from them." Because if you make what they're doing is bringing up that element that's missing from the soil into the into the root zone. So, if you And it's up in their leaves, etc. So, if you just leave the roots, cuz that's where the mycorrhizae are, don't disturb those, take the top off, make it into a weed tea, put it back over the patch of weeds.
They might be nettles, for example, if you don't want to make soup and pesto out of them and you want to get rid of them, then make your weed tea and put it back over again.
Now, logic will tell us that if we're putting that element from the weed tea back onto the area where that weed is growing because that element is missing, we're putting it back again. So, what happens?
The weedy species disappears.
Because we are now using the elements back in the from the So, so, weeds must never be seen as a problem. They're telling us a story. They're nature's They're nature's protection for the soil. So, here, we don't want cape weed in our in our pasture because it contaminates our our our grassy species, our mixed species.
So, what do we do? We use compost tea. We use the diversity. Because if you have a look I didn't do it, but I know if I'd gone and taken some soil from under that weedy area, then there would have been a bacterial domination.
What we've done by putting on a fungal dominated compost tea is we've shifted the soil balance back to a fungal domination.
And we've probably, although I I I didn't measure it again, but I have in the past, we would have shifted the nitrogen in the nitrate form, which is there now, back to a predominance of nitrogen in the ammonia form, which is what perennial plants prefer.
So, nature's doing it all there for us.
And this is one example of if you have uh if you're in Australia or any country that has a flatweed, then make a fungal dominated compost tea and feed it and change the biological activity ratio diversity in the soil, and you won't have to put a fungus a herbicide on your property ever.
And so, there's a perfect example of it.
The the bottom the bottom uh photograph is about 6 weeks. The top photograph is about 12 weeks. Um I think I can see maybe one or two um uh capeweed plants in that top one.
They'll get pulled out.
But all of that capeweed there has not been allowed to flower.
It has now gone. It's disappeared.
So, let's go to the next slide.
This is a a winery that's just north of the highway from where I live.
And the the person the people who own the winery, they came down and they did one of my workshops.
But before they got themselves set up, they would buy the compost tea from us and take it up because what I wanted um the the the um vineyard owner to do was when he pruned to put a heavy drench of a really fungal dominated compost tea onto the vine structure but particularly running down the trunk and on into the vine row to to kill off any of the some pathogen spores that may have been there.
So, and I and so he took 600 L up up because that was the size of our tank, took out took our tractor and our equipment up over the highway, up the road, up to his vineyard and put it out.
Now, some weeks later, I got a phone call.
Hello, Patrick.
You didn't tell me about Cape weed.
I said, "Well, no, because you didn't ask me about Cape weed." He said, "Can you come up to the to the vineyard?" I said, "Yeah, okay."
So, I hopped in the car, it's only 5 minutes away, and I drove up and we got into the got into the truck, went up to the up to the vineyard, and I said, "Oh, gosh, that's looking good.
Good green mid row there. Really nice.
The the vines look good."
He said, "Well, what about the Cape weed?" I said, "Well, there isn't any Cape weed."
He said, "But have a look at the headlands. So, if you have a look at the left-hand photograph on the you can see the Cape weed that's out beyond the the vines. That's what we call the headland.
Well, that it didn't have any compost tea. But if you have a look at that photograph on the left at the end of the where the posts are at the end Yes, where the where where Yes, along there.
You can see where he lifted the the the the um the spray unit to go and turn around the the Now, can you see there is a difference in the green and can you see there is no Capeweed?
So >> Then right is is obvious. Then when you have a look on the right-hand side, you can see along the edge of the vine row the mid the the road yet there no Capeweed. Go to your left a little bit loads of Capeweed.
Have a look at the one at the bottom we're got looking up and down the vine row no Capeweed.
So he said, "What's happened?"
And I said, "Well, we've changed the biological diversity of the soil." And he said, "But I only put 600 L on 4 ha.
Now, I'm not sure how that converts to that that's about 10 10 acres 100 L it's only a few gallons. So it wasn't it wasn't a heavy application." He said, "But that's one application." And I said, "It only needs one application if you do it properly. This is nature will do for you."
So then he I said, "Okay, I wanted to talking talking an anecdote is is okay, it's this with show me the data.
I'm a scientist, show me the data."
So I had a conference in Singapore to go to. So I took this data and I made a poster. And so on the next slide I want you to have a look. What I did was I I did um two two soil samples. I took one out in the headlands that didn't have any compost tea and another soil sample inside the vine row where it had the the the the the the um compost tea.
So if you have a look, what I did was I did a normal biological um, quantitative analysis of the soil.
The active and total bacteria, the active and total fungi, the the the the the protozoa, and the mycorrhizal fungi, and particularly the active fungi to active bacteria ratio, which really is a is a good um, a sign of of how balanced your soil is.
Now, if you have a look at the no compost tea, the second from the bottom row, what we had was quite dry soil.
Uh, we had not a lot of active bacteria.
We had very little active fungi, and we had low levels of protozoa. So, with low levels of protozoa, it means we're not getting um, the the the ingestion of the bacteria to release the plant available nitrogen. So, our nitrogen levels also would have been low.
Mycorrhizal fungi, it was it's low, but I mean it it's not bad. They he would be getting some some good phosphorus from that.
But, the ratio of the fungi to the bacteria was pretty poor. We needed up around at the minimum of five.
So, that's what we started with. And we in that in that soil, there was loads of capeweed, um, big bare patches where the capeweed had died, very little vegetation in terms of grasses or or or useful growth.
One application of compost tea.
These these samples were taken at the same time. So, these were taken uh, some weeks or when I went up and took the photographs. So, it was some weeks after the the application. So, the the soils were the same. So, if you have a look then at the soil the the second the sort of top yeah, the second top one, you can already see there is a difference in the moisture content.
Now, it's it's it's only little, but it but there is a difference.
If you have a look at your active active uh bacteria, that hasn't really come up at all. Um the active um a total bacteria has come up a little bit, but we're not interested in bacteria because bacteria high bacteria drives weedy species. We're looking at a perennial crop, so we're wanting fungal domination.
Have a look at how the active fungi has come up.
We have a significant increase.
And so there we're starting to get that changeover to the fungal domination.
But have a look then at our at our flagellates and our amoeba.
Big increase in population, which means where our our nitrogen potential has increased enormously.
These flagellates and amoeba require aerobic soil. But if you have a look at the ciliates, ciliates uh can can live in reduced oxygen. So they're a good sign of of some sort of anaerobic conditions, um whether they be um compaction or flooding, too much water. If you have a look, we've actually reduced our ciliates, which is what we want to do because it means we've got more aeration, we've got more activity, we've got more oxygen going through the soil. And even our mycorrhizal fungi increased a little bit.
This is with one application of compost tea. But have a look at our active fungi to active bacteria ratio.
What we've done, we've almost brought it up into a into the to the um the range where we want it to have good diversity and good activity and good nitrogen potential and good um um phosphorus uptake and calcium, etc. So what I'm trying to show you this is this is in a a vineyard with just one application of compost tea. This is what we can do by working with nature.
If we then go and have a look at the pasture, which is the next the next slide, I think.
>> Before we move to the next slide, Mary, there is one question in the chat.
People are wondering what do you mean by DW in the second column of this Yeah.
What are those numbers?
>> uh that's the dry weight.
So, so so if we have a look at at the no compost tea, uh we've got um uh 87 per so we've got 13% moisture in the soil. So, if you just turn that into make that say 80%, that's the degree of dryness. So, we've got 13% moisture.
But, if you go to the next one, uh what's that? 22% moisture in the soil. So, what we've done is we've increased our water holding capacity in the soil. So, DW is dry weight. So, it's just a way of of um of saying, "Okay, um uh 0.87 uh point So, point uh I mean 0.13. So, 13% of that soil is moisture. In the other one with compost tea, 22% of that soil is moisture."
Does that help?
>> Yeah, thank you.
>> Now, this This is This is our farm.
And if you have a look at the at the uh picture on the left, you can see the grasses, and you can see where the where the fence line is. Where our next door neighbors, uh dairy farmers, um you would think they're commercial cake weed growers.
Uh it's just a carpet of yellow.
Now, Alan puts out his compost tea, and if you look at the one on the on Yeah, the bottom right, that's looking from their property back into our property with our beautiful black Angus stock.
Then, have a look along the little one that's in the inset.
These people have been on this farm as long as we have.
And Alan gets very frustrated because we have to continue to clean our property because we have blowing from all the flowers and seeds and things coming from our farmers. So, if you have a look at that little inset, when Alan's putting out the compost tea, he goes out into their property about a yard about about a meter.
And if you have a look along the fence line on the on the on the Do you see? No capeweed.
Do you think they'd notice?
Ah, very frustrating.
Uh but here again is absolute proof this property is full uses heavy synthetic input NPK urea.
But, by putting our compost tea along that fence line, just into their property, no capeweed.
Compost tea costs about I don't know, um 5 or 6 cents a liter.
We can put out hundreds of liters for a couple of dollars.
For them to put their their chemicals on, cost them thousands of dollars a year. And look what they've got. They've got They're growing capeweed.
We have a few cents a liter onto our property. Look at our beautiful grasses.
There's There's mixed herbage in there.
You just can't see it from that photograph, but we have plantain, and we have several of the other medicinal type plants in there. Chicory, uh all of those medicinal plants that that animals will will select if they have the opportunity when they want them as medicinal plants.
So, all our property has had we've been here for 55 years and so is the other property, 55 years, and all we've done is we've used rock dust, compost, compost tea, and fish kelp and molasses.
And we use a Yeomans plow which simply drills into the soil and just opens it up. We don't plow our soil at all, never have.
And this is what we can do. And and this is this is probably my frustration with authorities in that here is evidence at no cost, well, next to no cost. Even if you add the cost of diesel in given today's crazy world, it's still next to nothing compared with putting out NPK, which in effect doesn't work because here's the proof that it doesn't work.
So, I find it very frustrating that that that I suppose farmers farmers need to be given knowledge and they need to be given evidence and they need to be given courage because they want every farmer knows their land very well and I get very upset when I hear people talking about farmers trashing their land. No, they don't. They just don't understand. They don't have the knowledge. So, we give them the knowledge and they want to do the right thing. And these sorts of things, these sorts of webinars that you put out, this is the evidence that for next to no cost you can make a change, but it doesn't take 100 years to make a change. You can make a change in two or three years.
It's it becomes more difficult with vegetable growers, but but for for pasture for broadacre it's not a problem.
I have farmers up in up in northern western Australia who are broadacre grain croppers.
They now pasture crop.
So they have they have a a legume or something planted in between their pasture. They don't now plow up their soil. They cut their they cut their their grain higher and leave stubble.
They then go out with a good compost tea, fungal dominated compost tea, so that so that you can break down the stubble. You leave the roots where they are because that's where your mycorrhizal fungi are.
Uh and and so you don't you don't plow.
You don't plow it at all and break that up. You bring those all together and you work with them. And here's evidence, or here's two lots of evidence, of how you can do this um without damaging your country. And what it comes back to is what our first nation people here say, care for country.
Farm the soil.
If you do both of those things, whatever happens above the above the soil will be the best it can be.
>> Really? Mary, I'd love to ask you to expand on that a a little bit more, especially in regards to the financial aspect. I think, you know, the the conversation has shifted over the years and more and more we see people that are committed. They know if they grow regeneratively, the food will be more nutrient dense. They want to buy organic. They They want that, but there's still this perception out in the world that well, we could do the right thing, but it's going to be way more expensive. You know, we're we're financially stuck in the conventional way. And you know, I I know, but I'd I'd love to hear from your experience. Could you you tell people a little bit more about the reality of of the sort of savings and benefits of doing things the right way?
>> Okay. Well, Um, as part as part of my my big research project, uh, we worked with two farms. We worked with one that was a conventional input farm and with our farm, which has not had synthetic chemistry for over 50 years.
Um, and what we did was we went to the chemical companies and we said, "Please, will you give us prices to date of the various NPK mixes and urea mixes and lime, etc., that farmers would be putting on uh, onto their farm as as on a say a broadacre farm and also for a vegetable farm."
So, those those figures were uh, and and then and then we got our accountant to to work out what it cost us to make our compost tea, our compost and our compost tea.
So, I can't remember their figures right down to the last dollar, but what we did was we looked at uh, the various mixes of NPK and how much per hectare per or per ton or per hectare they they would cost.
So, for for a perennial system, now, a perennial system could be a vineyard or an orchard or or a pasture like ours, the input costs, uh, say 2 years ago were between about 700 and 1,100 dollars per hectare annually of input costs.
If it was a vegetable farm, then those costs equivalent costs were between about 1,200 and 1,900 dollars per hectare.
Then, when we come to compost and compost tea, what we did is we calculated the cost per liter of the compost tea and it worked out at about 7 cents.
Now, if we put out our compost tea at 150 L per hectare, we're looking at you know, $20.
If we put it out on our vegetable patches at $250 per liter, we're looking at maybe what, 30 or $40?
Compared with between 800 and $2,000 for the conventional.
Now, then we'll say, "Okay, well, we can't we we can't we can't um produce as much."
Okay.
In Australia, each one of our big in uh big uh organizations like the chicken industry or the or the wheat industry or the beef industry or the wine industry, their peak bodies know exactly how much NPK comes off per gallon, per kilo, per ton, whatever whatever whatever it happens to be, per liter. They know. All you have to do is go to those websites, and you can get that information.
So, I say I say to my farmers, "Okay, we know what that figure is. All we have to do is produce more in our soil than you take off in your in your production."
And we can do that.
I could tell you about some farmers I worked with down in Gippsland and some farmers over in in in South Australia.
They were so locked into the chemical paradigm that they they were suicidal.
And in Australia, a farmer suicides every 10 days.
And that is that is a tragedy because Australian farmers are not that we don't get subsidies. We don't get any protection, really.
And so, this farmer was having to lease land to run his his dry cows uh because he didn't have enough land to run his his milking cows plus his dry cows plus his young stock.
And he was so far in debt. He was so far in debt he could see no future.
And so, we said, "Well, why don't we look at" and I always say to my farmers, "Give me your worst paddock.
Not your best paddock. Give me your worst paddock because if you lose production on that worst paddock, you're not losing anything because it's not giving you anything anyway. Give me your worst paddock."
And so, with those farmers down there, what we were able to do over two or three years, we were able to build that farmer biologically with with with um using a Yeomans Plow and fish and kelp and molasses and and good compost compost tea.
We were able to bring his his property up such that he didn't have to lease another farm.
Because what he found was he was increasing the productivity in his cows, therefore he needed less cows because his productivity was actually going up.
Because his soil was going up. His cows were happy. They were spending a lot of time lying down chewing their cuds like they were supposed to instead of grazing all day on this this this grass that had no nutrients in it.
So, he had a future. And that was only over a period of two or three years.
So, he had he didn't have to lease more land.
He was he didn't have to run so many cattle.
He was able to go and take his children to to to football on Saturdays.
And that's just one example of so many examples in South Australia. I have farmers I work with a a company there that that that now make compost tea to my recipes.
They send me photographs of a farmer before anything has happened, you know, traditional NPK urea.
Full of weeds, full of rushes, no real pasture. Okay, I give them a recipe. I have a look at this this soil. I give them a recipe. The recipe goes on, the compost tea goes on. In 2 years, we've got photographs back, beautiful pasture, happy farmer.
Uh time after time this is what happens because what we're doing, what they're doing, and what they what they don't understand is when you add a lot of phosphorus, synthetic phosphorus for example, uh the science now tells us you hear a farmer saying, "Oh, I'm having to put more on every year. I'm having to put more lime on every year." Well, duh, doesn't that tell you it's not working?
Um lime is is is terrible. Um use your mycorrhizal fungi, produce your your calcium oxalate from your mycorrhizal fungi, where and have the calcium where the roots of your plants actually need it.
With the with the with the synthetic phosphorus, we're actually finding that it affects one of the the biological pathways that actually leads to less health of the plants over time. So, the biochemistry and the science is there.
You just have to look for it. It's there.
So, so with these with these um applications of compost tea, we're shifting the the the the biology to fungal domination, but we're actually also shifting the the nitrogen availability from nitrate predominance to ammonia denom- ammonium predominance. And that that ratio of nitrate to ammonium ions in the nitrogen is really important in the quality of the of the pasture that you're actually going to get.
Did that answer the question at all?
>> Oh, absolutely.
Carla, did did you have another question?
>> Yeah. Uh it's a follow-up question on on top of that, Mary. I think you you touched a very good point.
Uh we still see a lot of farmers resistant to this regenerative approach.
Uh besides all that you already told us, what else do you think that we, the new generations coming, can work to really open up the doors and let them give us a chance to show what we can do in regen ag system? How to kind of tone down this closed mindset, this afraid of losing yield, or I don't know if I can trust the system.
>> I think all we can do is show by example.
If someone's in a conventional paradigm, they would never go and put on, you know, X number of tons of NPK until I had a chemistry test done.
When I say to farmers, oh, you know, what would you would you come and have a biology test done, and then I then I can show you how to make that transition.
They said, well, how can how can you do that? I said, well, I can do that. I wouldn't offer it if I couldn't do it.
Well, why do we have to know that? They said, but you don't go and put on synthetic chemistry without having a test done, or without knowing a little bit about your soil.
Why would you go and do something else?
There is an alternative.
What they what is happening is the agronomic the the agronomist uh through their education uh just about almost completely 100% chemical-based.
Not not There's some of them that aren't, but mostly chemical-based.
The big chemical companies uh and and the and the stock feed and the the the cut companies that are in the the various towns and villages that that supply these chemi- chemicals, they are aggressive.
I can tell you an example. PhD student.
He finished his PhD. He went and got a job not very far from us because we're in a big agricultural area here.
And he got a job because the the farmer wanted to have an organic stream to his his his um you know, leafy greens and lettuces and and and and small um daily salad vegetables.
So, my my ex-PhD student got a job.
Some months later, he comes back and he's I'm sitting here at my desk as as I as I seem to be glued to most days.
And he walked in and I said, "What are you doing here?" And I I is I said, "Why aren't you working?" And he said, "I've lost my job."
Oh, okay. You know, tell me about it.
What happened and this is this is the aggression. This is the This is what chemical companies do.
Two chemical companies sent out representatives to the farmer.
And they said, "We will give you for free two agronomists, one from each company, if you will come back to using our chemicals."
And the farmer did.
So, he sacked my ex-PhD student.
That's one example of the power of the of the chemical companies. Another example is a farm down to the to the east of us.
The the the farmer again was just great distress, financial distress, mental distress.
He owed a huge account to the chemical company. And the chemical company said, "That's okay. We'll give you 5 years to pay it off. Don't worry. We'll give you 5 years to pay it off. But you must keep buying chemicals."
So, he never got ahead.
And and this is this is what and and Elaine related to this absolutely.
Chemical companies are so powerful, they have so much money. If they want to do trials, they have the money to do trials. Those of us who are trying to do biological trials, we don't have the money to do the great big trials.
And so, it's really important that these sorts of these sorts of small-scale trials that you're doing over there and that you have data from your from your various people uh like I'm showing here.
Pictures tell a thousand words. But then when you put the data like those two those two sets of data with them, you can't deny that.
So, I think and so, just coming back to how can we get the farm the farmers have to have courage. And it takes a lot of courage, but I always say, "Just give me your worst paddock."
Not the rest of your farm, just give me your worst paddock.
And then next year, we'll do another paddock. And next year, we'll do another paddock. But what is actually happening is I've got their worst paddocks because that's where I'm going to see the biggest response. And then I I phone them up the next year and I say, "Right, you ready to do another paddock?"
Oh, we've done the whole farm. We got such a great response. I said, "BUT WHAT ABOUT MY CONTROL PADDOCK? I have to have a control paddock."
Ah, the farm is all now biological.
So so so it's a case and and then and then the farmers in the various areas they become the spokesperson. They become the showcase.
It's like our farm in our road here. I said when I have workshops, I say to people, "Did you have any problems finding our farm?" "Oh, for heaven's sake, Mary. It's so It's so different from all the others. You know, what are you What are you talking about?"
And so I think this is this is what we have to do and this is what we're doing and this is we have people farmers all around Australia who are showing their farms as showcases. But it's getting the data. It's getting those figures like I showed you on those charts. It's one thing showing the picture. Okay, and they said, "Well, okay, as a scientist." I said, "Well, okay, so there's a difference. What does that mean?"
So what I try to do is to get the before and after application soils so that I can do those those those um figures like you've seen in the uh that we showed earlier.
And I think that's what we have to do.
And and farmers want to change. They desperately want to change.
They just need to be given the data.
>> Brilliant. Beautiful, Mary. Thank you so much. We can spend hours here.
>> [laughter] >> Yeah, can we just have a look at the have a look at our farm our farm here?
Um here's Yeah yeah just got Yeah, this one. This is This is our farm. Now, it's it's not as easy to to get a good um response because we don't because we've always been biological. So what I did was to get to get a soil that probably didn't have the 50 years of biology. What I did was I went to the to the to the street on the edge of the road under the fence line.
And that was the closest I could get to what was probably a soil that didn't have a lot of compost tea.
So, if you have a look at the dry weight, you can see there was very little difference uh between the dry weight and otherwise.
Um with the applications uh or with with no application, uh the figures were still not too bad, actually. I was I was surprised with with the fungi. Uh the protozoa were low, but because it was undisturbed, there was still some reasonable uh mycorrhizal fungi.
But then, we put our application on because we wanted to mimic what we did at the vineyard as well to do that.
Uh very little difference in the in the in the moisture content.
Uh bacteria were were were lower. Well, we don't want bacteria.
Not a lot of change in the in the um uh total bacteria.
But the active fungi, by putting a fungal dominated compost tea, we were bringing our active fungi up and also our protozoa.
The flagellates and the amoeba were coming up. The ciliates were going down because we were getting more aeration into the soil, more worm activity. And the mycorrhizal fungi went up.
But what was really interesting was I and I noticed someone has noticed the the the the bricks.
When I have farmers bring this their pastures, uh it's very rarely that I will get a bricks above two, three, maybe.
Uh but with the compost tea on our farm, uh, in just in the pasture, depending on the time of the year and and and how much moisture there is, we can get bricks of definitely up around 15 without any problems. Now, in our vegetable garden, we can get bricks of 18 to 23 in our kale.
Right?
It's doable. It's absolutely doable. And this is a pasture we We only have a small property. We're only 60 acres.
But, these are these are This is These are one applications that I'm showing you, uh, the change. But, and what we're actually seeing is the change in the fungal activity.
Good. And I'm going to have to get a drink of water.
Um, what we're what we're What I haven't got on this is the is the, uh, active fungi to active bacteria ratio. It's dropped off the end, unfortunately. But, um, with the with the the both, uh, one the one at the bottom was about seven, in the range of five to 10.
Uh, no. Sorry. Yeah. No, the the, uh, the range the Yeah, five to 10. And and then when we put the when we put the compost on, um, it was up around seven.
So, that So, they were both actually in range.
Right? Uh, so, uh, our As I say, our farm is probably not a good example because we've always been regenerative.
But, even with just an application of compost tea, you can see the response.
Uh, and the one thing about about our pastures, our and and our vegetables, as you increase the bricks, as you all know, as you increase the bricks, so you decrease the impact that pest diseases have.
But, what you're doing is you're increasing the nutrient value.
Now, if you have a look at the at the at the world literature, um what they'll do is they'll measure NPK.
Well, there's not there's not a lot of difference in in the in those sorts of elements in fruits and vegetables between conventional, organic, and biological. But, you don't buy your fruit and vegetables or grow your fruit and vegetables to get those elements those nutrient elements. What you do is you buy them or grow them to get your antioxidants, your vitamins, your your all of all of these sorts of things. Now, when you then compare conventionally grown fruits and vegetables or pastures or whatever with biological or biological or regenerative or permaculture or however whatever you want to call them, but anything other than synthetic chemistry, those antioxidants, those vitamins are orders of magnitude higher in our biological system than the conventional system.
So, if someone says to you, "Oh, there's there's You have a look at the paper."
And there were a few papers out there that say there's no difference, but they're not measuring the right thing.
If you measured the the the real things, your your your your antioxidants, your vitamins, the difference is so significant that you wouldn't go and buy from a supermarket again, ever.
And it's the same thing with the pasture. I have farmers coming to me for a workshop, and I say, "Oh gosh, Mary, you don't have much grass out there."
"What do you mean? We've got plenty of grass."
Um oh, well, no, we've just put our urea on, and we've got this big growth of grass, and the cows are up to their bellies.
I said, "Okay, how long do in the day do your cows spend eating?" Oh, no, they're eating all day. I said, "Yeah, because they're starving."
And elongation due to nitrogen is not giving you more nutrient, it's giving you more water and cellulose.
I said, "Our cows go and feed for a couple of hours, then they go and find a nice warm spot or cool spot, depending on the weather, and they'll lie down for the rest of the day and chew their cuds.
Because the nutrient value is in the little that they need to eat.
So, bigger is not better.
More is not better.
Elongation of and getting a bigger a bigger um you know, taller grass is not giving you more nutrition. It's actually it's actually diluting the nutritional effect.
So, again, giving that if we can get that data together with pictures, farmers want to know. And the young farmers that are coming through the all the young people coming through these days, these are they're educated.
They've got degrees. They they they understand, even though they've been brainwashed with a chemical paradigm through the universities.
Uh if you give them the data, they understand the difference.
And this is this is where we're getting those young people coming through into agriculture now. And what's really interesting, many of them are women, which is is which which is fantastic.
It's taken 50 years, but it's women.
Um uh they are they are actually they don't they'll say, "Show me the data."
So, what we do is we show them the data.
We provide them with the data, don't we?
And then they know how to analyze that data, and they said, "My gosh, okay, I can see that. I've got that."
And that's what that's what we're getting with the young people today.
"I've got that. That wasn't presented to me in my degree, but I've got that and I can understand the difference.
And that's what we've got to do. And that's what's That's what's happening.
It's happening slowly, but that's what's happening.
>> Absolutely brilliant. Well, thank you for sharing all that. Shall we go on to the to the next slide? You mentioned some of the studies and some of what's going on there.
>> are some papers. Um if people are wanting these are These are peer-reviewed. Now, I don't take information out of Google.
All of the information that I take is out of Google Scholar.
Uh and I would put it to everyone, don't believe everything you see in Google, but go into Google Scholar, where you'll find all the peer-reviewed papers.
And these are just a couple These This I mean, there's hundreds of them, but these are just a couple that are easy to access um that that talk about the sort of influences that that someone who is wanting to start off with could find very useful and interesting to read.
That's the reason why I put those in there.
So, I'm not sure what the next slide is, if there is a next slide.
Ah, yes. Oh, these are This is our compost workshop.
Every uh every 2 or 3 months we hold a compost workshop. So, on our farm, nothing is wasted.
What we do is we pick up everything up if there's been a storm or a big wind, Alan or one of our staff go out with the tractor and they pick up all the twigs and everything and they bring it back and it goes through a mulcher and we store it to make our compost, cuz this is our carbon source.
So, again, this this this circularity is important. If it's organic, then it's able to be made into compost, it's able to go back to the soil as a compost or compost tea.
So, then when When a workshop, what we're doing is we're wanting to make a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a a So, you can see on the top right, um we've got our carbon source, which is our browns, and we've got our nitrogen source, which is fresh uh freshly mown grass. We don't use any manure in our compost.
And there's no reason because that's a good nitrogen source. But the reason why we don't use manure is we don't want to get a have to get into the legis- the the sort of legal situation of having to test for pathogens like salmonella and uh E. coli in particular.
So, we don't use any manure in our in our compost. It's all just It's all just plant material.
And so, if that pack is stacked there, if we get around 40% of green material and about 60% of of of our brown material. Now, our brown material can be um mulch. It can be uh old old plant material out of the out of the garden. It can be cardboard with all the plastic taken off it. It can be egg cartons. It can be newspaper uh because the print now is is is is safe. So, anything that was ever from a biological source, we we put into our brown stack.
Then we make we mix it all together and we might put in some rock dust.
Um we quar- like there's a quarry nearby and we use rock dust. And our rock dust just happens to be 20% calcium.
So, we might put a cupful of a cupful of of rock dust into our cubic meter ring.
It which is about a ton of a ton of of of green mate- of plant material.
Then we might put a cupful of a previous good compost pile in to seed with a lot of microbial activity.
Then we might put in um a little bit of fish and kelp and molasses. You know, maybe maybe um in a in a in a cubic meter ring, we might put about half a cupful of of kelp and fish and molasses. Mix it all in water and then pour it over when we're wetting down the stack.
So then we have uh we we make um we make our ring, uh press it down, and uh it's there and you can see the nice mix of green and brown.
And we put a thermometer in the top. And normally what we do, depending on the time of the year, we put um old um bags from our chicken feed across the top to either stop it from drying out or the rain getting too much rain through the stack.
Put some bricks on the top. And we do that on a Saturday morning of the workshop.
And I say to the people, "On Sunday morning, have a look because it could be, if we've been a little bit too excited with our nitrogen, we're going to have a stack ready to turn."
So they come in and they So what do we start off with? Around about ambient, say between about 16 and 22°.
They come in the next morning and they say, "Oh, the stack's up to 43." And I say, "Already?
Already? Okay, this afternoon, Sunday afternoon, you're going to have to turn that." Well, often it's Monday or Tuesday before it gets turned. Um but usually within 36 hours to 48 hours Oh, no, maybe maybe 48 to 96 hours of the first pile being made uh Oh, sorry. Yes, we do work with Celsius. Um I don't know how to convert.
Um my apologies to use those of you who are in uh Fahrenheit.
Um, uh yes, we're in Celsius.
Um, um, uh what was I saying? Um, yeah, so so so then so after about 96 hours we turn and usually within the first 7 to 10 days we've had at least three turns.
And we try to keep it at around 60 65 or 55 to 65 for two or three days.
Uh and if it's stable, but if it's still going up, uh then we do turn, but we try to keep it at around that around two or three days if we can uh at around 55 to to 65°.
Um, so then uh after about 8 weeks, that ring is down to about half its volume.
So what we say then is the temperature's going back to ambient. At this stage, there's no the so most of the pasteurization, which is the heat generating part of making compost, most of the pasteurization is completed.
But that's not compost.
That is simply a pasteurized uh raw materials.
So what we do then is we then leave that where it is, uh make sure that it it keeps aerated.
So we're looking at the oxygen. We leave that where it is or we take it out of the ring and put it somewhere.
And we leave it for about another 12 weeks until we see all of that that temperature has gone and what we end up with is a beautiful black uh humus that's that's that's um that smells good that uh the earthworms have moved back in again. The protozoa have moved back in again.
And then we store that in our bunker.
And then when we want to use it, we simply put it through a sieve to take out all of the oversize stuff that hasn't, you know, the sticks and things that haven't broken down. And they go back into the mulch pile for next time because they've also got they've also got extra microbiology on them. So they just a cycle So everything's circularity. Everything is circularity.
Nothing goes out except the compost which then goes out onto pastures or onto somebody's vineyard or somebody's vegetables or wherever it goes.
And uh now uh people are really liking the quality of our compost so much that we're selling we're selling 100 kg every 6 weeks to big uh vegetable growers. And so now we're having you can see on the bottom left here, we're having to increase our number of rings where we're making the compost.
We don't We We only make rings because we're making very carefully controlled compost for compost tea.
And if you're going to go into a situation where you're going to take compost tea as the replacement for your synthetic fungicides, pesticides, whatever other sides you use, insecticides, then that compost tea must be very very high quality.
And this is this is the This is the risk that the farmers feel they they have problems taking.
And I say I say to them, "Look, I'm not going to tell you how to run your property.
I'm going to show you a better way.
But what happens if you go over to a biological system, a regenerative system, whatever sort of permaculture system, if something happens, that's going to give you an outbreak because of some weather event or because you're surrounded by other farms that that that have high disease load, if you get a disease load that you simply can't afford to to lose your crop because of this, then use the softest of the synthetic chemistry.
You know, I'm not saying you are not allowed to use this ever again. I'm saying you do whatever you have to do to save your crop. It will rarely ever happen, but it might happen. But what has happened in the past when this has happened to anyone, particularly my vineyards, when they get an outbreak of say a downy mildew or or a powdery mildew because they're surrounded by vineyards that are heavily uh into chemicals, um I say put your put your put your synthetic chemistry on. Get the softest one you can, put it on, clean up the mess.
Have a look on the on the label rate, what is the residual time of that chemical?
Often it's 7 days, 14 days, 21 days, whatever.
As soon as that residual time has passed, drench your your enterprise with a highly fungal dominated compost tea.
Drench it to run off and do it weekly for two or three weeks.
And that way, you will replace your your diversity, you will replace your your your um your uh beneficials back into your enterprise.
But you have got rid of whatever that problem was, and your bank will be happy.
Yeah?
So so Elaine used to say, you often have to take one step back to go three steps forward.
We don't have the right to tell a farmer what to do.
You must do this. No. What I say is here is another way.
Let us take a journey by starting with the worst paddock.
If there is a If there is a situation that I've just described where you are going to lose your crop and you cannot afford to do that because of your your your um your relationship with your bank, then we go and find a soft option.
We have a look at that withholding period.
We then, as soon as that withholding period is gone, we then go in with our compost and compost tea and we fix up the problem.
That little bit of damage, Mother Nature is very forgiving.
She will help us come back because we've done the right thing most of the time.
Is there another slide?
Okay.
Making compost tea.
It's It's really People say, "Oh gosh, you know, I I I don't I don't have time to make a whole lot of compost tea or I've only got a small vegetable garden."
That's okay. If you have a look on the top left, here's Allen. He's got a little 20 L bucket.
He's got a little piece of of electrical cord or whatever you call it that's been heated and made into a circle and a little and and the stopper on the end of it is actually one of those plugs that you put on the bottom of the legs of your chairs to stop them from scratching your your floor.
Yeah, you just Yeah, nothing nothing special. And then the holes are are drilled into that that those circles there at the bottom, not at the top, at the bottom.
And then we just put a fish tank pump on it, and we can make 20 L of compost tea in 48 hours.
And and that compost tea, we can we can if we want to, we can dilute down, you know, four or five times.
So we started off with our little This is our This is our This is our journey, our experimental journey, our 20 L bucket.
Then we went to one of our favorite hardware shops, and we got a 150 L container, which is the blue one, and then a 200 L container, which is the green one, and our compost bag, and got a and you can see on the top of the green the green tank the second picture, you can see a slightly bigger pump.
So we just go to we go to a pump shop, and we say, "This is This is how much volume we've got, and we need to change we need to turn it over, so we're keeping above six parts per million oxygen." "Oh, yes, you need this size pump." So we go buy that pump.
And so now we're making 100 L or 200 L of compost tea.
Very easy to do, because it can be diluted down. Then, when we got [clears throat] serious, we had a stainless steel tank, which is the bottom one.
We had a stainless steel tank made, and that holds a thousand liters.
And so this is our This is our big tank.
If someone wants to buy a thousand liters of compost tea, this is where we will make it.
So, you know, all all everything you can start from 20 20 L up to a thousand liters. All my growers over in Western Australia that are buying the old winery vats, and they're making 30,000 L. It's all scalable.
The other thing that I put in there is Now, this is brewed. This is where you use compost, and you feed it, and you build up your populations of your microbiology. This is a brew. This is a compost tea.
The leachate is [clears throat] simply a Here again, we had an old drum, cut it in halves.
Make sure the plug's at the bottom.
It's got a It's got a cover on it.
And we put compost into it.
Then we put clean water in and we wash it. We We stir it around and we wash it and we wash the microbiology that's on the compost off into the water.
And then we catch it at the bottom in a bucket.
And that's a leachate.
And you can use that when you when you if you're going to plant your plant your veggies out, make some leach up leachate up very quickly, put your plants into it and let them get all of that nice microbiology on before you put plant them out in your veggie garden.
Then you can use the leachate to just water them and it helps them to get over the transplant shock.
So you see, everything can be done in a little, but it could also can be done at scale.
And it can be as complex as you want it to be or as simple as you want it to be.
It's all doable.
So I have I have I have people in in older people in apartments, younger people in apartments.
And so what they what they're doing is um they're just making up a little bit of compost under the sink and they're making a little bit of leachate and they're growing their their tomatoes or their or their or their lettuce in flower pots on their balconies.
It's doable.
It's all doable.
Are there any others?
>> I think that's it.
>> Oh, beautifully Elaine.
>> What a brilliant presentation. Thank you so much for coming today and sharing your wisdom with us.
Um we'll get to the the questions and answers in a little bit. So, if anyone has questions for Mary, please uh drop them in. This would be a great moment to to get a sip of water, a a little break.
We've got a few slides to run through and and then we'll get get to the questions. But, uh for all of you who are are watching this, this is the point where we ask for your help and support and and donating to the future of the Soil Food Web Foundation so we can continue to carry on this work. Uh, you know, if you enjoy these webinars, our our mission is is to you know, educate, inspire, and and train as many people as we can uh all around the world. And and so, those funds go to help promote scholarships, help us to create new programming, uh and all the other activities uh that we take on to carry forward this this beautiful legacy. Uh, we're also really excited to announce that we have a new uh experience, a new platform that we've just launched that you can find at school.soilfoodweb.com.
Uh, we're also making the the courses mobilely accessible, which will um help a a lot of people to access on the go. And we've got brand new and improved programs as as well as all of the legacy programs that the Soil Food Web School is known for uh present on there. Uh, we've got a special for folks who are have been following along and and uh looking to jump in and and are interested in in pursuing a career uh or just skilling up in in this work. Uh, so that's the foundation courses and the the complete practicum, all of the theory and and all of the guided practice with our our brilliant team of mentors like Carla here uh who will walk through how to implement this stuff, uh the soil microscopy, the bio complete compost production, the liquid amendments, and and wrapping that all together into a real field trial. So, just like the the case studies that you saw here today, you can learn how to you know, put this all to practice in a real world environment. Uh if you have any questions, you know, reach out to our team at [email protected].
You can scan this QR code uh and we've got a a big discount as we're just now relaunching uh those advanced courses, the the practicum courses with uh a a really great iteration, a lot of work that's gone in by our team to put extra videos and extra lectures and extra support to help uh folks along that journey.
Uh also, if if you're not ready to to dive in all the way, we've got a few free ways to engage. We've just launched a new community that's free for anyone who wants to join. So, come meet other people from all around the world. We've got uh thousands of folks in there already. We've got students in in 130 countries who, you know, care about soil biology, are interested in regenerative agriculture, are practicing, you know, at large scale or or, you know, in their backyards or up on their apartment balconies.
Uh all are welcome and and we're excited to see you there. And And if you've been curious about the foundation courses and and Elaine's lectures, uh we're also for the first time offering uh sampling of of 10 of those lectures from our our um flagship courses, the foundation courses, for free uh to anyone here. So, catch that QR code and and the discount code spring. And if you uh jump in, you'll get that as as a free gift for attending this webinar today.
And I think uh we've got a pro uh an info session coming up next week. So, if you're curious about these courses and and wanting to learn more, uh a few of us at the school are going to be live to answer your questions, uh talk about the programs, kind of walk through in in longer form end to end uh what we're offering and and what's included in those programs. So, please join us next week or or catch the replay if you're interested and and if you have questions, just when you can't show up at that time, just send them in, and and we'll be sure to address them uh live during that session next week.
Uh the last thing I I'll say running through this here is uh next month, June, is is Elaine's birthday month, and you know, in in honor and celebration of of her life and the incredible impact that she had on on so many of us, uh we're going to have a lot of new activities.
Uh we're going to be encouraging folks to come together and and create ceremonial compost piles. We're going to be giving away lots of scholarships to folks who uh are interested in in taking the courses and wanting some financial support, uh and just making as much noise we can about this beautiful work and and and yeah, that it that it works.
It's been working. The solutions are here. We we just have to choose to to do things the right way. And as you said, Mary, care for our country and and live in harmony with with nature and and give back to to the earth as she gives so much to us. And yeah, gives us everything that we have.
Uh so, stay tuned for more on that. And with that, I will pass it off to Carla to open up the Q&A.
>> Thank you, Evan. Mary, thank you so much. There is so many layers of so many lessons here that certain I will watch this webinar many more times cuz every time you're going to get a different nuance. So, thank you so much for that.
Uh Evan, I don't have control of this slide. Okay.
So, uh Mary, in the in the chat, we see I saw a lot of discussion about the weed tea, and people got like excited on your definition of weed. But, can you elaborate a bit more on what do you mean by weed tea? How do we see that, and how best to use a weed tea?
>> Right. A weed tea is it's Again, again, I have I have problems with calling these plants weeds because to me, they're they're they're indicator plants, they're primary colonizers. But any plant that you don't want in a particular area, I suppose, is what a weed definition of a weed is. A plant where it where it it's not wanted or shouldn't be.
Uh but now, if you understand why that weed is there, then that definition is it falls apart.
But let's let's let's use let's use nettles. Nettles nettles are a very common.
They make beautiful pesto. They make fabulous soups. Absolutely fabulous soups. Um uh you just have to wear gloves when you're picking them. That's all. But let's assume we have a we have a nettle patch. And it's usually showing that there's there's a lot of fertility in that that particular piece of soil. But if you want to get rid of the nettles, um what you do is you harvest the nettles with good gloves on.
And you just have a bucket of water.
A clean water. Now, when I say when I my definition of clean water is water that doesn't have um the urban uh chlorine or fluoride or anything like that in it.
And it's really it's really rainwater or or water that you've collected uh in a tank. But not from the reticulated system.
And so, all you do is you just put the What I What I do is with with if it's if it's with nettles, the I've certainly got gloves on. And what I do is I rub them and bruise the leaves and release the release the the the photosynthates um out into the water. And then I just stir it around for a day or so.
Uh and you'll find the the leaves uh become sort of a dark green and and they lose their they lose their sort of texture. That's okay. And then I simply take that water because that has all the nutrients that were that were that was in that in that plant. And these these are these are all sorts of useful things like auxins and cytokinins and and and the the the the elements that they the chemical elements as well as well as antioxidants and and all sorts of vitamins. And so I then pour that back over the plant if I want to get rid of that particular plant or I use that as a nutrient source to water my vegetables with or my flowers.
Now the other thing that you can do with with a weed tea is you can start it off the same way but if you're if you're from a bio if you have a biological system then one of the things that that are also in your microbiological diversity are yeasts.
Now yeasts help fermentation.
So if you then make your make your tea from your from your nettles for example and you stir it but you let it go for several days then you'll see it's starting to bubble.
And so what's happening there is the natural yeasts that have come from the environment are now working on the sugars that are that are from the from the photosynthates that are in the in the nutrient that's come out into the water and they're starting to ferment.
So you can let that go as long as you want. Uh you can let it go right through the fermentation process if you want to or you can stop it anywhere you want.
So what you're doing there is you're and then you can still use that in the same way as a as a as a as a a foliar spray or or soil spray if you want to. However, but what you what you've got there is slightly different from the from the from the biochemical makeup of the tea prior to fermentation.
But you've got different chemistry.
Cuz everything's made of chemistry.
That's why when I'm talking about when I'm talking about fertilizers, I talk about synthetic chemistry. Everything is chemistry.
What you've got is slightly different chemical makeup of a fermentation than you have of a fresh weed tea.
Both of them are brilliant for your absolutely brilliant for your for your um for your plants. And one of the things that I like the fermented teas for uh and it it doesn't make any difference, but I have a preference for fermented teas. If I'm planting out new plants, what I do is I just put them in a shallow a shallow container with with the fermented tea.
And I just sit them in there overnight before I plant them out.
What I'm giving them is a whole lot of nutrients, but I'm giving them also the microbiology.
Then I put them into the plant them out wherever, and then I use what's left of that tea to to give them a foliar spray.
And what I find is they go through they don't get the same transplant shock.
They set off and they start growing much more quickly than if you don't do that.
So any tea is is really simply taking the leaves of a plant that you don't Well, you feel you don't want, but now I'm hoping you got you've got a a totally different um a different attitude because a lot of those weedy species are are actually edible. They're actually forage plants. So So I'm hoping that when you you're not going to use that word weed anymore. You're going to put you're going to call it Oh gosh, I've got a whole lot of pioneer plants.
Oh my word, look look what I've got here. You know, it's it's it's a it's a you know, it's a primary colonizer.
You know, weed, that word weed goes out of the dictionary.
Uh but you can use them to make these teas uh by simply bruising and and leaving them for different periods of time. And they're absolutely beautiful and so easy. So easy to use.
>> I love the idea of a pioneer tea.
Yes, it's a the great new term.
I I know we've got a a lot of questions.
We're we're a bit over time, so we'll try and squeeze a a few more in. Uh we've got, you know, some folks that are are hanging out and I think eager to to get their questions in, so uh Carla, I'll leave it to you for the next ones.
>> First, Mary, nothing should be sorry. We are just I mean, thank you. That's the only thing we have to say. Thank >> I think we could be here for [clears throat] hours.
>> Yes, definitely.
>> [laughter] >> I'm sorry. I talked too much.
>> Oh, we love that.
>> That's that's great.
We really appreciate it.
>> okay. Okay, compost to break Yeah, go for it. Go for it, Mary.
Yeah, compost to break down a thatch layer without needing to Well, the thing the thing about a a thatch, if you if you don't penetrate, it does it does take a little bit longer, but what I like is I I work a lot with golf courses.
And what we we use we use we use spikes.
But if you don't want to do that, but the the thatch layer is simply telling you that the saprophytic fungi are not functioning sufficiently to break down the dead organic matter.
So, if you've got a thatch layer, particularly I'm I'm think I'm thinking now of the golf courses because that's where I'm trying to get rid of thatch.
And and we're doing that and we're we're we've proved it. We've got data. We're doing that with fungal dominated compost tea.
And if we have if we have a heavy thatch, what we're doing is we don't dilute the compost tea, we put it on as it comes out of the brewer.
So, it's very concentrated. So, we've got very high levels of of saprophytic fungi.
Um and we we simply water that every week or every 2 weeks until we see when we take a core, we can see that the thatch is no longer there.
So, it takes only a couple of weeks.
Um on a steepish slope with thick moss layer >> [clears throat] >> um moss and lichen um I that it's a a a little bit problematic there. It's it's a reason why it's there.
When you have if you have um an area that has had a heavy application of synthetic chemistry, what you'll find is the the plants the photosynthetic plants not you know, like grasses, they go away.
And your moss and lichen layer cover the soil. And what they're doing is they're saying, "Oh my god, here's a bare piece of land. We can't allow this land to be to to be washed away or blown away. We're going to cover it."
I e. lichens, I e. moss.
Um or al- algal layer. So, it's nature's way of saying you have damaged me, I need to protect myself and I'm doing it with these. They're photosynthesizing.
If you again, if you're wanting to get rid of them um because there's been heavy synthetic chemistry input, go back to a highly fungal dominated compost tea.
If you can spike, then all the better.
Um but just think about the fact that moss and lichen are nature's way of protecting the soil surface because the the the plant surface has the the natural plants that were there before have been taken away and nature does not like bare soil.
So, have a think about why they might be there. It's because you have an imbalance in your microbiology or you have a build-up of synthetic chemistry in the soil. That's why you end up with mosses often in in lawns, in gardens. I mean, lawns I hate. I think that's a waste of water in a country like Australia. Uh but you can have moss in in amongst the lawn. It's because your microbiology is incorrect. You've been putting on probably nitrogen uh to to to get a stimulation and a nice dark green grass. Stop doing that.
Make a make a weed tea. If that go find some of weeds around your around your place and make a weed tea. If you can make compost, make compost and make a compost tea and get the saprophytic fungi and they will they will then change the microbiology and the lichen say, "Oh, well, you don't need me anymore." The moss says, "You don't need me anymore." You know, I'll go back to sleep, you know, get on with it.
So, it's so it's be very careful about why you wanting to get rid of the moss or the lichen and why it's there. It's because the soil surface has been damaged.
You can do it with a fungal dominated compost tea.
>> Excellent advice. Thank you, Mary.
Um next question from Jean. Are you reapplying the biology at time intervals? Are there specific >> Um >> things that you recommend?
>> Yeah. Yeah. So, so you talking biology, I'm assuming you're talking about a good diverse compost tea, for example, or a compost. Um on on if if you if you're starting out on the journey of regeneration, then you need to put compost tea out probably every couple of weeks.
You'll never make enough compost to recover a property because you need to put out 5 or 10 tons per hectare.
Um too much, you know, maybe [clears throat] maybe two or three tons per acre. It's too It's too much. It's It's a lot of material. But, if you make a very high-quality compost tea, then you can put it out every couple of weeks.
You'll find as you get the turnover and the microbial activity and you can see that in your grass or the or the lack of weeds or whatever, then you increase the distance between it. We put out our compost tea now twice a year on this property, spring and autumn.
That's all we need.
Uh so so as you as you recover your soil, the distance between your the time between your applications increases.
But, you can start off every week or two when you're starting off.
>> Sounds great.
>> Mary, this is a question from Alan and I think that helps summarize a lot of what you told us today. Uh when you mentioned the use of tea, which I presume is aerated brew extract, a lot of farmers in US are using extract, which is not brewed.
Uh just extracted from the compost in relative short period. What are your opinion on that?
>> Right.
>> versus tea >> Okay. Um the the the the the tea as I as I explained uh and as as Alan understands, the tea is growing more microbes on the compost that you put in.
An extract is extracting just those microbes that are on the compost that you've put in.
Now, if you have if you have a very, very good quality compost that you're using for your compost tea that you're using for your extract, yes, this is this is this is fine.
But the only difference is is that between the tea and the extract is both of them you need really good quality compost.
But remember that with your extract, you're simply taking off what's on your compost. So your compost has to be really, really, really good.
There's no difference. But if I was using a extract an extract, I would probably be putting it on If I put on a tea every If I put on a tea twice a month, I would probably put an extract on three times a month.
Because I know that I'm getting I'm not getting the same concentration. Oh, but absolutely I have no problems with either.
Um if they it's just that that that that you have the diversity, you don't have the population. That's all. Both are both are perfect.
>> Beautiful. Thank you.
And we have the last question.
Jean, that's an incredible question. I agree. How do you do that, Mary?
>> Oh, Jean. Um I have to.
I have I have no I have no other reason for living than to make sure that when I'm going to cry, when I leave the planet, like Elaine, our legacy is that we have some people here who understand that caring for country is really the greatest thing that you can do on this planet.
>> So, I will keep going as long as I have a breath in my body.
Caring for country.
Because I know that there are people like you in this audience who are listening.
And who feel as passionate as we four here do.
That we have no other role on this planet as far as I'm concerned except do good by the soil.
>> Thank you, Mary. I can't think of any better words to end on. Thank you so much for your for your time and decades of of dedication to this work and to this cause and and for sharing your brilliance with us here. Such an absolute honor and a a pleasure and I'm I'm sure Elaine is is smiling at all of us right now.
>> She is.
She'd be saying, "Go get it, girl."
>> Well, if if you have any final words, I I welcome you to share them.
Um and I think to everyone who's watching, thank you for tuning in.
And we'll we'll see you next time. And Mary, we hope to have you back on the channel soon and and to continue to get some updates on on the brilliant work that you're doing in this world. You're you're very busy and and still running fast at and making this world a better place.
>> Just everybody, care for country. It's the It's the It's It's the greatest thing you can do and it gives you the greatest pleasure is to walk out and see a tree smiling.
So, thank you, all of you.
>> Thank you, Mary.
And thank you, everyone. I mean, there is Like Evan said, there is not much you can say besides thank you for another incredible, amazing almost yet almost 2 hours that just flew by. And thank you, everyone. Remember that you can rewatch this incredible full course with Dr. Mary Coe in our YouTube channel pretty soon.
And don't hesitate to contact us if you have any more question.
>> Thanks, Clara.
Bye-bye, all.
>> Bye, everyone.
>> Bye. Thank you.
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