I've been doing quite a lot of gardening in the past 3 years.<p>There is a plethora of home gardeners and/or permaculture resources on the internet that generally like as much organic matter as possible.<p>I some of that strategy as it's convenient at home to supply nutrients to plants without much work.<p>But, I can't help but feel it's all sort of wish washy science.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHZHy3_7PPE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHZHy3_7PPE</a><p>^ I found this guys videos much more satisfactory to "need the facts" mindset. He uses knowledge from the agricultural industry instead of the "organic" approach.<p>In short, plant roots actually love sand, silt and clay, and actually don't like organic matter around their roots as it causes rot. He suggests that you should always just top feed your plants. (throw compost around the top of the plants only)
When people say don't over water your plants, it's not because of the water, but because of the organic matter in your pots mixing with water and making sewerage. (e.g. this is why hydroponics works)<p>Anyway, I'd suggest watching some of his videos on perfect soil for an opinion you don't find much of in home gardening videos.<p>(This was touchy for me because when I started gardened everyone described my soil as sandy, shit and told me to amend it with X, Y and Z. I was too lazy to listen at the time and noticed that my plants were perfectly fine growing in sand as long as I top fed regularly.)
I'm curious what HN thinks about the current trend of root washing when planting trees. From what I've read the science is still out and people tend to be split 50/50.<p>The root washers say that by removing all media that the sapling was grown in will give the roots more "incentive" to move into the native soil and thus it will establish quicker.<p>Whereas the anti-washers say you are slowing the establishment by washing away the helpful microbes as described in the article.<p>Then there are the people who say, DO wash the roots, but save the water. Plant the tree bare-root, but fill the hole with 50% of the saved water, and use the rest to top-water over the next few weeks. The idea is to get the benefits of bare-root planting along with saving the beneficial organisms.<p>The reason I ask is that my yearly tree just arrived in the post and I've yet to put it in the ground. I'd love to know what the current thinking is.
This reminds me of my favorite "thought experiment" to poke at intuition: with no other information that what most people learn in elementary/middle school science (or what I would assume is taught, i.e. the water and respiration cycles), where does the majority of a tree's mass come from?<p>First we might look at dirt, but that doesn't quite pan out; where does the mass come from, and how would it be replenished? We don't see gaps slowly start forming around roots, and dirt doesn't just build up in other places, so that's probably not it.<p>Next we might look at water, but water is only made of hydrogen and oxygen, and the oxygen is released. The water also brings in nutrients, but there's no way it brings in enough to generate the majority of a trees mass.<p>So there's only one place left, which is never anyone's first guess and almost never crosses anyone's mind at first glance: <i>air</i>. It's around this point that most people realize that a majority of a tree is <i>carbon</i>, which all comes in from the air as carbon dioxide.
I am so happy to see this on HN. A couple years ago I started learning about rhizosphere environment. It has changed how I look at my gardening. I now see healthy plants as a biproduct of feeding and caring for the soil. I imagine the soil as the external stomach of plants. When the soil is healthy plants thrive. I get excited when I start seeing larger arthropods in a new bed. It is an indication that the soil ecosystem is very healthy.<p>To head down the rabbit hole of soil health even further, learning about increasing the cation exchange capacity(CEC) affect on plant health has been fascinating.
In aquaponic systems, which have plenty of bacteria on the roots, we are running much lower levels of nutrients with very good growth, compared to recommended hydroponic nutrient levels. I think we are observing this interaction that is described here.
I wonder how much of this rhizophagy cycle applies to plants that don't really rely on the soil for nutrients. e.g. many of the insectivore plans (venus fly trap, pitcher plant, etc.).<p>In fact, if you try to plant venus fly trap in <i>rich</i> soil, it'll probably die.
On a related note, Richard Feynman explains how a tree grows:
<a href="https://youtu.be/ifk6iuLQk28" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/ifk6iuLQk28</a>
I love how it starts with: <i>Over the past few years it has become clear that plants are able to extract nutrients directly from soil microorganisms in their roots.</i> - something that was like a baseline of plant biology when I took it in high school 40 years ago, and, according to wikipedia, we've know for over 120 years.