Science Forums 2

[maikeru]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

The only thing that worries me about all this is that we don't know realy very much about what is in the soil in the first place

For example, where I live there is a lot of urban (suburban) development-on the outskirts of Sydney). Many developers are required to collect seeds of native plants before development and re-plant with these after everything is broken up into "little boxes"

I see little evidence of this actually happening.

Soil and aquatic microorganisms are probably some of the least characterized and cared about, even though I cannot overstate how important they are--so many forms of life and critical processes depend on them. Recycling of biomass and detritus to nitrogen fixation from the atmosphere for plants. You name it, they do it. It's the pathogenic organisms that get the most research and funding for study, although they make up the extreme minority of microbes out there. Some oceanic microbes are being studied by Craig Venter (famous for the Human Genome Project), but he's ahead of the game as usual.

Craig Venter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But what about native 'soil beasties'. They may have taken 100,000 years to develop in that soil.
How do we know what's there?

Then inoculating with 'store-bought' super bugs is not going to help their survival.

From what I remember, mycorrhyzae are also spread via spores in the air, so it should be possible to inoculate homemade terra preta by leaving pots or mix outside for a few days, and you should get some of the mycorrhyzae native to the area. This'd be good if you wanted to avoid some or maybe many soil pathogens, which might be spread by contaminated soil or water. Of course if you want the entire microbial and soil ecosystem cocktail, you just add a bit of native or garden soil to your mix. I bet there's always a party going on underneath our feet, and we just don't know it.