Inside a drop of Compost

Soundtrack: Areknames - Franco Battiato (from an unofficial recording of a 1973 live concert) What does Living Soil look like? Today we want to take you on a video-trip inside a drop of our homemade compost. The video was realised with an optical microscope at magnifications between 100x and 400x. Our compost is made from vegetable waste from the garden, plus vermicompost made at home from our own kitchen waste. The sample was left in water for a day, so you will see many facultative anaerobes (microbes that can live without oxygen), most of which come from the gut of our hard-working red wiggler worms! Towards 2:15 you can see a nematode struggling to free itself from a nematode-trapping fungus! We will post more about this fascinating strategy that fungi have developed and we can use to our advantage to control root-feeding nematodes! In no-dig gardening, compost is used both as a fertility input and as a thick protective layer of mulch on the native soil. However, compost is much more than these two things. It's a biological inoculant of life forms of all sizes and shapes. It's a source of stable organic matter, the precursor of humus - one of the most stable and precious forms in which carbon is stored on earth. It's a sponge for nutrients and water. And when we look at it under the microscope, it strikes us as being a universe in and of itself. A living universe with which we are deeply connected. Our energy, body and mental health rely on the ability of all these microbes to unlock the chemical power stored in rock, soil, air, water and organic waste. A healthy, functioning soil food web allows plants to synthesise amino-acids, proteins, vitamins, fats which then get transformed in our body into flesh, blood, bone, but also hormones and much more. We hope you enjoy this stroll into a small drop of LSG compost. Visit our website at: livingsoilgarden.co.uk Follow us at: facebook.com/goffinLSG Instagram: instagram.com/livingsoilgarden/