The Importance of Microorganisms in Commercial Agriculture

Think of microorganisms as the life in the soil. These little, live creatures create nutrients in the soil and make certain elements more available to the plant. The more microbial activity you have, the better chance you have for native nutrients to build back up in the soil.

“We like to say that microorganisms are one of the best ways to turn dirt back into soil,” says Steve Lenander, Director of Agronomy for Holloway Ag. Microorganisms have a very multifaceted job:

• They make any applied nutrients more available;
• They increase compost activity;
• They make natural elements more available to the crop;
• And they help increase soil penetration.

With all this good work happening, the application of microorganisms helps significantly with remediation and can bring poor spots around much faster.

To get microorganisms into the soil, Holloway Ag most often applies compost. Different kinds of compost house different kinds of microbial activity. The three most common types of compost are dairy, chicken manure, and green waste. Even though both are manure, chicken and dairy waste contain different microbial attributes. “In a perfect world, you would rotate the compost to get the microbes of all three into your soil,” recommends Lenander.

The compost, and microbes in that compost, are good for making nutrition more available and improving soil structure. “Those little guys are living organisms that are living, breathing, eating, and pooping, all of which create life and looseness in the soil, making the structure much more suited to support growth and yield,” Lanander says.

However, there are gap issues where growers cannot use all three on some crops. For example, almond trees cannot use dairy or chicken manure-based composts because they pose a risk of contamination at harvest when the almonds are shaken to the ground for collection. In these cases, only green waste or humic materials are recommended.

Humic materials are used in place of, or in tandem to, compost depending on the crop and its harvest process. Rather than introducing new microbes to the soil, as is done with compost, humic materials and humic acid excite the populations that are indigenous to the soil to get them excited and going. This causes them to populate again if they have become sluggish or even dormant. The humic provides the food source to re-energize the elements native to the soil.

Holloway Ag’s agronomists often take the humics and blend them with amendments, primarily gypsum and gypsum blends. This is a one-two punch of nutrition and soil structure improvement that can really help a struggling orchard thrive. At Holloway, our agronomists are always looking to see how they can help the input dollar of the grower work harder and better.

Lenander recommends that if you have a field and know it well, and are doing the same things every year but not seeing nutrition move with mass flow of water, it may be time to look at the gaps. “When growers are not getting the impact from the same process as last year or the year before, it is time to examine if a humic or micro would help,” he says. It is key to understand in what order and quantity would best serve your soil. The answer lies in soil samples and subsequent soil reports where an agronomist can give a precise prescription of amendments and nutrients.

Microorganisms and humics are the little helpers that can make all the difference between dirt and soil.