Use of Microbes in Gardening Part 2

You probably already have the idea of the importance of using microorganisms in your garden from the last blog, but it bears repeating. 

Microorganisms enable the plants to absorb the nutrition they need and if you use a wide variety of different ones, not concerning yourself with the idea of “good or bad” bacteria your plants will be able to absorb more of a variety of nutrients.

This will make your plants more resistant to pests and disease than the plants found in nature. It also will improve size and flavor and yield and with less work because even weeds are kept to a minimum around such healthy plants and who doesn’t want less work?

Using microorganisms in your garden that are already familiar with the growing environment will be significantly more powerful and effective than germs that have been cultured elsewhere and transferred to your garden. 

These kinds of organisms are known as Indigenous Microorganisms, IMO for short and it is possible to gather these complementary and interdependent IMO’s in a variety of ways from various locations around your garden.

Gathering IMO’s and using them is a fundamental part of Korean Natural Farming. It recruits that microscopic workforce I was saying that I would tell you about.

The first thing you do is collect these organisms. This is called IMO-1. 

The best way to collect microorganisms is to look around where you live and find an area with a lot of vegetation that has similar growing conditions to your garden like the local forest or hills or even a park. The reason you don’t do it right in your garden is you want to bring in more biodiversity. Introducing other strains will increase effectiveness  with your plants. 

The most convenient food to grow these on is believe it or not, steamed rice for a garden or ground potatoes for larger farms. You can get various recipes in Jadam International articles, videos and books online. 

Here is one that I got from Alessandro Vitale’s book, Rebel Gardening, that I thought was easiest for a garden-sized endeavor:

1. Get a wooden or cardboard box and add a layer or two of paper towels on the bottom of the box.
2. Add a layer of undercooked brown rice on top of that. Make sure you wash the rice in water before cooking it and save the cooking water for other garden uses. 

Don’t put more than 2-3 inches of this undercooked rice in the box because you will need a lot of air room for the colony. Also, leave it kind of loose. In other words, don't press down on it. The reason for this is that you want diversity, and this will have varying amounts of oxygen in different spots. Different microorganisms grow at different levels of oxygen. You want both aerobic and anaerobic bacteria. If you press it down, you will most likely get all anaerobic.

3. Cover the box with a loose, breathable cover like paper, chicken wire or even another box upside down over the opening.
4. Find an area with lots of vegetation where you can hide your box.
5. Uncover the soil by taking off the first layer - the leaves and twigs or branches.
6. Position your box there and hide it with the leaves and branches. If someone sees it they might mistake it for something like an animal trap and remove it.
7. The moisture content of the rice in the collection box will attract IMO’s living in the local soil. The warmer it is, the faster this will occur. At 68°F, it should take about 5 days. At 86-97°F only 2 or 3 days. In colder Winter weather, it takes around 10 days.
8. After the right number of days, you will see a covering of white fluff growing all over the rice. If you see a few different colors, that’s even better because we are looking for diversity. All microbes will be useful. 
9. Carefully collect the IMO-1 by removing the paper towels covered with the rice and fluff and transfer it into a bag or jar to take it home.

Note: Don’t leave the collection box out for too long or it will start to degrade and turn completely into black mold, which is not recommended to use or even to get near. Dispose of black mold carefully and try again.

Now that you have your IMO-1 you want to stop it from growing into something else, so you will have to put it into a state of dormancy to be there for future use. This is called IMO-2.

To make this, you will need: 

• Unprocessed sugar. This can be Jaggery, which I have seen in Eastern Indian stores or turbinado/demerara sugar, which I have seen in health food stores. White sugar is not recommended. Brown sugar may be used if you can’t find or afford the others. It is a little less processed than white.
• A Glass Jar
• Organic vinegar for wiping
• paper towel and a rubber band.

1. Mix the IMO-1 with the sugar. (Very approximately 1:1). Do not be alarmed if white powder goes into the air while you are mixing, but I wouldn’t breathe too much of it in directly. That is the form fungus takes when it is dormant. You have probably heard the term fungal spores, well, that’s what that powder is. Well done for collecting some good fungus in the mix.
2. Once it is mixed well, you can transfer it into a glass jar for storage until you need it. Only fill the jar ¾ full because you always want available oxygen for the mix.
3. Add an extra layer of sugar on top and gently press it down, but not too hard.
4. Clean the rim of the jar by wiping it with organic vinegar. It is safe to use vinegar because it won’t alter the fermentation process. You always want to keep the outside of the jar clean too so that it doesn’t attract bugs or they will wind up getting into the jar. This is not a catastrophe, but it’s better to keep the bugs alive. In fact, if you encounter any bugs in the process of collection, don’t kill them; they are probably woodlice that are very good for your garden.
5. Put the paper towel, or muslin if you have it, over the top of the jar and seal it with the rubber band. Store it in a cool dark area like the kitchen cabinet.
6. If the mixture starts to bubble just add more of the sugar on the top. No need to stir it in.
7. Now you have a unique shelf-stable biology that you can use to enrich your garden soil with microorganisms! You might want to label it as to the time and location of collection and write any notes about it in your gardening diary for future reference.

You can put some of this IMO-2 in your compost pile just like you did the leaf mold. You can dilute it 1:100, or 1 tablespoon per gallon, to do a soil drench or put it in a sprayer and spray the upper and lower surfaces of the leaves.  

To be sure it takes hold and continues to grow in your soil and on your plants, you can drench or spray it every week.

You can also gather plant matter and put it in a bucket with water and add IMO-2 to make a fermented fertilizer. You can also do that with leaf mold or you can mix them together. 

Really, you can get pretty creative with making your own chemical-free, organic fertilizers. This is how it should be, rather than depending on “experts” from big companies to tell you what to buy from them to fertilize your plants. You, with trial and error using your journal, can find out what’s best for growing your garden. You are the expert in your garden. 

If you want some ideas, there are loads of Jadam International videos on YouTube. And you can even download a book. They don’t patent any of their techniques to encourage sharing. When you look it up, be sure to include the “International” Just JADAM brings up all kinds of irrelevant stuff. Since it is an organization of farmers in corroboration, they are likely to be dynamic, and it might be something you want to keep up with as it is evolving all the time. Also, they have natural, inexpensive solutions to anything that might go wrong.

I was so relieved to find out that there was such a group as Jadam International that exists to save farmers from the traps they have fallen into with big agriculture and to start people in general on the way back to being the boss of their own food supply. 

No more being unknowingly poisoned by chemicals and additives that are currently making a lot of people ill or old before their time without them even knowing it. I don’t think that even as a beginner, it would be too hard to do a better job of feeding your loved ones nutrition-wise than they are doing. What do you think?

At Herbal Roots we believe in you and encourage you to make at least a small move toward reestablishing control over the food supply. A little bit at a time, you can eventually get there.

In fact, next time, in anticipation of your bumper crops, I will go into how to preserve vegetables, so none of your bountiful harvest will go to waste. Goodbye till then.

*This article is intended for informational purposes. The statements above have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.