Part 3: joyful observation

An exciting benefit of active compost-making is observing improved plant and soil health. If high-quality compost is part of land management, you will likely notice resilient holobionts. With time and practice, you can track meaningful plant and soil responses and improvements.

Most people can directly observe soil quality and holobiont health without using complex or expensive tests and measurements. Formal data collection can be helpful in some cases, but simply noticing how holobionts and local soil ecosystems respond to bioamendments and other regenerative practices can help us make practical decisions.

Nutrition Support

For example, after applying well-made bioamendments for one or two growing seasons, your plants may have fewer nutrient deficiencies. This is because many soils do not consistently supply enough of one or more essential nutrients to holobionts. Supplementation is often necessary. If bioamendments are made from diverse organic materials, extra resources are added during application. Also, a thriving biological community typically retains and cycles nutrients efficiently, potentially enhancing plant growth and resilience.

How can you observe improvements in nutrition after applying bioamendments? There are often visual signs when plants cannot access nutrients at rates they require. In fact, plant tissue discoloration is a common indicator of nutrient deficiency. In many cases, if you supply the correct nutrients (compost, biofertilizer, or other sources), signs of deficiency will fade.

Color and tissue growth are indicators that often respond to nutrient additions. You may also notice fewer unwelcome plant antagonists, such as herbivorous invertebrates or microbial pathogens. Indeed, adequate nutrient uptake supports production of defensive compounds and immune responses that help repress disease (Tripathi et al., 2022).

Soil Improvements

Additionally, many soil qualities and physical characteristics can be tracked. If you scoop a couple handfuls of soil and notice how it looks, feels, and smells, you can often get a valuable impression of soil health status. For example, soil teeming with microorganisms and organic matter often smells earthy, much like the soil in a mature forest.

Over time, as you apply strategies that support soil life and thriving holobionts, you may observe improvement in soil fluffiness (tilth), the size and stability of soil crumbs (aggregates), and the moisture content of soil long after irrigation or rain (water holding capacity). Another low-cost method to assess comparative soil stability is a slake test.

Observing versus Testing…

If your operation is a relatively larger-scale agribusiness, you may find plant and soil lab testing essential. We recognize that more systematic and technical assessments can be useful in production scenarios. For backyard gardeners and many other biosphere enthusiasts, basic estimates and inexpensive assessments are a great way to know if you’re on track.

Remember that observing living systems is part of the fun! Engaging your senses in the process is enjoyable. Look at the bioamendments you make. Use your hands to feel compost and soil. Take a deep smell. What do you notice compared to other areas that you DID NOT treat with compost?

Understanding your setting is the foundation of a beautiful relationship between you and the ecological world. Living systems are messy and amazing - complex and wild. Compost-making and working with biological communities offer endless opportunities to cherish our marvelous biosphere and the holobionts that built and maintain our stunning planet.