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| This fungus is smarter than you and I put together. |
Fungi produce special structures— for example, mushrooms above ground or truffles below— to disperse spores. Since fungi grow in all sorts of environments, they have devised some elaborate methods to achieve spore dispersal, including attractive scents, triggers, springs, and jet propulsion systems. To ensure survival, fungal spores can develop tough membranes that allow them to go dormant for years if the conditions are not right for immediate germination.
Jeff; Lowenfels, Jeff (2010-09-10). Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web, Revised Edition (Kindle Locations 860-861). Timber Press. Kindle Edition.
As one scientist observed, evolution gets increasingly difficult to promote at the microscopic level. Man-made devices, like the Swiss watch, look crude under a scanning microscope. God's Creation is a marvel of engineering. The author--an evolutionist and global warmist--has to use unusual language to explain how simple fungi can serve as the primary decomposition agents in the soil.
It is perfectly clear to the author - fungi have devised elaborate methods to achieve success! Likewise, desert plants have figured out that waxy leaves will ensure survival in the blazing sun. There must have been conferences of fungi and cacti, because both groups have many different strategies for dealing with the same issues in their environments.
That Chemical Factory in Our Plants
Intricate chemical systems created by God are used by bacteria and fungi to decay matter and hold nutrients in the soil to feed to plant roots. Harvesting some beans and tomatoes made me think about the more elaborate chemistry of plant cells turning solar energy and basic chemicals from the roots to fashion:
- Sunflowers - loaded with minerals, protein, and oil.
- Corn - sugar that turns to starch after harvesting, oil.
- Beans - carbohydrates.
- Spinach - fiber and iron.
- Potatoes - comfort food and a vitamin pill.
- Squash family - B vitamins in abundance.
- Cabbage family - cold weather plants with great nutrition.
- Carrots - sweet when raw, sweeter after a frost, like candy when cooked.
Lacking the ocean of life in the soil, the plants would never grow. And yet the plants also feed the soil. Most gardening books seem to think of compost as returning the organic matter to the soil, but more is involved than that. Although we eat the fruit, seed, roots, and tubers of these plants, we have a big plus when returning the garden trash to the soil.
- The roots have penetrated the soil and established fellowship with fungi and bacteria.
- Tap roots have mined the minerals from below.
- Plants have formed cellulose, lignin, and carbohydrates for soil creatures to break down and store in the soil.
- Rotting roots have fed soil life and left channels for rain and air to penetrate. The soil actually breathes when it rains.
Simply knowing the mutual dependencies of Creation can make us gifted gardeners who are the envy of the rototiller fan club.
Rototilling; spraying with herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, and miticides; compacting soil; removing organic material from lawns and under trees —all these human practices affect the soil food webs in your yard and gardens. Once a niche is destroyed, the soil food web starts to work imperfectly. Once a member of a niche is gone, the same thing happens. In both instances, the gardener must step in to fill the gap, or the system completely fails. Rather than working against nature [GJ - Creation?], the gardener had better cooperate with it; and this, as we shall see, does not require a lot of hard labor— not if the gardener understands and teams up with the soil food web, letting its members do the work.
Lowenfels, Jeff (2010-09-10). Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web, Revised Edition (Kindle Locations 1517-1520). Timber Press. Kindle Edition.
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| To get this Knockout rose bloom, I dug a hole in the lawn, put the plant in it, mulched it, and added red wiggler earthworms. |