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Entry Date
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Nick Name
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Location
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Thursday, February 13, 2025
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Little Ketchup
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Grittyville, WA
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Entry 45 of 56 |
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I would usually freeze-sterilize dirt from the garden, but for these soil tests I did not, and its interesting seeing the macro soil biology. There are many soil bugs mostly in the large patch sample. The soil in that spot is deeper and there is more food. We dont get cold enough here to kill the soil bugs, a few may perish over the winter but the clever ones have to burrow down only 4"-8" to find survivable/ livable temperatures. And that soil ended up on the test tubes so now there is an abundance of life, at least in the main patch test tube. I watched a few leggy wormy type critters communicating with each other. They were sharing a hole up against the glass. Communicating via their antennae. Maybe this hole is their bigpumpkins.com, a place where they talk about pumpkin roots with the other bugs. They're definitely talking about something.
Anyhow, some of these soil bugs probably do eat roots, a few may even crawl up the plant and chew on the above ground portions at night. Its a whole food web that has all the interesting shapes and diversity of creatures that you'd find on an African savannah. And then there's an even smaller realm of microscopic creatures, busily living their lives in yet another level too small to see except with a microscope.
Supposing I steam or h202 sterilized the soil and eliminated all of these hidden kingdoms of life... would that grow a bigger pumpkin? I dont know. Its impossible to keep the environment totally sterile due to mold spores and the odd creature here or there that survives or wanders in. The worms especially aid in the soil structure, and there are countless decomposting critters releasing CO2 and nutrients.
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