{"id":11365,"date":"2018-12-18T09:16:18","date_gmt":"2018-12-18T09:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aptus-holland.com\/?p=11365"},"modified":"2024-02-21T14:50:42","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T14:50:42","slug":"beneficial-micro-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aptus-holland.com\/nl\/beneficial-micro-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Beneficial Microlife"},"content":{"rendered":"A battle for your garden, invisible to the naked eye, is raging in your root zone. Trillions of microscopic critters are viciously competing for dominance. What are they? What do they do? And why does it matter?<\/strong>\r\n\r\nYou may have heard that a hospital is the best place to get sick –\u00a0 even though everything is ultra-sterile. When good microbes are gone, bad ones easily move in. Our world functions best in partnership with good microbes to protect us against invisible threats and to perform functions impossible for the grower to perform himself. Nature\u2019s way is to support and partner with the beneficial microbe community. Successful growers know that healthy microbes are the key to increasing quality, and yield while minimizing plant stress.\r\n\r\nHealthy soils contain a mix of various microbes that can be either beneficial or harmful to your plants. We can separate these organisms into four primary microbes in soil; protozoa, nematodes, bacteria, and fungi.\r\n\r\nProtozoa and nematodes are larger organisms that perform specific and important functions in healthy soil, such as eating bacteria and fungi, as well as protecting the rhizosphere (area directly around the roots). Most terminal crops, however, don\u2019t make full use of these creatures since the cycles are short and often soil isn\u2019t reused. More important in these applications are bacteria and fungi. For the purpose of this article, we\u2019ll focus on bacteria and fungi, as they are the base of the soil food web.\r\n\r\nBENEFICIAL BACTERIA<\/strong>\r\n\r\n\"\"\r\n\r\nBacteria are the smallest of microbes. They tend to be the most diverse and resilient too. Bacteria are the first to establish populations in a soil environment. In fact, they require little time and resources to begin functioning. These microscopic creatures are the workhorses of the soil, tuned to perform specific functions. Bacteria don\u2019t eat like we do. Instead, they simply absorb small molecules through their cell wall(s). Since most compounds in soil are larger \u201cpoly\u201d molecules, bacteria produce enzymes and send them out to cut up large chunks into smaller absorbable molecules. Bacteria like to eat simple sugars as their primary food source. They are able to consume small sugar molecules quickly without enzymatic digestion. They can break down large sugars with enzymes but it takes some time. These are some of the functions bacteria perform:\r\n