Microbial friends may help forests adapt - Odatagaagomini-giizis (Blackberry Moon) - 1 August 2023

Happy Odatagaagomini-giizis (Blackberry Moon): August, lunar orbit July-August. Note: The eighth moon can fall in either July or August, depending on the year. Learn to identify different types of blackberries and their medicinal uses.

Happenings

KFHC Little Forest on Van Order Drive: Last week Joyce, Joanne, Josh and Nathan met with a neighbouring condo association about the planned 200m2 Keystone Little Forest in the building’s courtyard. By the end of the meeting there was unanimous support (with some people wanting to help). We’ll be meeting soon with the resident organizing committee to plan soil preparation for the fall. W'e’ll also be breaking ground for a butterfly garden at the centre of the design. The site appears to have been a marsh that was filled with gravel and then overlaid with a shallow layer of soil and sod, so we will be emphasizing keystone species that do well on alvars and shallow soils. Since so many developed sites in Kingston are similar to this, this will be an interesting learning experience to see which species are most successful on shallow urban soils.

Interested in helping? Contact Nathan: nathan7472894@hotmail.com or (343) 363-0492.

Senior’s Centre Little Forests approved: We’re getting the ground ready for planting the weekend of October 14. On July 24 and 25th, Little Forest volunteers, along with a hardworking group of students and staff from St. Lawrence College led by Sustainability Coordinator Jadon Hook, cleared the vines and invasive species (Common Buckthorn, Spindle Tree, Manitoba Maple) from the fence line. While Wild Grape (Vitis vinifera) and Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) are native species, if left as they were they would quickly overwhelm the Bird Forest which we’re planting on a 4 metre wide strip on the west side of the property.

We’re holding work parties on Tuesday, August 1 and Thursday, August 3 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm. We’re separating the brush piles into wood and vines. Vines won’t mulch properly in a regular chipper and so we’ll compost them on site and eventually reincorporate them back into the soil. We’re also removing the roots and stems on the Virginia Creeper and Wild Grape that still cover the ground in the north west part of our planting site. We’re also spreading compost and woodchips. If you’re available, please bring your muscles and your spading forks, shovels and wheelbarrows to 56 Francis Street. Washrooms will not be available. Nathan will bring water and snacks.

Interested in helping? Contact Nathan: nathan7472894@hotmail.com or (343) 363-0492.

Pocket Forest and Fruit Tree Guild workshops: Volunteers prepped two areas for workshops we’re helping facilitate at the Orchard at 1130 Montreal Street. To prepare the areas for planting, Nathan flipped over the sod. Then we dug a moat 30cm deep and 30cm which we filled with European Buckthorn  removed from the hedgerow. We used the soil from the moat to mound up the planting area.

Join the 1000 Islands Master Gardeners Sunday August 13 for three workshops on the theme of Designing Garden Ecosystems Inspired by the Natural World. Workshops include: designing a pocket forest, designing a fruit tree guild and designing a pollinator meadow. Read Nathan's article for more details on each workshop. Register for the workshops on Eventbrite.

Biodiverse, climate resilient garden tour

Embark on a inspiring journey through seven ecologically focused gardens lush with diverse plant species and teeming with wildlife. Ecosystem features you'll see include: pollinator meadow, forest garden, food forests, ponds, medicine garden, bubble fountain, ditch garden, rain garden, front yard vegetable garden including espalier fruit trees, native seed propagation and much more! Master Gardeners will be on hand at each garden to answer your questions on biodiverse and climate resilient gardening practices.

Register on Eventbrite.

Microbial friends may help forests adapt

"Climate change is adding new stress faster than most trees are used to. We have some sense of how most tree species are going to have to react—where they will be pushed out and where they can move. But that's based on what we think the trees themselves can handle. Forests may actually be more resilient if we give them credit for shifting microbial communities."

Richard Lankau, UW–Madison professor of plant pathology

New research from the University of Wisconsin–Madison published in the journal Science and reported in phys.org suggests that trees may have an easier time adapting to rapid shifts in temperature and precipitation with the help of new microbial friends.

In Korean Natural Farming, these microbial friends are known as Indigenous Microorganisms (IMOs):

“Indigenous microorganisms do not contain a single culture of beneficial microorganisms but a mixture of different beneficial microorganisms; it is a village of good bacteria that are living together in harmony with the rest of nature. The term ‘indigenous microorganisms”’refers to a group of beneficial microbes that are native to the area, thus the name indigenous (locally existing, or not imported); EMs or effective microorganisms on the other hand is a laboratory-cultured mixture of microorganisms.”

In Asian countries, including Korea, collecting and culturing naturally occurring soil microorganisms has been a common agricultural practice for centuries as documented by Han-Kyu Cho in his book Natural Farming.

Currently we add a handful of forest soil and leaf litter (which we hope are teeming with Indigenous microorganisms) when planting each seedling. However, based on the new research, our forests may be more climate resilient if the seedlings are paired with Indigenous microorganisms from soils adapted to specific climatic conditions:

“Research shows that diverse assemblages of microbes that live on and around plants, including mycorrhizal fungi in the soil surrounding their roots, can enhance plant tolerance to environmental stress. And since microbial taxa are likely to adapt faster than their host plants and disperse farther, microbial associations may offer an alternative, underappreciated source of plant community resistance to climate change… tree seedlings inoculated with microbial communities sourced from drier, warmer, or colder sites displayed higher survival when faced with drought, heat, or cold stress, respectively.”

The article effective role of Indigenous microorganisms for sustainable environment reports that Cho Han Kyu, who spread Korean Natural Farming around the world, was successful (97% survival rate) in planting trees in the Gobi Desert in Mongolia with Natural Farming methods, an area where three previous attempts at tree planting had failed due to harsh winds and minimal rainfall. Unfortunately I couldn’t find an original reference for this, but interesting to think about the potential for cultivating Indigenous microorganisms for our Little Forests.

Cultivating Indigenous microorganisms

You’ve probably all heard about probiotics and the benefits of fermented foods—foods like yogurt, sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha—preserved using microorganisms (natural bacterias and yeasts). What if we could cultivate probiotics for our Little Forests?

I’m going to try using the technique described in this paper from the University of Hawai’i to cultivate Indigenous microorganisms for the Senior’s Centre planting.

If you’re interested in cultivating Indigenous microorganisms yourself, advice on where to collect includes:

• a mature forest where there is a deep layer of humus and leaf litter and humus where soil fertility and microbial biodiversity should be high

• a barren area (while there may be less microbial biodiversity, I’m guessing, based on this paper, that this is because the area may have microorganisms that help plants adapt to stressful situations.