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part II
Having briefly explained how we replace the complex set of organisms that need to be in soil, let us make sure to cover all the
important points regarding a healthy soil food web. If all of the
soil microorganisms are in the proper balance, disease will be
suppressed because plants put out specific exudates to grow exactly the right bacteria and fungi around every part of the root
system, protecting all the roots.
What is an exudate? Exudates are mostly sugars from photosynthesis, a little bit of protein and some carbohydrate. If I
sent you into your kitchen and asked you to make a recipe of
mostly sugar, a little bit of protein and a little bit of carbohydrate, what would you end up making? Cakes and cookies.
Thus, root systems of plants release different cakes and different cookies depending on which bacterial or fungal species the
plant wants to have working for it at any point in time. The
plant may put out one type of exudate in order to grow those
bacteria and fungi that prevent the growth of fungal diseases.
In another part of the root system, the plant may put out foods
that grow those bacteria that solubilize iron because the plant
needs more iron. Because there are billions of bacteria and
miles of fungal hyphae around that root, the plant is protected
from disease organisms. No disease causing organisms can
survive in that root area because there is no space left and no
food left for something unfriendly to consume.
Predators are attracted to the root system, bringing nutrients
and eating the harmful organisms, as well as the other bacteria
and fungi present, and thus releasing plant available nutrients.
Like pizza delivery guys, predators deliver precisely the nutrients
your plant needs right to the surface of the root.
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As all these material get pulled together, airspaces appear between the aggregates in areas that were once filled with bits and
pieces, creating space for oxygen and water to move very easily
through the soil.
How many of you see water puddling on the soil's surface
in the springtime or after a rain? Through these puddles, nature is trying to send you a message. Puddles indicate areas
where there's poor soil structure and the needed bacteria and
fungi are not present. No hallways and passageways are available to allow good infiltration of water or air or roots. Compaction layers are likely present and soil life is lacking. Learn
to read all the messages that nature is trying to send. How do
you prevent puddles or compaction? Put organisms back in
that soil.
Once micro and macroaggregates are built, larger organisms
need to move the particles around and form larger spaces. Protozoa, nematodes, and microarthropods rearrange the macroaggregate furniture and make bigger spaces appear. Does soil have
feng shui? Absolutely, and it is built by the organisms that live in
the soil. No life: no feng shui.
EXAMPLE TWO: Soil Bacteria
Bacteria are much smaller than fungi, on the order of one to five micrometers. ey can be round, rodshaped, corkscrew shaped, and
Cshaped. Each of these shapes can have small diameters or very
wide diameters. Some species can move under their own power, although at least half of bacterial species cannot move by themselves.
Bacteria can clump in various patterns; such as chains of individuals, filaments that grow around themselves, colonies, picket fence
patterns, Vshaped pairs, or just as chains connected end to end.
We train people to identify these dierent organisms in soil.
A sample can easily be analyzed for microbial populations in
five to ten minutes, once you get good at identifying organisms.
ere are great videos of roots growing through soil showing the castle wall of bacteria and fungi surrounding the root. As
the root develops root hairs farther along its length, protozoa arrive to start nutrient cycling processes for the plant.
When roots grow through soil, the soil needs lots of spaces,
hallways, airways, and passageways so the root can grow without
expending energy to push its way through the soil. A better aggregated soil makes it easier for the root to reach the sites, nutrients and water it needs.
Soil aggregates, which are clumps of smaller soil particles
bound together, are built by all of the organisms in soil working
together. Sand, silt, and clay are pulled together by bacteria that
ooze gluelike exudates to bind the particles together. Aerobic
bacteria make copious amounts of glue to hold themselves on to
surfaces so they do not wash away from their food source. e
bacterium then glues some organic matter into place, then some
silt and clay, then more organic matter, then a sand grain, and so
on. is process creates a soil microaggregate.
A macroaggregate that can be seen with the naked eye requires fungi to bind its particles together, just like rope around
a group of packages, or microaggregates, made by the bacteria.
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Part III
n March of 2011, just aer becoming Chief Scientist at Rodale Institute, I toured the Shumei garden on the Institutes
grounds. It was then that I began to understand the principles of Natural Agriculture. It was enlightening to find people who share the attitude that natural processes must be the basis of agriculture.
My area of expertise is focused on organisms that live in
the soil, and the processes these organisms perform in natural soils. Looking at what happens to these organisms in current conventional agricultural is depressing. We must understand what life forms are necessary in soil, how these
organisms function, and what conditions are necessary for
these organisms to do their jobs and benefit the soil. The
more we maintain the proper conditions for the workers in the
soil, and the better we mimic nature, the higher the quality of
our foods becomes.
How does Nature grow plants? Conventional agriculture
does things differently than the natural systems do. We need
to understand how those differences influence and affect the
soil and the quality of plants. We need to understand the damage conventional practices cause. We need to learn how to
maintain our plant production systems as naturally as possible,
realizing that short-term gain in yields costs too much to the
long-term health and balance of the system. What are the con-
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plant in this soil, should we be concerned about disease? No, because competition from the good fungi will prevent the bad fungus from growing. What if we had used a fungicide, meant to kill
all fungi in the sample? All the beneficial, disease-competing fungi
would have been killed in the soil, and most likely the disease-causing fungi would survive in the soil at a level deeper than the fungicide penetrates. If that happens, be very worried, because the disease will be able to destroy the plants in this system. By maintaining
functioning beneficial organisms, in the proper balance in your soil,
we can let the organisms do the work for us.
Below, to the le is an example of soil at a golf course in the
United Kingdom. When we first started working there, massive
weeds, insects, fungal diseases, root-feeding grubs and nematodes
infested their soils. en the proper biology was put back into the
system. ese nice white fungal hyphae started to grow, indicating that a good healthy food web had been reestablished. Disease,
pests, and weeds were gone as well.
When fungal strands like this appear, it indicates that the soil
is healthy. e soil is no longer bacteria dominated, and the ratio of
fungi to bacteria has shied from a strictly bacterial system to a wellbalanced systemthe proper amount of bacteria to fungi. When
that happens, weeds, fungal diseases, and root and foliar diseases disappear. e soils no longer are compacted. Nutrient cycling is established, setting the stage for growing the grasses the groundskeepers want to grow. ey do not have to use toxic chemicals anymore.
It only took about six weeks to create this conversion. So the
life that is supposed to be in the soil can be put back very quickly.
Can this kind of understanding of biology help the Shumei Natural Agriculture process?
In Tasmania, where the government is giving grants for people to test concepts that shi from conventional agriculture to
more sustainable practices, an onion farm had been managed with
conventional chemical practices for perhaps 60 years. e conventional field had two applications of herbicides already applied, but weed numbers remained very high. Roundup1 was not
able to kill the weeds, as the genetic resistance to Roundup had
been transferred to many plant species.
e field next to the conventional field, which had been previously managed by conventional means, two applications of compost
tea2 were applied instead of Roundup, and no weeds to speak of ger1. Roundup: The Monsanto Company rst brought glyphosate, an herbicide
that kills a wide range of weeds and grasses, to market in the 1970s. Its
brand name was Roundup. Because of relatively low toxicity, it was a
desirable alternative to other herbicides. Later, Monsanto introduced
Roundup Free, a range of crops resistant to glyphosate poisoning. This
allowed farmers to kill weeds but not their crops, thus increasing Roundups
sales and Monsantos prots. However, because of Roundups heavy use
strains of glyphosate resistant weeds have naturally evolved. While
glyphosate is used widely throughout the world and is approved by many
regulatory bodies, both its long-term effectiveness and its impact on human
and environmental health are still a major concern.
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PLANT SUCCESSION
What plants will thrive in soil as its ratio of fungi to
bacteria increases.
Conifer & Old Growth Forests
F:B = 100:1 1000:1
Deciduous Trees
F:B = 5.1 100:1
Weeds
(High NO3, lack of oxygen)
F:B = 0:1
strictly bacterial. But as these bacteria release wastes, true bacteria grow, saprophytic fungi appear, and then predators of bacteria and fungi develop. Not until a basic food web has been established can plants of any kind grow. e first types of plants are
ones that put little energy into the root system, grow very rapidly
for short periods of time, and produce high numbers of ospring,
usually seeds. ese plants thrive best with lots of bacteria around
their roots, and not much fungal biomass. us, these plants
prefer their soil to contain lots of nitrate and little ammonium.
But when green plants grow, the residues they leave when
they die provide more fungal foods in the soil because of the
lignin and cellulose that plants contain. This transition will begin to increase the amount of fungi in the soil to a point where
the balance of fungi versus bacterial shifts only slightly to the
side of fungi in the weedy species. Slowly but surely, the shift
continues to occur and fungi catch up a bit with the bacteria,
and then plant species shift as a result. True weeds phase out,
SHUMEI MAGAZINE \ SPRING 2013
17
and some early grass species, brassicas and wetland plants begin to appear. Eventually, these more fungal loving plants will
develop a larger fungal component in the soil, with more
species of fungi, creating a plant community shift to more vegetables and mid-successional. Nature keeps increasing that
fungal component. Thus plant species shift to later successional grasses and plants that have more and more woody components, eventually leading to forest development.
Mature grasslands will give way to shrubs, vines, and bushes,
which in turn will develop even more fungal dominated soil
communities. ese woodier, more fungal food containing plants
put more fungal foods into the soil, shiing the soil balance away
from bacterial food, increasing the fungal component more and
more, and shiing plant species into conifer and old-growth forest systems. In the late stages of succession, bacterial biomass remains the same with respect to numbers, but its diversity keeps
increasing. is is how Nature does it. Can we use this information in agriculture?
Part of the explanation for these shis in plant species is that,
early in succession, bacterial dominance generates a lot of nitrate
in the soil, making it the predominant form of nitrogen. As fungi
become more dominant, they shi the predominant form of nitrogen in the soil to ammonium, Nh4. In soils where bacteria and
fungal populations are balanced, then nitrate and ammonium levels will be about equal. When the vegetation shis to woody
perennial plants, changing with the soils shi to fungal dominance, the predominant form of nitrogen will become ammonium,
which is what trees require.
So Nature drives successional changes by increasing the fungal component of the soil more than the bacterial component. If
we want to truly mimic Nature in our agriculture fields so to generate a successful crop with no weed, pest, or disease problems, we
have to generate the same fungal and bacterial balance in the soil
as that found in the natural system.
So why is not this planet covered entirely in old growth forest? Because disturbance re-sets systems to earlier stages of succession. A severe disturbance will set things back to very early
stages of succession, while less catastrophic disruptions will push
things back to intermediate stages.
If there is a fire, what happens to old growth forests? If whole
trees burn and all the organic matter on and in the soil burn, succession may return all the way back to bare soil, with no plants at
all. e system has to start again from the beginning. And of
course, nature does exactly that.
If a pasture system is tilled, how far back in succession will
the system be driven? is depends on how intense the disturbance is, how much of the life in soil was destroyed, and how
much organic matter was lost. A rototiller will cause a great deal
more damage than a moldboard plow because rototillers slice and
dice and crush more organisms living in the soil, leaving only bacteria to rule, whereas moldboard plows only flip the soil surface
over, leaving more organisms intact. When the first rainfall or irrigation occurs aer rototilling, the soil will collapse and compact,
because there was no life in that soil le to form the structure
needed to build and maintain aggregate structures. Rototillers also
press down on the soil at the depth of the metal blades, compacting the soil at that depth. Without any decent life in that soil,
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water is held at that compaction layer, causing anaerobic conditions to develop. is process, coupled with a lack of oxygen, set
the stage for growing weeds, and only very early successional, disturbance-requiring weeds.
Be aware what is destroyed when any management practice is performed. Consider the effects of disturbance of any
kind on life in the soil. Will that alteration result in succession
going the way you want it to? How many of you have had experiences with a rototiller? After tilling, what comes back in
abundance? Weeds. What if we disturbed the soil less, or not
at all? Can we plant crops without disturbing the soil? Can we
cause less damage?
Consider no-till methods, rolled cover crops, direct drilling,
or planting into an existing living mulch, or permanent shortgrowing cover crop mix. Or as the practice of Natural Agriculture
shows us, plant back into undisturbed soil where that plant was
grown the year before.
If we have to damage our soils in order to prepare seed beds
to grow our crops, then perhaps we could reduce the damage by
coming back immediately aer the disturbance and replacing
the organisms we have killed. is is what Nature does, over
time, to improve productivity in that soil. So, perhaps we can find
ways to make these improvements more quickly.
By understanding what these organisms do in the soil, we
could allow our agricultural soils to match what Nature does instead of destroying natural processes. When disturbances happen, we can use these principles to reduce the harm done, and
more rapidly return our soils to healthy conditions to grow
food for people.
Over the last 100 years of doing intensive chemical agriculture and intensive urban landscaping, humans have developed a
very warped and incorrect view of how roots exist in soil. en
tilling, we flu the surface layer of the soil, but we also push
down on the earth below the plow blade, causing compaction at
The compacted area in this crosscut of a eld can be seen just below the
black anaerobic layer.
that depth. Because water will not move very rapidly from that
fluy layer into the compacted layer, an anaerobic layer develops.
en toxic, unhealthy bacteria grow, producing toxic materials
and releasing major nutrients as gases. Plant roots will be restricted to just the top few inches. is is not natural. at is not
the way plants are supposed to grow.
How far down into the soil do roots go? Over the last 100
years of doing intensive chemical agriculture and intensive urban
landscaping, humans have developed a very warped view of how
roots exist in soil.
The compaction layer and the black anaerobic layer are
seen in the picture at left, above. They are the consequences of
human management. As a result of this poor management approach, the roots of the plants have been killed at the anaerobic
layer. The plants are forced to fight each other in that shallow
layer of soil at the surface.
ere are hundreds of papers in the arboricultural3 literature
that suggest that trees only put their roots systems down about
three feet into the soil, and then go sideways. Just like the tree in
the picture above. Many, many examples of this type of root
growth have been shown. But this does not mean this pattern of
root growth is natural. What we see here is the same problem that
humans impose in agricultural fields. Compaction was imposed
on the soil by human management such as tilling to aerate the surface soil, but imposing compaction where the blades of the plow
pushed down below the surface of the soil. People compact soil
around houses or buildings to prevent the foundation from moving, but they pay no attention to the damage they are causing to
the landscape trees. e tree in the above picture suers from diseases, pests, and poor fertility because the roots are prevented
from growing as deep as they should. But humans, instead of understanding the damage they cause, blame disease, pests, and
poor growth on the soil being poor. When instead we should
properly point the finger at ourselves for destroying the aerobic
life that should be in the soil.
How far down can roots go? If you go out into natural systems
and look at how far down roots of trees can go, the first thing to note
is that those roots are not restricted to the top two or three feet of
soil. Instead, tree roots can go from 100 to 200 feet deep, perhaps
deeper. Go to a cave, and look for the roots of the trees growing
through cracks in the rock down 50, 100, 200 or more feet.
3. Arboriculture is the planting, cultivation, and study of trees, shrubs, vines,
and other perennial woody plants. It is both a practice and a science.
Three month old, common lawn grass roots grown in healthy soil.
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soil, with all its beneficial functions and processes. Soil functions
and processes require soil microbial life. If we nurture the proper
set of microbial life in the soil, then building soil happens continuously in a healthy cycle.
How fast can an inch of soil be built? Work done by James
Sottilo shows how rapidly soil can be built. To get the same results in your systems, you have to do what he did. For example,
take engineered soil. (Actually engineered soil is just dirt, as
Roots grew from less than a half-inch to six inches deep into the soil in six weeks.
No erosion, no weeds, no disease, reduced water use, no inorganic fertilizer used
were some of the benets of the replacement of biology in the soil. Courtesy of
James Sottilo, www.elmsave.com
In this city park, James Sottilo treated sand with compost tea and then laid sod
over the sand. Then, a second dose of compost tea, as seen here, was applied
to the freshly laid sod.
ter bill by at least 50%, perhaps as much as 70%. Make sure the
microorganisms you need to support the plant you want to grow
are present in the soil. In that way, you can build the soil structure to hold water and nutrients.
Exactly what did we do to achieve this water-savings, and
stop using inorganic fertilizers and toxic chemicals? We replaced
the soil biology by applying aerobic compost in the fall of the previous year. e next spring, compost was applied in a liquid
form three times. We had to make sure the right sets of organisms
to support grass or flowers or shrubs or trees were present in each
area to see all the problems go away.
By returning the right sets of organisms to the soil, we had
no need of chemicals. Whether you work in agricultural fields,
gardens, or lawns, the soils microbial life is what is important.
is is exactly what you have been doing in Natural Agriculture.
But we can reduce the time it takes for you to return to the microbial life that Nature had in the soil before these human-induced disturbances started.
If we start to understand the biology that is in our soil and
if we know what our plants need, then we can increase the speed
of recovery of our plant production systems and our planet.
PART IV
Dr. Ingham Answers Some Questions
Question: Are you suggesting that instead of tilling we should put
proper biology into the soil?
Elaine Ingham: Exactly. Because we did not understand that
tillage slowly but surely destroys life in the soil, on which crop production depends for good yields, we tried to use the quick fix approach. Of course, quick fixes seldom address the underlying
problems. Tilling flus the soil and air is put back in that shallow
band of soil. But deeper, where the tillers blades pushed down on
the soil, the compaction gets worse. It takes time for the damage
from each insult to soils health to build. e organisms that are
not killed try to recover, but with time the constant damage from
tillage does takes its toll. Eventually, when the damage to the
soils life reaches the critical point, rain will cause compaction. And
so, we think we have to till even more to get flu back into the soil.
Quick fixes end up being exactly the wrong thing to do.
People might put organic matter back in the soil and see perhaps
some short-term benefit, but they do not stop tilling. Water sitting on a compacted layer tends to move downhill, and with no
life holding the soil together, it moves with that water. is is
known as erosion. Where there was once living soil, now has no
living organisms to hold it in place or retain soluble nutrients. e
soil moves with the water and becomes sediment.
Root systems coming into contact with the anaerobic layer will
be killed by alcohol dissolving them or through a lack of usable nitrogen, phosphorus, or sulfur being lost because they were converted to anaerobic gases. Disease organisms grow well in anaerobic habitats, and thus attack any roots that grow into the area.
How do you fix this problem? Till deeper? No. Where will
the compaction layer form? Till even deeper. How do you get rid
of a compaction zone that is even deeper? Till even more deeply.
at is exactly what we have done in modern agriculture.
Back in the early 1900s, we did moldboard plowing where
the plowshare pushes down on the soil at about four to six inches.
How do we break up compaction at four to six inches? e
USDA developed chisel plows, which till down to one foot. How
did we fix a compaction zone at 12 inches? Disc plows, which go
to 18 inches. How can the plough pan4 at 18 inches be dealt with?
Till the subsoil down to three feet. How do we get rid of compaction at three feet? Deep rip. en compaction forms at four
feet down into the soil. How can we deal with that? We do not
have tractors large enough to pull a plow through compacted soil
four feet deep. We are at the end of the mechanical approach to
fixing the problem. Tillage is a quick fix. It does not in fact fix anything. It just keeps delaying the inevitable.
So, how can we get away from ever having to till again? Return
the proper sets of organisms to the soil. If we must till once a year
to put the seeds into the ground, then apply the organisms to the
seeds, so when planted, the seeds already have organisms to heal
the disturbed soil. However, leave the rest of the soil intact.
ink about what nature will do with bare, disturbed soil. If
no beneficial sets of organisms are present and functioning,
weeds will grow. Whatever weed seed is in your soil or that may
blow in is what will grow there. But if we plant seeds for living
mulch, which is permanent, short growing, and has the same biology needs as our crop plants, then the weeds will be outcompeted. e living mulch fulfills its function by preventing weeds
and keeping the right food web happy and functioning in the soil.
When planting, it is best to either direct drill the crop into
the living mulch or till a narrow strip out of the cover just wide
enough to allow planting crop seeds. en any need to deal with
weeds is over. In the Shumei Garden at the Rodale Institute, that
is part of our plan for the gardens expansion.
4. A hardpan or plough pan is a hard layer of compacted subsoil or clay that
forms in agricultural elds by plowing at the same depth every year.
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ere are several questions that need to be settled. For example, permanent understory5 plants need to be identified. We
need to test them to make sure they survive in the gardens at Rodale. We need to collect seeds of the ones that work. We need to
match them to the crop or herb, or desired overstory6 plant we
have been growing.
Jay Fuhrer in North Dakota has been working for the last 15
or more years to develop a mix of species, called a seed cocktail,
that are all low growing. Some are nitrogen fixers, some are more
fungal, some a little more on the bacterial side, and some well balanced fungal to bacterial. In the first year those seeds were
planted, three species of plants came up and did a beautiful job
of covering the soil. e crops were strip tilled into the soil and
grew very well indeed, because the organisms were maintained
and nurtured by the living mulch. It was not necessary in some
cases to use compost. Some places did add compost to bring the
soil back to a full set of soil organisms however. In the second year,
dierent species of the original set of seeds grew, because of different weather conditions in the second summer. But in some
cases, compost was not needed in the second year, because the
plants maintained the proper biology.
Could we do this in Natural Agriculture? When crops are
harvested, and the residues are on the surface of the soil, we want
those residues to decompose rapidly. If the soil has good biology,
the residues should decompose in a month. If they do not decompose, compost should be spread over the surface of the bed.
at means that during the winter, under the snow, if the com-
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6. The term overstory refers to the uppermost layer of foliage that forms a
forest canopy. Both understory and overstory are terms that are now used
not only in the field of forestry but also in agroforestry, which involves
the cultivation and use of trees in farming and many forms of integrated
land management.
E.I: An ecological definition of the term weed, would never include vegetables. However, from the chemical industrys point of
view, a vegetable could be a weed.
Let us go through a little history. In the early 1980s, a chemical company representative was sent out to ask people what
they thought a weed was. at person noted that thistles, corn,
and oak trees where considered by some to be weeds, and that
some people could consider almost any kind of plant a weed. at
is where the definition of a weed as a plant out of place developed.
But it is not a useful definition. Who would be best served by that
sort of definition of a weed? Herbicide salesmen, so they could
sell you herbicides. So let us not fall into a trap meant to sell products that are not needed. You do not need these herbicides if you
understand which organisms you should use to prevent weed
growth in the soil.
An ecological definition of weeds is what is useful. Weeds
grow in conditions where serious disturbances have occurred.
Weeds require very high levels of bacteria, and almost no beneficial fungi. Protozoa should be present, but their numbers fluctuate wildly. Highly bacterial soils result in large pulses of nitrates,
followed by almost no nutrient availability. Very low levels of ammonium, and either alkaline conditions or very acidic conditions
are typical of conditions that set the stage to grow weeds. Weeds
tolerate poor soil structure.
When fungi begin to be an important part of the soil food
web, ammonium becomes a significant pool in the soil, inhibiting the growth of weeds.
Weedy species grow very rapidly, take over, and try to rule
for a short time. Because their purpose in life is to suck up all the
nutrients, turn it into billions of seeds that then disseminate
everywhere, weedy species such as thistles, Johnson grass, and
nutsedge8 are wide dispersing plants and have very rapid growth
and production rates. Corn and vegetables are not weeds because
they do not grow that fast, they need more than just nitrate as a
source of inorganic, soluble nitrogen. ey do not produce a huge
number of seeds that disperse wide and far. ey do not do well
in soil that is compacted close to the surface. Most mid-successional plants can put their roots down several feet or more, and
thus are clearly, not weeds. Plants that make tap roots can be considered one step further along in succession, possibly because
they try to break through the compaction layer and help move
soil to the next stage faster than true weeds.
Corn and vegetables might be classified as volunteers, in
that if you grow corn one year, the next year when you grow soybeans, corn will volunteer in the soybean field. But being a volunteer type plant does not make it a weed.
Weeds require a disturbance of the soil. e soil might have
been compacted and is likely to be anaerobic, requiring high nitrate
pulses. It might be a highly bacterial-dominated soil with almost
no fungi. Weeds have rapid growth and produce lots of seeds.
Q: Can a garden or farm free of weeds still have healthy and good
quality soil?
8. Nutsedge or nutgrass is a perennial weed, a member of the sedge family
that supercially resembles grass. Varieties of nutsedge are aggressive and
tenacious weeds that commonly infest vegetable and ower gardens, and
home landscapes and lawns.
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Bare Weeds
10g
0g
Vegetables
100g
10g
Bacteria:
Fungi:
Shrubs
Deciduous Trees
500g
800g
Grass Land
600g
600g
Conifer,
Old Growth Forrest
700g
70,000g
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