How do plants eat?! · Sacred Soil Solutions

How do plants eat?!

Two Nutrition Pathways

When we look at how plants are able to intake nutrition, we find a very simple truth - they drink, and they eat.

When a plant drinks, it also drinks whatever is inside the water. In a way, these things can be considered nutrition. We all enjoy some electrolytes on a consistent basis. But nobody thinks that replaces eating.

But often times that's how we expect plants to get enough to eat. The most amazing thing is, many of them can survive very near to that state of only drinking to get their nutritional input.

What's universally clear is that plants want to eat and we had no idea how they did it.

Now we do know. We call it rhizophagy (root-eating).

Rhizophagy is the process by which roots funnel microbial life through themselves in order to harvest protein and complex nutritional compounds, and generally provide the building blocks of strong plant tissues.

Haven't heard about it? Neither has anybody else.

The original white paper on it - Published in 2019 by Dr. James F. White.

So this is super new information. It also helps us with a lot of puzzles we were trying to figure out in the world of compost. Like why compost tea has such a near immediate response in a plant.

What rhizophagy shows is that it wasn't just an errant protozoa poop that was soluble enough for the plant to slurp up in the water table.

At the tip of the root, the plant is intaking bacteria and yeast in bulk to run through corral systems in order to be processed. My favorite analogy is that they're ranching microbes.

Some will survive and repopulate at the root hairs where they're expelled.

(Some will even live within the plant's tissue's for a more extended period, but that's a story for another day.)

The result is that plants are intaking their proteins directly - NOT building the proteins themselves from water soluble minerals. They can do that to an extent, but it's much more energy intensive for the plant. It leaves the plant without enough sunlight to do other important functions, like make essential oils to repel pests or send more sugar to the fruits.

The byproduct of this whole feeding process is ethylene - That's what causes root hairs to extend.

The more microbial numbers there are, the faster this process can move a plant forward in its maturity. The more vigorous your root hairs become.

The plants are also a net positive on the total microbial populations in vibrant soil. This is immediately obvious when we remember that plants pump the sunlight energy into the feeding cycle.

So what's the trouble?

Well when we took the path of water solubility, we stressed out the microbes. In some places, they were already stressed.

What we know.

Plants want more microbes to eat.

We can help them get more microbes.

-Worm castings.

-Liquid microbial concentrates.

-Fungal dominant composts.

All of these are extremely efficient and exceptional when extracted or diluted with water.

These are the powerhouses. They also work at every scale.

Plants have had enough to drink. They'd like to get back to dinner.

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