The focus on nitrogen, or N-P-K +minor elements, is very 20th century. Hopefully the 21st century will see a return to a focus on healthy soil, as growers (gardeners, farmers and arborists) focus on the compete soil microbial biome.

This article, with its focus on one particular approach to restoring N-P-K represents a transition, albeit one locked into the mindset of the last century.

If you gain a broader understanding of the way nature feeds plants, you move to a new paradigm that, again, reflects a more current understanding of soil biology. In the wild, plant root extrudates feed bacteria and fungi. The broad biodiversity includes nitrogen fixing bacteria, but most of the bacteria and fungi “lock up” the nutrients the plants want. It is the higher trophic levels, the other soil microbes that consume the bacteria and fungi, that release these nutrients in plant available forms.

There is a lot more to it, of course. The cat ion and anion exchange facilitated by the soil microbe biome drives the soil chemistry and is better understood by humans with each passing month. And, of course, as the founder of SymSoil, I’m biased — SymSoil is a soil health B-Corp, with products to reseed the complete Soil Food Web or soil microbial biome.