Question❓| Upskill 📚 | Information ℹ️ | Picture 📷 | Special Offer 🎁

Edition 22

👋 Hey TropicalBytes family, welcome to this week’s edition of Q.U.I.P.S.!

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In Today’s Email:

• Q: What is Soil Health and How Can We Effectively Measure It? 🤔

• U: Build Your Own Worm Farm 🐛

• I: Where Life and Earth Intersect 🌍

• P: Life's Building Blocks in a Spoonful of Soil 🥄

• S: Get your FREE Root Health Sample Pack today! 🎁

This week’s Q.U.I.P.S. is brought to you by:

Andermatt Madumbi

Ever stop to think about the future of food? 

We're not talking about the next big diet trend, but something far more impactful: the intersection of health, environment, and agricultural innovation.

Meet Andermatt Madumbi—a leader in the Biological space, rewriting the script on how food is grown.

Their mantra, "Healthy Food and Healthy Environment, for all" says it all. Inspired by the belief that 'Nature Leads Innovation,' they're proving that harmony with the Earth is the key to sustainable agriculture.

So, what does this mean for you, the future-focused grower?

• Boost Your Crop Health and Yield

  Looking to supercharge your farm? Andermatt Madumbi's tailored Root Health Program uses a blend of four key products designed to revitalise your soil and optimise root health. And not to forget—their Plant Vitality range. These biostimulants not only improve crop health and stress tolerance but also unlock your plants' growth potential at various stages. Let's face it: a robust root system combined with vigorous, thriving plants is the cornerstone of any high-yield farm.

• Protect Your Crops Naturally

  Turn to their Bio Crop Protection range for environmentally friendly crop care solutions. Their unique, biology-based products (containing fungi, bacteria, viruses and plant extracts) offer not just protection but also sustainable long-term benefits.

• Localised Expertise, Global Innovation

  With field experts across South Africa, Andermatt Madumbi delivers individualised, region-specific guidance, ensuring you implement world-class, sustainable farming strategies.

Ready to take a leap into the future of farming? 

Head on over to andermatt.co.za now for your FREE field-based consultation with their local experts.

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Now to today’s piece 🤝

Question❓

What is Soil Health and How Can We Effectively Measure It?

Following a growing niggle, a question that just wouldn’t let go – we took to the road, to get some real-world perspectives around the definition of Soil Health.

We had the incredible opportunity to chat with 15 top-notch farmers who graciously made time for our spontaneous soil-side interviews.

“What do you understand Soil Health to be, and how do you rate yours?”

The responses were insightful, to say the least!

Most farmers associated soil health with physical characteristics ie: they rate their soils as healthy if they are deep, rich, red with a good percentage of clay and sand. Others assessed based on nutrient content of the soil.

While the question “What is soil health?” may seem elementary, it turns out it's anything but.

Upon further reflection, we found it helpful to assimilate soil health to human health. A healthy person: well-nourished, strong, balanced, and active. Sustaining and building that health hinges on adequate water, rest, activity, and a balanced diet.

Soil isn't much different. But, assessment of that health might be subjective, so how do we standardise that?

Ever been asked, "How wealthy are you?" Another highly subjective measure…

The answer? Quite straightforward (for us at least)—If your income were to dry up right now, how long could you sustain your current lifestyle? The longer that is, the wealthier you are.

Similarly, if you had to stop all soil treatments and amendments, how long could your soil support its current crop demands? The soils that can go the distance, that can sustain the longest, are indeed the most robust, the healthiest, the 'wealthiest,' if you will.

Your Soil's Health = Your Farm's Wealth. Take care of it.

For those who like it straightforward or may be confused by all the analogies, soil health can be defined as:

1. "The capacity of soil to function as a vital living ecosystem that sustains plants, animals, and humans."

2. "A state where the soil meets its range of ecosystem functions, appropriate to its environment. Simply put, soil health arises from the favourable interactions of all soil components that belong together, like microbiota, plants, and animals."

❓ What question(s) do you have this week? Tell us here

Upskill 📚

Build Your Own Worm Farm 🐛

Materials You'll Need:

• 3 bins, one with a lid.

• A tap for that liquid gold—worm tea!

• Red worms. (Unlike the usual earthworms, who dig deep, red compost worms always migrate upwards, towards the food, leaving their castings to fall below them)

• Newspaper.

• Water.

• Kitchen scraps such as fresh veggie and fruit peels, coffee grounds, tea bags, egg shells etc.

Let's Get Building!

1. Drill holes into the base of two of the bins.

2. Insert the tap into the lowest part of the third bin. Your worm tea will flow from here.

3. Pick a nice cool spot for your worm farm, close to the kitchen so that feeding it with scraps isn’t a mission.

4. Place the bin with the tap on blocks. This elevation makes it easy to fit a cup underneath to collect the worm tea.

5. Stack one of the perforated bins on top of the base bin.

6. Create a starter habitat for the worms in this bin using shredded, damp newspaper and a little bit of soil.

7. Place the worms into this aerated, cool and slightly moist medium and cover them with some garden cuttings like grass and leaves.

8. Gradually start feeding your worms by adding kitchen scraps. Only use fresh organic material. Don’t add anything cooked or processed.

Notes:

• Keep the lid snuggly on the top bin.

• You’ll notice that a brown liquid starts to fill up the base bin; this is worm tea (wee, actually, but we prefer to think of it as tea) and is extremely nutrient-rich—your plants will love it!

• Over time, your worms will generate ‘castings’ (worm poo). This is also very nutritious for your plants. The bin will become full of this as they reproduce and your farm grows.

• When you find you’re running out of space to add food, stack the second perforated bin on top of the first and add your food into this one.

• The worms will wriggle through the holes, from the lower bin, into the top one.

• When the majority have migrated up, remove the middle bin (now only full of castings) and use this rich compost to build up the health of your soils.

• Rinse this bin out and have it ready for when the next bin is full.

To any of you who have worm farms already, tell us about your experiences! Any tips, success stories, or lessons learned? Share them with us here. 

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Information ℹ️

Where Life and Earth Intersect 🌍

Whoa! Have we just been down a fascinating rabbit hole!

In trying to define soil health, we discovered some pretty remarkable information. In an attempt to contextualise what we were learning, we kept taking steps backwards. Turns out, soil health is part of a much bigger picture than most of us appreciate.

So, we’d like to share what we’ve learnt by starting at the beginning…

Well, not quite the beginning because only our glorious God lives there, but a little further along His remarkable creation.

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Okay, how many of you have heard the term "Pedosphere" before?

And no, it's not related to "paedo-" anything, so you can put those raised eyebrows back down! "Pedo" is actually derived from the Greek word for ground or earth.

The Pedosphere is the Earth's outer skin, where soil is formed and continually shaped by various forces like the Earth's mantle, air, water, as well as living organisms. Imagine it as Earth's life-supporting membrane where all elements unite to create the wonder we know as LIFE.

As we gear up to explore the teeming life within soil in next week’s QUIPS, here are some byte-sized takeaways: (Get it? TropicalBytes?)

→ While humans belong to the Biosphere, we often don’t stay in our 'lane', overstepping our boundaries, affecting other spheres and creating imbalances in the grand scheme of things. The realm of human society is known as the Anthroposphere.

→ The Pedosphere is at the intersection of all other spheres. To fully understand it, requires a systems approach and a consideration for the many processes, interacting in unique combinations. All these interactions make soil:

• Complex

• Open

• Bio-abiotic (Biotic and abiotic factors are what make up ecosystems. Biotic factors are living things within an ecosystem; such as plants, animals, and bacteria, while abiotic are non-living components; such as water, soil and atmosphere)

• Non-linear (not sequential nor straightforward)

• Multifunctional

• Multi phased

• Spatially diverse

→ Currently, soil properties and functions are influenced by the extensive exploitation by humans.

Now that we've zoomed out for a macro-view of soil's place in the cosmos, we'll be zooming back in to focus on the living inhabitants (the fauna and flora) of soil in our next edition.

🧠 Did you know? Increasing soil organic matter by just 1% can help the soil hold up to an additional 200,000 litres of water per hectare. This could reduce your irrigation needs and, subsequently, your water bill!

Picture 📷

Life's Building Blocks in a Spoonful of Soil 🥄

A single tablespoon of soil contains more living organisms than there are human beings on Earth. Life above the soil depends on life in the soil.

🤝 Thanks to: 

• https://www.researchgate.net/ 

• https://www.nature.com/ 

• https://hgic.clemson.edu/ 

• https://www.sciencedirect.com/

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Special Offer 🎁

Get your FREE Root Health Sample Pack today! 🎁

A massive thank you to this week's sponsor, Andermatt Madumbi, for hooking you up with a FREE Root Health Sample Pack! 🤝

This pack includes:

• Eco-T®: Powder formulation of the beneficial fungi, Trichoderma asperellum.

• RhizoVital® 42: Liquid formulation of the beneficial bacteria Bacillus amyloliquefaciens.

• V12 Initiate: Specially formulated nutrition for early growth phases.

• AgriSil K50®: Fully soluble, liquid formulation potassium silicate.

These are the growth-promoting microbes and essential nutrients your trees will thank you for. Just do yourself a favour and grab yours today!

👉 Use Promo Code: QUIPS092023 at www.andermatt.co.za to secure your FREE Root Health Sample Pack.

That’s a wrap folks! We hope you enjoyed this week’s QUIPS.

Happy farming, deep learning, and warm smiles.

We'll see you next week! 🌱

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