Soil Secrets

Soil Secrets LLC is on the go. In the world of agriculture, or urban horticulture a major hurdle is how to make or keep the root system of the crop or the landscape plant material healthy. While I've made my living as a nursery owner, tree grower and the founder/operator of a soil ecology company, my formal academic training is from the world of human health and one thing we can say for sure about us humans is that oxygen and water are an essential part of our survival. Without either we die! Well the same thing can be said about the roots of our crops, or our lawn and trees in our yard as everything that's good that must take place in that soil keeping the plant alive and roots healthy is contingent upon water being able to penetrate the soil along with enough oxygen. If there's one thing I can hang my hat on while giving the 30 second elevator speech about what does Soil Secrets do, its that we increase the porosity of soil rapidly therefore allowing water and oxygen to...

Soil Secrets -  Biomimetic Soil Ecology - "To Copy What is Life Like" Category of Product:  Pre-Biotic -  A  substances that stimulates the growth or activity of microorganisms (e.g., bacteria and fungi) by creating or supporting a favorable environment.    In this case the environment is soil and the  area close to the plant roots called the  rhizosphere.     1.  TerraPro -  Tested and Measured doing a molecular characterization down to a sub-atomic level,  under a Commercial Proprietary Information Contract by Los Alamos National Labs with Sandia National Laboratories,   TerraPro  is a carbon rich Macro-Molecular Substance (huge molecules clustered together into Supramolecular groups).  Supramolecular just means that the molecules are highly energized and they self assembled into larger structures where the molecules are not chemically bonded to each other.  In nature th...

By Michael Martin Melendrez, Founder and Managing Member - Soil Secrets LLC It's common knowledge that the idea of increasing the amount of soil organic matter is generally a good idea.   Its an even better idea if you live in a place on the globe where soils never truly developed a defined zone of topsoil that one can see with the naked eye.  Where I live in the arid Southwestern Chihuahuan Desert the only place we can truly see carbon rich topsoil is where lots of natural vegetation was able to grow over many hundreds of years, depositing organic debris and growing lots of roots that finally decay and contribute to this accumulation of decaying organic matter.   An example of this might be along a creek or river where riparian vegetation is getting enough water.   It's also commonly accepted that soil organic matter (som) increases the soils potential for holding onto water, where its been said that for every 1 percent of increase in soil organic matt...

I've been reading up on new ways to access changes in soil concerning the Soil's Biota (the microbes),  who they are and what diversity there is. I've found a bunch of published writings on using phospholipid fatty acid (known as PLFA) as a method of measuring this factor.   Microbial components are expressed as content of phospholipid fatty acid markers specific for each component.   I've attached one article that used this method in measuring the microbial community structure on various sites including one treated with biochar.   Since many of you continue to ask me about biochar this grabbed my attention.  The study found that the site treated with biochar tested out pretty good, so I decided to look at this closer and when I did I found that the amount of biochar used per sq. ft. was 3.5 pounds, 152,460 pounds per acre.   Holly Smolly, can you image using that much TerraPro, how fantastic the results would be? I've attached the paper so you can ...

Here's additional information on how well TerraPro's organic chemistry benefits agriculture by using vegetation analysis with infrared. These are almond orchards in California. You can easily see that the fields treated with TerraPro have more leaf cover and are needing less water because the soil and biomass temperatures are lower. At our own arboretum in Los Lunas the soil temperatures are 16 degrees cooler than other sites in Valencia County at the same time. The lawn images are one year apart in Merced California.