The bringing together of the physical, chemical and biological components of healthy FUNCTIONING soil is the key…this is holism at its best and demonstrates what Colin is so skilled at doing -
getting out of Nature’s way so she can do what she does so well.

The old saying of “don’t just stand there, do something!’ is turned ’round by Stuart Hill……’don’t just do something, stand there’ [and let Nature take her course] is sage advice.

I wonder how you would go about soil testing. Assuming at least some chocolate cake topsoil, would there be any value in a microbiological soil test at all?

e.g. In your physical limitation example above (compacted pasture) odds are that fungal ratio is far from ideal, I doubt you would need a biological soil test to show this. Would you rely on the fungal biota to repopulate the soil in conjunction with improved management practices (keyline/HM etc.) or add biota from “best pasture” locally.

Would it not be advantageous (in this example) to make a batch of fungal fed ACT using the “best pasture” or local mature forest (or a mix of both) as the source material, and apply that in a single pass with the keyline plough, skipping the microbiological soil test all together? Or maybe feed the biota directly in the soil in a single pass with the keyline plough skipping the testing and brewing all together?

Looking at the myriad of available soil tests (and the costs) I wonder what regime you use beyond standard chemical analysis.

The findings of the compost tea study I mentioned aren’t published yet. I got the inside word from one of the professors involved. Will happily send it on once it’s made public.

The article you mentioned here: https://www.agronomy.org/publications/sssaj/articles/71/2/259 is a good one. I imagine it would cost an absolute fortune to try to balance the soils in most places in Oz.

One of the insights I’ve had in recent times is that rather than trying to add all the P or Ca or whatever is deficient in that particular soil, the aim is instead to add just enough in an available form to kickstart the microbes that make that particular nutrient available. They can then start mining the subsoil, and parent material for the nutrient which is often in abundance but in an unavailable form.

In the case of the example mentioned in the article, the addition of Calcium to displace excess Sodium molecules, thereby reducing the shrink swell nature of the base cations is pretty well tried and tested by mainstream science. The liquid injection process he uses gets the Ca down to the sodic subsoil faster than gypsum will if applied to the surface.

What’s the reference on the compost tea study? I’m not surprised that they found that. I’ve become fairly reserved about some of what Elaine Ingham says, as much as I loved doing the course and love looking down the microscope. There’s little evidence that compost teas help with disease control as foliage sprays for instance.

Although I have got a lot from reading Albrect, there are criticisms of some of his experiments, and critiques of the whole ideal mineral balance concept. This wikipedia article, though written by one person looks like a well referenced critique.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_Cation_Saturation_Ratio

(There is nevertheless evidence, and it’s widely accepted that Mg can cause dispersiveness in clays, so adding low magnesium lime or gypsum helps with this, so the Ca:Mg ratio is still relevant.)