🔬Living Soil Secrets, Reframing the Soil Food Web, and Soil Microscopy, with Matt Powers

12:16PM Jan 28, 2025

Speakers:

Jordan River

Keywords:

living soil

regenerative agriculture

soil microscopy

soil food web

mycorrhizal fungi

root health

microbial ratios

soil structure

epifluorescence microscopy

soil testing

microbial diversity

soil inoculant

soil biology

soil health

soil education

Greetings growers worldwide. Jordan River here back with more grow cast powered by microbiology. Today we've got Matt powers on the line. That's right, we're talking living soil with Matt powers. We're going to talk about his new microscope. Course, he's got some books out. He loves talking about regenerative agriculture, fungi, bacteria, all the good stuff you're gonna love today's episode before we jump into it with our brand new guest, though, shout out to AC infinity. That's right. Acinity.com, code, growcast one fives gets you the biggest savings available on each product, including their grow kits. That's right, the grow kit has everything you need to get started, all packaged up into one nice kit. You get your tent, you get your light, you get your fans, pots, all the things that you need, except for some dirt and some seeds. And you can get growing or get that veg tent going. You know, if you're only running one tent, you need to get that veg tent going so that as soon as you harvest, you got some more plants ready to flip. That's gonna really do a number on your total yearly harvest and increase your production substantially. I highly recommend having multiple spaces, even if you just need a little two by two. Grab the cheapest kits around. Go to AC infinity.com. Use code grow. Cast one five. I love their fans. I love their tents. You will not go wrong. Plus, they got a bunch of other stuff. They got glasses for in your grow. They got twist ties and ratchet hangers, all sorts of cool stuff. It's all@acinity.com go and grab some gear. Treat yourself this holiday season and make sure to use grow, cast one five as your code. That is how you support the show, and you support our partners, and you support your own grow. So acinity.com code grow, cast one five, always. Thank you to everyone who supports us and uses our codes and thank you to AC infinity, Okay, everybody, let's get into it with Matt powers, thank you for listening and enjoy the show. Hello, podcast listeners. You are listening to grow cast. I'm your host, Jordan River, and I want to thank you for tuning in again today before we get started as always, I urge you to share this show. It's the best way you can help us out. Turn someone on to growing and turn someone on to grow cast. We're on Spotify. Give us a follow wherever you get your podcasts. We're there. Thank you for sharing growcast, everybody. And special, thank you to the members for supporting this show and making this possible. Today we have, oh, very special guest on the line. We're going to talk about soil. We're going to talk about microscopes and the soil food web and all that fun stuff that has to do with microbes and more. Today we have living soil expert, Matt powers on the line. What's up? Matt, how are you doing? Man, I'm doing awesome. Thank you for having me here. Yes. Thank you for being on the show. I appreciate you. You're busy. You're a busy, busy man. You're working on your regenerative conference. You're working on courses and books, and it's very, very exciting how deep you are into soil and the soil food web. For the listeners, though, who are just tuning in for the first time, can you give a little intro about yourself, how you got passionate about soil and the work that you're currently doing now?

Well, I would say it started with me being a teacher. So I was a high school teacher, and I taught at a school where there was no books, so I had to create my own curriculum, and I became really and I was getting a master's degree at the time on educational psychology, and so I just got really keyed into this feedback loop of response and being a facilitator as a teacher, rather than like a dictator that a lot of people experience teachers being in public ed. And so I had like 150 kids, and I really thought of it as having 150 different preps. And so I figured out how to like dynamically respond. And so I also, in that process, became a curriculum creation expert. This was years ago, and I was doing permaculture in the background, and then I started mixing it with curriculum. And then I started realizing that there was nothing for kids, and I wrote the first permaculture curriculum for K through 12, for middle school and then high school, and had it all standard based so that it could be implemented. And then it was adopted and accredited, the first government accredited permaculture program for high schoolers ever in North America. They could actually get credit. That's amazing. So yeah, so I did all that, and then I started, just because I'm a teacher, I'm like, All right, well, what else do you guys, like, want me to do? Because, you know, I did all that. I wrote, like, a 400 plus page book on permaculture, iterated it out. And then I was like, should I do, like, another beginner's book, should I do just gardening? Should I do something with soil? Because the longest chapter in my last book was on soil. And everyone said, do soil. And I was like, Huh? I'm gonna have to learn chemistry. No. And it. Like, the greatest decision ever. You know when, when you have an opportunity, but it requires you to, like, face that, like, terrible weakness that you have in your past.

Yes, absolutely, dude, that's how you grow, right? Like you said, it's like, Oh God, I gotta learn this. But the obstacle is the way. That's the saying. So I imagine that you got into that side of it and then were you just like, off to the races, fell in love with it.

It took me months to really crack that side of it and understand there's certain things that, for me, comprehension wise, that take longer than others. I mean, a lot of people will see my work. They see this finished product that I've taken, you know, sometimes a half a decade to, like, figure out, you know what I mean. And so I ended up making everything visual. I started walking through and figuring out step by step. And it was I was scared for part. I mean, I did the whole launch. The Kickstarter made over $80,000 it was this crazy, unbelievable moment I realized how much people needed this, wow. But then I wanted to fully connect everything, and so I I've gone from DNA to microscopy to epifluorescence microscopy, all an effort to serve my students at a higher and higher level, and it started with regenerative soil and it's I'm still in the midst of doing the rewards for Regenerative soil microscopy. So I'm very much. I make a deal with my students, and I honor that obligation, and I still I can't, kind of reshape the hat tune in different ways. I I still am, in many ways, that high school teacher that's helping people launch into the next phase of their lives, because I had those teenagers at the 16 year old, you know, they're the transition right? Get ready, get ready. And so that's what I'm doing, for everyone to go into the regenerative economy. That means all the different manifestations of that. And so that's why I do that conference our future every year, every January, to get people inspired and pumped. So I'm really just a teacher that's, that's that's highlighting all of these people doing great work, and then I've been called at this level to serve, and it's really been this an unbelievable blessing of unfolding things one after the other. I've had these discoveries that have just kind of fallen into my lap, because I approach things from a curriculum perspective, and I'm like, Well, what's what about this section? We have to do the chemistry. Let's go through it, you know, right? And mapping it out in a way that makes it so that it's tangible, to the micro, to the macro, to the hands on, to the action based and strategic. So you can schedule it out. Has been what I did always as a teacher, and it doesn't exist other than very niche applications, and usually it's so narrow, they don't tell you the why. They just tell you, this is what you're doing with your cannabis plant, or this is what you're doing with your corn and you do it then, and this is what you know. This is the amount. And no one really understands that. No one can respond dynamically. So I really want to empower people, give them the tools to form a first principle space, iterate out the whether whatever their entrepreneurship desires are, iterate out in response creatively to whatever they're facing with their soil or their plants or their homestead or the permaculture. It's really about giving people the tools to live that life that we know is possible. That's

amazing. Man, I love that the R Future Conference sounds awesome. That's the letter R future. I'm honored that you invited me to be a part of that. Man, that's really, really cool. So stay tuned, listeners for more about that. I'm interested in this microscopy course that you made a lot of living soil growers like to get their hands on a microscope and take a look at what's going on and find some nematodes and identify what's going on. How many protozoa they can get their hands on. Tell me about the creation of that, course, and what that was like, crafting that for living soil growers like myself. Yeah,

I was talking yesterday to my or, yeah, no, the day before yesterday to my students, about how I had to accordion things. And let me explain. So when you accordion things, you you're taking the same structure and taking it out and bringing it back in, right? I did that with the structure of my tests. So I would do like 20 drops, and then view the 20 drops twice, and then do nine drops, and then and combine things at different levels, different numeracy to figure out what's actually effective for building understanding and. And also, what's a waste of time, right? And so there's so much wasted, like, almost like, like, monks or priests doing weird ritualistic things. We're doing stuff, and we're like, we have the number, the number, right? It's like, listen, it's a number that doesn't mean anything, but you're like, No, it's a sacred number. Back off. And so it's like, it's weird, because there is no true correlation with a lot of these numbers that we're generating. Because, and this is going to blow some people's minds. If you just take any soil and dissolve its structure into a certain amount, all the different structures of the soil that are possible are going to be variable. So let's say you take a one mL of soil, you pack it down so there's no air in it. Well, my compact soil is already compact Matt, so it doesn't do that. Oh, so how are we going to compare the numbers that we generate from your soil compared to my loamy chocolate cake soil that balls up into this tiny ball, because it's 50% air,

right? That added air. So if I had to, like, condense this down to the to the listeners at home, is this the idea that your living soil, and your soil, as a farmer, kind of is your fingerprint, your thumbprint, they're all unique in certain ways, and just because one thing works in one doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work in another. And they're they're all unique.

I love that fingerprint. I love that idea, and that there's there's there. We can add some of that in, but this is more like the math we're doing is like tricking ourselves, like we are literally like playing a game, like we're making circular logic. Think about this for a second. If we take one mL of soil, even if we fill that up to three mls of water. First, this is the newest thing people are doing. And then they are like, Oh, I'm gonna dissolve the soil up to the four MLS, right? Okay, you just took away the structure even more efficiently than my little tamping was doing when I was compacting it so you got rid of the air even more efficiently. AKA, you just skewed it even more efficiently. I

got what you're saying. So the numbers can be misleading. This is like THC tests. When people are like, over drying the sample, they send in so there's less water in there, so the THC number goes up. You're saying that the numbers are just a little misleading, sometimes due to wildly

misleading I got you and so. So if it's 50% air, like between, like our chocolate loam and our compacted Sandy, silty soil, and there's like no air in one and all this air in another. And every year you improve your soil, you become more structured. You can't even compare to yourself, because your actual sample size is always flexing on you. So what do you have to do? You have to flip it around. And I don't understand why anyone didn't figure this out before me, but I feel very blessed. I feel really blessed because once I say it, everyone's gonna go, Oh, that's easy and simple. Why didn't anyone else do that. So I'm just gonna say it ratios. I mean, if we're thinking about trophic feeding, right, then it's all ratios. Anyway, the ratios of wolves to elk in the northern hemisphere, right? It's all so simple. So why were we counting? I think that's, uh, it's moving. Okay, that's a that's a bacteria. Why are we counting bacteria and then multiplying up to the acreage or even the gram? It doesn't work that way. From a drop. Everything's so variable. So we

should be more concerned about the ratios. When you're talking about wolves and elk. Are you talking about bacteria and fungi? Fungi and protozoa? Ratio between those, between microbes? Wow, yeah,

that's how I do it. That's the only way I was able to figure out how to properly do this, so that I can, actually can. Because basically, I got into it, and I was like, um, does anyone else aware of this malarkey and that everyone was like, What do you mean, Matt? And I was like, You do realize the math is meaningless? And they're like, No. And I, like, waited. I had a 500 students in my first introduction course to the microscopy that I teach, and all of these people just argued with me about the math until I waited through everything they could say and think of and then they finally saw it, and then they were all, were like, Oh my gosh, $5,000 they spent 1000s of dollars on this education. So it's that's actually hard to overcome when you pay for things and you've you've invested in it and been doing it and practicing it, and people have been paying you. To do it, but it's so clean and clear. You can prove it to yourself today, all of us can. That

is a really interesting point, though, the structure of your soil changing those totality numbers, of course they would. That does make perfect sense. And yeah, that's what we're working for a lot as cannabis growers, right? Is to, like, get that soil, food web, thriving, biodiversity. These are things that get thrown around a lot in our industry. Man and

I'll throw another thing. I'll throw another thing out there. Think about this. Everyone talks about the soul food web cycling. They're like, I want those nematodes and protozoa releasing, releasing. How fast do your roots grow?

That's a good question. I don't know how. I don't know exactly how fast they seem to be doing pretty well. Well, Steven

raisner was put like seedlings into his aquaponics, and within 18 hours has it growing like six to eight inches, right, right? So how fast does the soil, food web cycle work, and how efficiently and dense is it in comparison to other forms of digestion, that's

so that's another comparison. That's another ratio, right there, right? So are you saying that it can

outpace that? Oh, yeah, no, they've found no evidence like all right, so the exodus that they put out that are falling into that cycle, the roots already past them by the time that their effect is having an effect. It's really that the exits are there as a draw in. Well, they're there because they're excretions. That's true, like they can't control the excretion of exudates, but the fact that it comes out this the tip of the root, and they're drawing it back in. Up to 80 to 90% of exudation is drawn back in. It takes the microbes that are farmed in there and reabsorbs them, and then feasts upon those microbes. So when we were actually doing compost tea applications, put them at the, you know, the drip line where the new roots are growing the root tips. Why? Because they're actually slurping up the microbes wholesale, and the nutrients that the microbes are holding internally are being oxidized and ripped out of them and being consumed by the plant, right there and then. Wow. So that's a the rise of Fauci is what that is called, Dr James F White is one of the most prominent scientists focused on this area. If you don't know about it, folks, check that out. That's going to be more immediate and happens instantly with all plants than the soil food web. In fact, the soil food web basically microbial manures is what that is has to happen before our roots are there at enough volume and frequency for it to be an effect. Wow.

So does this lend to the idea of the no till grower, the cover crop style grower, the idea of, like, keeping life in there, continuously having something going before your principal growth? Yeah, it seems to be playing into a lot of what you're saying right

there, absolutely. And this is also why you know certain pathogens are non pathogenic in certain situations, because there's an abundance of biology, there's an abundance of bacteria, so that certain things like physiarium, certain things that don't act pathogenic because they are internally, are digesting the bacteria. They're oxidizing bacteria as well, just like the roots do. The behaviors is almost exactly the same, but when they run out of those bacteria at the end of the season, this is why these blights show up. Because now photosynthesis has stopped, the sugars are slowing down. The bacteria are drying up, and they need to find food, so they switch gears. Is this something

I've heard before, and I never really quite understood which, like Mary Beth has said it on the show, like having the, quote, bad guys in there. They're going to be there, and they have, you know, functions to do, we just don't want them to attack our plants at the wrong time. Basically, wrong time, basically,

right. And there's ways to buffer around that, and then also ways to digest those things and then displace them ultimately, man, because the thing is, if something's more robust, and you put in the same food source and it's more robust, it's going to beat out what you have. So you're going to have to either have something pre prepared, be it such a loud volume that you added in that it drowns it out, or you have to attack whatever vector that is and then add that back in once that thing's died down, like with nematodes. If you've got root knot nematodes, you have to treat that issue with either prey nematodes or bringing in like plerotis, oyster mushroom hyphae will actually kill nematodes. It paralyzes and kills them. So there's all these different ways. And by the way, if someone's doing compost or trying to living soil, and they're like, why aren't we getting nematodes? Are you adding. Oyster Mushroom hyphae and, ah, substrate, because you are killing the nematodes.

Get out of here. I didn't know that. I love a good oyster mushroom, but not in your not in your living soil that you're growing cannabis in. If you want nematodes, you're saying they're antagonistic

to the nematode. Yeah, they kill them. Wow, yeah, wow, wow, wow.

Okay, so we're digging in now, man, this is the type of stuff I like to hear. Okay, so there's a couple things I want to circle back on. The first thing is, what you just said, root, not nematodes. Now we're used to the beneficial ones, the ones we like, but we've talked about on the show before how there are certain types, like the root, not nematodes that are horribly destructive, like will destroy foliar

nematodes that are that are destroying some cannabis. I heard about this.

Don't know about this. So have you seen this? Have you seen this in action before? It's something that I've maybe seen like once in my community, in an outdoor situation. I'm sure you do a ton of like outdoor consulting, permaculture consulting, stuff like that.

How I started doing like consulting, I do everything, mostly like, either people send me samples that are my students, or I work with my students online, and I do my own thing here at home, right? My boys are 13 and 17. We homeschool. My wife's had, like, a lot of health challenges, and I routinely have some health challenges, too. And so you tend to be pretty private, and I don't do consulting, I'm

sure you can sense stuff, though, like, I'm sure someone sent you something. You go, that's, that's root, not nematodes right there that destroy. Yeah,

no, I people have definitely sent me things. But in this specific instance of the foliar nematode, this is, like, a very weird thing, and they were talking about how dangerous it is.

Yeah, tell me about it. What's going on here? How does it differ from the other destructive nematodes and and it's, it's attacking cannabis plants. You

said, Well, this one person's cannabis plants, and they were saying that they had to cook the soil. And I was like, you can't just get like, predatory nematodes. And like, no, it's like, it seems like we have the tools with plerotis with, you know what I mean, with all these different options to like I said, if you don't take an antagonistic position against certain things, you won't displace them. If you're adding the same food source that these two feed upon, these two things. One, you like, when you don't, they're just going to stick around or come back, right? Specifically. Also, like, if you get pathogenic E Coli from manure that you brought in, earth worms are going to fix that. So it's like, we have to take specific actions to fix specific issues. And it's cool. I didn't know that that's kind of like what I teach is that I want people to understand everything, from a first principle space, understand the commonalities and the outliers, and to be able to respond in a really, truly fluent, improvisational way. Because everyone, going back to what you were saying is, is living out a unique situation.

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Yeah, so a classic one is that, I mean, 10 years ago, people were saying that effective microbes, or em was, you know, pathogenic, because they're anaerobic, but they're yeast, Saccharomyces, cerovisia, it's rotosota. Mountainous palestris, considered the most abundant endophyte and the one of the most abundant end fights in the world, lactic acid bacteria, which, you know, we find in the life cycle internally, inside like durum wheat and other plants from the beginning to end. So these things are familiar. You know what I mean? They're not strange, not weird. And in fact, em is found in all compost. I've tested DNA, tested things, and it's pretty wild, you know, like the Elaine Ingham, top student, catalyst, bio amendments, compost. Unbelievable, compost, right? It's got em in there. And that's the thing. Is, like em, these microbes are endophytes. They're common endophytes found in plants all over the world, and that's why they're so effective. And they just happen to work really, really, really well in a sugar based solution. And that may be why they go through that, you know, the sap of the plant, and you know the flow home of the plant, you know what I mean. And we see these things glowing. You know, they test sugarcane and find over 1000 different varieties of yeast inside them. So it really is been a journey of disambiguating a lot of misconceptions, like people think that they can see E Coli from regular other other bacteria? Yeah, you can't. In fact, E coli is the most numerous bacteria. In fact, E coli is like saying the word mammal. There's lots of mammals, lots of animals out there and and some of them are dangerous. Some of them are not, right? So like, after there's more, way more dangerous animals than there are E coli. There's millions of species of E coli, but there's only six pathogens. And so what's really wild is, in the GMO genetically, genetic designer world, they refer to E coli as the universal chassis. It's constantly dropping and picking up genes, and genes can take millions of years to degrade in the natural environment, and so like 20 to 40% of the soil profile is actually fragments of genes, which, of course, organic matter is parts of things that have been living, which means that there's DNA, right? So these microbes are feasting on organic matter and nutrients and DNA, and then triggering new genetic expressions constantly. And so when we say, we make anaerobic conditions and suddenly, like anaerobes appear. Like magic, not so magic. It's just horizontal gene transfer happening in real time. Wow. And so pathogenic E coli can be created situationally, just like Dr Lanning gum always would say, you know, you make pathogenic environment, they show up. So

do we, do we stereotype microbes then, because you're like, Yeah, you're saying, like, oh, anaerobes. They're getting, you know, it used to be anaerobes equal bad. And in reality, it's because there's certain pathogens that like the anaerobic or low oxygen environment. But in reality, there's a lot of other stuff out there that. So we're kind of stereotyping, just like we stereotype E coli. Yeah, I got sick from that once a Chipotle E coli bad. You're saying there's six you know what? I'm saying. You're saying, you're saying there's 6 million species, and

there's 18 to 20% of every sample of soil or compost is E coli. 18 to 20% of it, one out of every five microbes you're looking at is E coli, right?

Right? So we're stereotyping based on the bad Chipotle experience.

People didn't do DNA testing, and so they didn't have any idea. And so a lot of people were shooting from the hip because they were told that's the way it was. And they assumed the ice was strong and it was thin, and they're out there on thin ice. And so what's going on right now is really a correction. So I've been able to verify all sorts like you can't see pathogenic E coli. They're not morphologically different from regular E coli.

You're saying you can't distinguish them with the naked eye. You would have to do a do a DNA test on I've heard that about a lot of a lot of bacteria, right? It's not as easy as looking at a protozoa and how it behaves, necessarily. I mean,

it's not like not as easy. Z, it's like, there's not waiting. Okay, I got you, I got Yeah, yeah, and so and so. It's like, really, there's all these fundamental truths about soil and about soil science that I've just kept stumbling across and being like, Yo, don't know about this. And it's, it's just shocking, like the fact that exudates are 90% reabsorbed. They're not cakes and cookies. They're a net. They're casting out of the net, capturing microbes and sucking them back in with misogynistic compounds. Yeah, I never really put that

together. I'd heard of the rhizophagy cycle, and I understand the like you said, the cakes and cookies, but when you say 80% that completely changes it, you're right, it's up to 90% it's like casting a fisherman's net and then bringing it back. That's a really great analogy. I'm definitely going to look at that

differently, yeah, and it's so easy to see. I mean, we literally can go and look at our microbes, go in and then get what happens is they get sucked in by the root tip, and then they get pushed out through the root hair. So if you just lightly stain your roots so that you can see the bacteria more clearly, like with like methylene blue, you can see your root hair. And if you're gentle and don't like mess up the root and let it keep operating, it'll push out bacteria straight out, right there, through the pores of the root hair. And you can verify that rhizophage is happening because root hairs don't form without rise of Fauci,

right? You get those, like those laboratory roots, where it's just like a string, it doesn't have those side

hairs, right? Yeah,

exactly got it. That's very interesting. So talk to me about roots and root health. What does this mean to us as cannabis growers? How can we make our cannabis better by making our roots better and happier and healthier, or just understanding what they do more?

Yeah. So our roots are like the touchstone of the economy with the soil. And so when we add mycorrhizal fungi, just for instance, that increases the surface area of the route by 10,000 times. And so, yeah,

I mean, we're using Mico, so I'm happy, but I didn't know it's 10,000 times. That's wild, yeah,

especially mycos, which is going to be Glama center DCS, or it's, you know, new name, rise of fadus, irregularis, right? So it's like, really potent stuff. And the reason that is, is we're reuniting two halves of a whole. We're not doing something new. We're actually bringing plants back to the original way they were. Plants evolved with mycorrhizal fungi in an abundance in their in the root zones, because everything was no till, right? The world was no till, yeah, dinosaurs

did the till, unfortunately, yeah. And

they did disturbances, no doubt, but it tended to be like sheet mulching, right?

Totally. And so, yeah, 20 million years, plants have been doing their thing. We're not nearly that old.

And so we sterilized the world, we fungicide the world. We oxidized the world with tillage, and we created these plants that were missing, like their fungal partners. And so all these fungal attacks started happening. They started using fungicides, which drove even further away. And then these fungicides and biocides are getting into the waterways. They're getting into the air. The function is they're sterilizing the water and the air of the actual microbes that our plants are expecting to catch, on the wind, on their leaves, and expecting to partner with in the soil. And so it's bringing it back. That's the reason why we see huge results, massive results every single time. If you're not doing biology and you bring biology in, you're going to be shocked. And it's when it's magic, because it's the right way. It's the way things are evolved to be another big fungi. Fungus

in the cannabis world is trichoderma. You brought up mycorrhiza. The other side of that coin, I see a lot of people using trichoderma, which I know is more aggressive and, you know, establishes goodies fungi. There you go. What do you think about trichoderma in like a cannabis living soil grower? Can you tell us about that

fungi? So it partners with our muscular mycorrhizal fungi and brassicas to open the door for brassicas, right? So that's cool. Trichoderma is great. I have no qualms with trichoderma. I think that it's, it's about, it's, it's really about amounts, right? Because we want all the members to be able to express themselves in and also to cycle. So trichoderma is one of those things we can go overboard with,

kind of because very party hog easily starts hogging Yeah, dance floor,

yeah, and so and so we can use trichoderma Absolutely, and it's in a lot of the mixes you'll notice. Is already, but it's all about not doing too much, right?

And even in a lot of the blends that I see, like some of my favorite blends that people sell for cannabis, you'll see it in smaller amounts, probably for that reason, I imagine, right? Well, I'm glad that you don't have any qualms with it, because I do like the trichoderma and the Michael rise, you know, that's what, that's what we see a lot, Matt, I will tell you this to focus on the fungal and bacteria side. When I'm being sold a cannabis, quote, microbe product. I mean, it's what you said. It's Glamis, interdices, or it's like a bacillus blend, which is great and everything. But like, how can we go further than that? You know, how can we, especially in an indoor scenario? Man, a lot of people are growing inside. They would love to be out on a piece of land and permaculture, but they're in an apartment and they got a Grow Tent. Can you talk about this like bacterial and fungal tilt when with these products, and how we can get more diverse inside? Well,

number one, what we need to do is is let nature speak to us and not presume so I would go to where there's feral cannabis, and there's places in Sonoma where people have land where, where it's seeding and it's just feral, you know, I want to see what partnerships and microbes are on in and in the soil there, and that's cool. I've heard that there's feral cannabis in Jamaica. I've heard, you know, there's feral cannabis in Africa, and there's, there's original wild cannabis still in the Himalayas. And so I would want to DNA test and assess with the regenerative soil microscopy protocols, everything about it, not just the biology who's there, but their their ratios, but also what are the nitrogen levels? Because the nitrogen levels are related to which microbes are there always, and that may be like, oh, we need those microbes there, but guess what? You got to re add them every two weeks, because this was a nitrogen and poor environment where the plants evolved. So we want that microbe, but the amount of nitrogen there makes them senesce, or the pH is different now, like we actually can compensate for all those things. I mean, if you think about em, effective microbes, rotosita minus palestris, the propulsion sulfur bacteria, the reason that and is one of those things I figured out, the reason that doesn't stick around in the extensions of em that everyone talks about it is it prefers pH eight to nine. Meanwhile, the yeast and the lactic acid bacteria, they love 3.5 pH, which is what you do to extend it. And so all you gotta do is go to a like algae barn or another aquarium store and buy pure cultures of rotositam is plus just an add it back in. But that's the point, though, is that we need to understand what these things are, why they are. Look at things evolutionarily. Look to as much as possible, to the wild, to the most natural, and let it speak to us. And I feel like I learned the most from that space. And I also get to see other people learn in the way they learn. And they learn different. I see my students, and I even saw this with my students when there was, like 1516, year olds, you know what I mean, they learn different in such a in such a way that I learn. And so I am all about fostering community in such a way that we create the next block. We create, you know, the next Shakespeare, and that is always in a place of fluency. And so I am creating the RSL database, which is going to be a place where people are going to be able to publicly share their data results. And then we're going to start be able to compare across bio region, across cultivars, across soil types and across time. Because how often are you looking at the soil tests across the last five years to see what the rate of change is and what you're where you're headed?

Can we get that feral cannabis soil testing that sounds like right up your alley? Man, yeah, that sounds awesome, man, very, very cool. And you're right. You know, after years of being there, that IMO collection in that area would certainly be more suitable, or, let's just say it would be different, at the very least, than going to IMO collect anywhere else, which sounds like that's what you're talking about, like, I'm sure you're a fan of all that great stuff.

Doing IMOs is great, but you're gonna have to, I mean, it's really important to, like, diagnose this. This is another thing I do, right? So IMOs, what are the IMOs in the scenario when you're looking at it, like, where, what, like, what, specifically, what microbes? Are they? And. Then, how are we getting them? And then, the thing is, rice mold is the biology that is the white fluffy mold, and inside of it, because it's non pathogenic when it has bacteria inside it, that's potentially the bacteria that's from the soil, or are those microbes taking in information about that local area? And they are themselves and were themselves the whole time, but they carry a message, and then that message is imparted to that right because they've calibrated to the environment, right? And they just happen to be decomposition microbes, that's fine. They're going to decompose in correlation to the environment, right? So we're in a very interesting space. We don't know, but I do know that those are zygoma COTA, like I've looked at them and I've talked with my logical experts of 50 years of experience, and it's rice mold, you know, and it could be it could be Mucor, could be rhizopus, but there's spoilage microbes, and they're fungi totally, but it's really what's inside them, The bacteria, that they're oxidizing, that is, the question is, are those the IMOs? Are those actually indigenous, or are they intrinsic to the rice that we just did right? And then, are they keying their genetics in response to their environment, their immediate environment, right? And then along what parameters is that bioelectric? Is it? I mean, there's so much there, so, yeah, no, I want to map that out all the way. I've done a bunch of the work around that, but for a lot of people, they feel like, I just like smashed the cake. I just like walking the party and smash the cake map. You gotta

replace it. You gotta replace the cake, for sure, because you're right. Other people are, are gonna call you a jerk. But I do like that, dude. I like the I like a PDF showing what you just said and the results if you, if you do that type of study that, oh, yeah,

do you want? Do you want that? It's called regenerative soil microscopy. It's my new book. I put case

studies in it. Where can people find that? Man, if people find that? Man, if people are interested in what you've been saying, Where can people find that?

The permaculture student.com backslash shop is my books, and right now you can get the regenerative soil book and regenerative soil microscopy book as the set. They're both hard cover. They're perfectly matched twins. It's just an unbelievable thing. And they're binding is just just unbelievable. These are the ones to get, and all my books are there as well. So the thing is, it's like no one gives actual frames of reference. That's the thing that's so crazy. Like, when, when have you seen an image we're showing you the same piece of fungi at 40x magnification, 100x 400x A 600x No, that would give you orientation. You'd be able to orient yourself. No one does that. That's,

that's a good point. I agree with that. Yeah, I totally agree with that. Man, I can't even, I can't even get a clear picture of an insect when someone's trying to diagnose something with their IPM, let alone five different macro shots.

I mean, if you want a 40 page book, that's just spores that are common for soil in the house, like household spores, it's $125 for a 40 page book. I mean, I had to pay some of the books I paid for for 100 $450 just for one book, just to get three sections out of it. Yeah, this is the space that I've been able to digest and bring down into this book. And so my books, they may be more expensive than Chelsea Green's books, but my books are based on books that are, you know, three to five to seven times more expensive, and hundreds of them. So I bought the library. I own the books and, and, yeah, and I write in them. So I can't really sell them.

You can't I really, really do it's all over them, like the like the high school textbook, with all the drawings all over. But that's

how I think I'm terrible. I, in order to do new edition, I destroy one of my own books, right, right? Like, and, and, but, but it's the only way that I like, go back to something and I'm like, oh, yeah, this is how this is wrong, because I have to, okay. So what I do is I am one of those people that has to print everything out and go back. Go back. We're gonna go back to the 90s together. I started off with a typewriter, ladies and gentlemen, before we had computers. And so I print everything off and highlight it with a highlighter. Write notes on it with a different color pen. Yes, and then pull punch it, and then put into a three ring binder, organized by subject into a special library I build for each book, and that's how I orient. And then go back to my sources when I want to talk about them, so that I know what the heck I'm talking about. And doing the online courses is the most important step for me, because it makes me go through that that library constantly answering all the questions. It makes me into the expert. So I love it, like 500 person classes, like I do this, and I love it because it's the only way that I go to that next level of developing fluency, and I set it up so that, like, I can serve at that high level and gain that benefit. But it's old school. I I'm afraid of the internet shutting down and losing everything. I've got all my books. I'm afraid of like, being wrong. So I got all the books,

all the notes, just in case you gotta you know, this is an interesting point, though, Matt, I think that your average gardener, especially your your cannabis grower at home, I think that if they got in touch with their learning style and streamlined that learning style, I think that that's that might be one of the best ways to improve as a grower that has nothing to do with who you know or how you're growing or whatever, but just learning. Are you digital or are you analog? Are you a visual learner or an audio learner? Get your notes. I love that. Take those notes, get that calendar up. Do voice messages on your phone, or do scroll notes on notepads all over the wall, like Charlie from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but however it works. Get in touch with your learning style, get your S in order and streamline that process. Take better notes, have better data, have better history. I think that's something we could do better as cannabis core. I know I could do better as that myself. I'll tell you that right now. Yeah,

and it's that feedback loop. If you can develop a feedback loop that is clear, that is impartial, or you just let it be, let it say what it is. You know, you will understand your soil, your plants, so much better. And you're like, I don't have a DNA sequencer. You don't need that necessarily, but you might need a microscope, because my microscope with one little I pull a little tab and it opens up the epi flora. Since light, it's cobalt blue. It's beautiful. There's no shielding on it, so it's safe for your eyes. And I can instantly see the mycorrhizal fungi. And all of us can see half. All of us can see something half, and be like, yeah, that's about half, right? We need our our like you said, the glomus Central or DCS or rhizophages irregular, depends on which area you're from. Same thing, though you can see that glowing half the root. You can see that glowing to full root, because that's its expression. It should be 50% to 100% of your root should be glowing with this fungi, and it is stark. So we're about to enter a completely new era of testing, where folks are gonna because before this book, regenerative solar microscopy, in this in this course, no one ever looked at their roots to verify that the fungi actually had connected. Everyone's looking at compost and looking at the fungal hyphae and being like, there it is the fungi, right? That's a decomposer that has nothing to do with your plant roots.

It doesn't necessarily mean that it's interacting with the root and doing what we want it to do, right? It may, yeah.

I mean, we don't know that names, name, one, name, one, Basidiomycota, like, that's breaking down things like in our compost, in hot compost that we're going to be looking for, I don't know any. And if we want to get exotic and weird, you know, Turkey Tail mushrooms and endophyte and improves, like, growth in wheat. So, like, yeah, there are Basidiomycota. There are. There are things no doubt, but that's not your hot compost usually, right? And so, and it doesn't look like that. It's clear. And that, again, that falls into the misconception people that like clear fungi is bad, and it's like your mycorrhiza fungi is clear,

yeah, and that makes sense. You're just saying we don't know. We don't know what connects with what necessarily, until

you test it, until you look right, and then, and then, like, actually hold it up against itself, because I've yet to find an example of those stereotypical hyphae that are excellent. You know, they're wonderful for decomposition, no doubt, and they do set the scene for the pH and the acidity, for fungal relationships to be positive for our plants, but it doesn't magically create inoculant. So that's why mycorrhiza, inoculant was a miracle. The compost didn't have it. It never will. We have to bring it in. Okay? Before

we go too far, you mentioned the badass microscope. You mentioned the badass microscope that you got just a second ago. Can I get some recommendations for what type of microscope I should be buying if I'm a home grower on somewhat of a budget, like, just tell me about like, compound binocular, like you said, the cobalt thing you said was pretty cool. What type of microscope should I be buying for which price ranges

at home? Okay, so I don't even use the IP some of the pieces on my microscope because they're bad for your eyes. Why would we focus? And we're focusing right a light that's bright white into our eye

sounds about right? So what are you playing the screen?

So I have a screen and I have a camera, and I watch it, and I'm, I sit upright. It's like watching TV. It's not a, not a strain, so, so it's like, it's a different world than a lot of people live in with their microscope. And not only that, there's a certain threshold that you cross over with microscopes where the clarity is unbelievable. It's like National Geographic level. And then there's these am scopes and these o maxes that are just terrible, but cheap, they're cheap,

right? And, you know, but they ruin some dollars. And you're right. The picture quality can be grainy. That's what I do. I like the price point. Hey, get started scoping. But God dang, it can be hard to see stuff. Sometimes you're so right about that. There's no romance.

I am romantically involved with my microscope. I get so much information and learn. I've learned so much about soil and plants, literally in real time with this microscope. So it's from LW scientific, if you click on their website, it'll say for soil food web and regenerative soil people on their website, LW, scientific.com, that's because of me that they're saying regenerative soil originally was just for soil foods, web school people, Alliance people, but now they've adapted it. And I actually sold out of this microscope last time I did a course, I was like, the first time this happened to you? And he's like, yes, so yeah, I love them. They're there. They have an advertisement in my book. Like, we love each other. It's awesome. LDO is scientific. They're amazing. I don't take any cut, but I get a discount for my students at 37% during the sign up for my course, they got a 50% discount on a $7,000 microscope with all the pieces that I have, because it's like six, and then you add all the pieces and taxes, it's like seven.

Oh, they've got a bunch of different models. These all look cool. So these are, like, this is, if you're serious, man, like, Yeah, are you?

And the revelation is, is under 1000 with that discount. It's really stupendous. I think the i Four is so incredibly important to get as your base, though, because you can add the epifluorescence to it at any time, and the epifluorescence unit is going to change everything. Because if you're operating a cannabis operation, let's say it's your job and you put down an inoculant and have told the person who hired you that it has all these benefits, and then you did the inoculant, and you don't look to check, and they come in two weeks later and have someone with my microscope come check it, and they go, Hey, look, none of This is inoculated, because the inoculant you used was just spores and not propagules like miCos, extreme gardening. Sure you're going to lose those two weeks. You're going to have to re inoculate with a new inoculant, and it's they just paid some other guy to do your job. So this is something we all could do in two seconds, though. You just clip the root, walk back, put it on top of a slide, like a little tray. You don't cut the root anymore. You just cut, you know, like, like, you cut it off the plant, bring it over, you know. But that you don't crush the root, you know, slice and dice it. You don't drown it. You just put it on there and put it underneath, and put it on 4x or 10x objective, and literally put on the light and look at it, and that's it. No prep, no stain. Forget all that. That's all manipulation and actually creating an artificial image. We've arrived at a completely new level of microscopy now where we're doing less to see more, and we can do more tests because we're doing less, and because we can do more tests, we can have a deeper understanding what actually is, because when we're doing tests, we're doing snippets, or we're doing droplets of a field or a bucket of soils. So so important. That we have the ability to do more tests so important that we kind of separate out what we're looking at with these tools to form clarity. So regenerative soil microscopy shows it all it goes over the microscopes. And if you go to regenerative soil science.com that's my other website, if you just type that in with no no other business, just type in regenerative soil science.com it's a lead link. It'll transform into my longer, more convoluted link and and it'll have, like my courses, it'll have my books, and I'll reviews the found co originator of permaculture, David Holmgren only uses and recommends my book, regenerative soil. It's got all that. Yeah, I mean, Jeff Lowen, fells, author of The teaming with microbes, teaming with bacteria, teaming with fungi, series, says I talk about it, but now you can see it with Matt's books. So these, these books, are something special. I feel like I received them rather than I created them. I just was able to facilitate this. And I feel incredibly honored to be in this space and time and and really it's about you and everyone who's listening, being able to get that feedback loop and reception from nature. It's not about me, not about the technique or the it's really about clarity and that feedback loop and so that we can take informed action that makes things get better and better throughout time, season after season. Regeneratively.

I love it. Man, that's a great stopping point. Matt, this has been an awesome interview the permaculture student.com. Regenerative soil science.com Stay tuned for our future. And where else can people find you, Matt, where can people follow you and see what you're doing?

So if you just type my name, Matt powers into Google, I'm now number one.

You are the number one. Matt powers Yeah, yeah. So

if you just type my name in, and, I mean, if you're on Bing or some it might be weird, I don't know, but if you just go to google.com and just type in Matt powers, I'm number one. So yeah, All my stuff's there. My videos, I'm all over Youtube, Instagram, Twitter. I was a musician, like, 25 years ago, all online. I was one of the early people online doing this stuff, and so I transformed everything, like, in like seven over to, like, gardening. I left the music industry and said, Yeah, I'm all over the place. Can we

find the album? Music again? Yeah, for sure. Listen. Give Matt a follow everybody that this was an awesome episode. Matt from the microscope, talk to you know, the misconceptions about biology and, like you said, just forging our own path, building our own tools and creating that feedback loop with nature. I think this is an awesome exploration. Do you have any other final words for the organic gardeners or the gardeners out there before we wrap it up and sign off here. Oh, thank you

so much. Well, grow abundantly, learn daily and live regeneratively.

Oh, I love it. Thank you one more time, Matt. This was a great interview. Thank you, buddy. Thanks for having me on. That's all for today. This is Matt powers and Jordan River, signing off, wishing you an extraordinary day. Be safe out there and grow smarter. That's our show. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you loved this show, you will love grow cast membership. That's right, we just dropped the brand new content flow over there. There's so much content. Find it at grow cast podcast.com/membership, hundreds of hours of video programs of growcast TV, that's our live web show that you can participate in on We've got weekly videos dropping every Tuesday that are just gonna drop knowledge bombs on you repeatedly. We got resources, giveaways, members only discounts. Now premium giveaways. We're giving away some pulses and some vaporizers and even some grow tents. It's going down at growcast podcast.com/membership it'll take you right there. Join up. You will not regret it. I appreciate you guys. It's how we can keep this show going, keep this community thriving. We do meet ups all the time. I'm helping members in their gardens every single day. Plus, like I said, so much bonus content, weekly videos, live streams, Q and A live streams, members only. Discounts. Don't miss it. Get in there. I'd love to see you in membership. All right, everyone, thank you so much. Be safe out there. We'll be back with more. Grow cast from the islands, coming soon. Take care now. Bye, bye. You

I am romantically involved with my microscope and.