Treating Lagoon with Microbial Inoculant

More than 40 years of research and real life successes provide the foundation for our seasonally adapted inoculant. It is a common product in Japan, and in the gardening industry in North America. Our process is aimed at taking this to the farm scale. Based on our own experience, and the research learning, here are a few things you can expect when using the Biological Lagoon Nutrient Retention Service:

  • Lagoons often will have very high salt content, measured as electrical conductivity (EC). This causes the manure to be harmful to soil organisms including earthworms, arthropods and fungi. One of the quickest benefits you can get with a treatment of this Biological Inoculant is that your total EC will be lowered as well as the pH of the manure will become slightly acidic. Applying this acidic lagoon manure to your fields will work to buffer the negative effects of alkaline soils.
  • On a daily basis your lagoon will be giving off nutrients in the form of off-gassing. These nutrients will be lost from your farm for good once this happens. Our biological product included groups of microbes that thrive in a nutrient rich lagoon. As these microbes grow and multiply, they will scavenge the most easily available nutrients; the nutrients that are ready to off-gas (or leach, once it is in the field).
  • When the organisms in this product find available nutrients in a compost pile or lagoon, they will work to make them stable and bioavailable. The major forms of nutrients that are produced by the beneficial biology are Amino Acids and simple Peptides. These are the Nitrogen and Sulphur rich building blocks for your crops. 

Your plants can now skip several steps in the process of using Nitrogen.

  • Additionally when the biology in this system encounters chemicals and compounds that are harmful to other beneficial microbes, they are able to lock up the harmful chemicals. Copper, Zinc, Chloride and other chemicals that are commonly used in the barn will normally cause the sediment of a lagoon to become pathogenic. The beneficial biology that we add provides the solution to this. The organisms we use will lock up these chemicals and keep them from doing harm, this effect is long term. Although some of our these organisms will die off as it does this work, the chemicals will remain harmless after this process.
  • In the dead zone of your lagoons, healthy biology has died, and a chemical process takes over. The carbon that is organically bound to many of your nutrients is chemically removed, and replaced with oxidizing compounds. The results of this are two-fold; you lose a lot of carbon as CO2 or Methane, and many of your organic nutrients (P, K, Ca and Mg) are made less biologically available. Many of these reactions in the dead zone are not possible for biology to reverse. With the regular application of our Biological Lagoon Nutrient Retention service you will keep this negative process from taking over your lagoon.
  • Odours will also be drastically reduced in bedding packs and lagoons with the regular application of our inoculant. Most of the smelly things that we want to avoid are actually your nutrients going off into the wind. Almost any time that you lose some Nitrogen or Sulphur it is also running off with some Carbon also. By using our products you will be turning this problem into a Carbon benefit.
Below is a clear example of the change that can be seen. The color change is from increased levels of organic acids that act to lower pH and the salt levels of the manure. 
Before and After of California Lagoon