Ep 99: Nutrisoil _ Nakala Maddock

Today we sit down with Nakala Maddock from Nutrisoil to unpack what’s really going on beneath our feet.

Nakala breaks down the fundamentals of vermiculture and explains how the worm’s gut acts as a powerful microbial factory—transforming organic matter into biology that drives healthier, more productive soils. 

It’s a simple concept with big implications for pasture performance, resilience, and long-term farm sustainability.

This is a practical, back-to-basics conversation about building soil from the ground up—working with nature, not against it. 

If you’re looking to improve soil function, boost pasture health, or just better understand the biology under your boots, this episode is a great place to start.

To find out more about Nutrisoil, 

visit nutrisoil.com.au

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Salt of the Earth Farm Stories, where the heart of farming comes alive.

SPEAKER_02 0:06

You know, farmers love the land. I get tingles every time when I make that distinction because there's a spreadsheet and then there's a farmer. And a farmer just wants to regenerate their land. There's no farmer out there that doesn't.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

G'day, I'm Darren Greek, and today we're talking worms and a whole lot of microbes. Our guest is Nicarla Maddock from Nutrasoil. And in this episode, we break down exactly what is Nutrasoil and how vermiculture or worm farming is being used to build healthier soils. Nikala explains how the worm's gut is basically a microbial factory, turning organic material into a powerful liquid biology that can help feed plants and improve soil health, animal health, and human health.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

And the more diversive microbes, the more resilient you've got in your soil because they all do different functions.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

We talk about what they feed the worms, why diversity is so important, and how a wide mix of microbes, fungi, bacteria and archaea, helps create more resilient soils and stronger plants. Now I've just got to say I love this product. And Nicala even makes the case that in some ways humans aren't that different to plants when it comes to needing the right biology. And right at the end, there might even be a little scoop about a possible skincare product made from you guessed it, worms. Just maybe. Here's Nikala Maddock from Nutrasoil. Let's go. Hello, Nicala.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

Hi Darren, how are you?

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Really good. Thanks for having me. Whereabouts are we today, Nikola?

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Yes, so we're in Northeast Victoria on the border of New South Wales and Victoria, or Rivadonga. We're at the Nutrasoil Production and Education Facility.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

This is the HQ.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

It is Nutrasoil HQ.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Now I know you've got customers right around Australia, and a lot of our listeners will have heard me rape about your product. And just to be clear, I am a big fan, so we'll get that out early. But a lot of our listeners will have heard of you. But can you give us a basic explanation of what is Nutrasoil?

SPEAKER_02 2:20

Yeah, so we're a family farm and we produce a worm liquid and castings, the solid out of big worm windrose. So we're a worm farm basically.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

And this is a, as you say, a liquid product as well as worm castings, but mainly perhaps a liquid product that can be used, and we'll get into the detail how it's to be used, but for fertilizer?

SPEAKER_02 2:40

Yeah, yeah, mainly broadacre agriculture. Um, and liquid is our main product, but the worm castings are gaining a lot more traction.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

So would you say this is a vermiculture farm?

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Okay, so what is vermiculture?

SPEAKER_02 2:54

I know. I remember when I married into the family, I was like, vermic, what? Like, what is vermiculture? Graham used to just rattle it off his tongue. He'd say, We're a vermiculture recycling system, and I'd be like, Okay, what does that mean? So, vermiculture basically is anything to do with worms. And when he called it a vermiculture recycling system, it's about worms breaking down things that are used so we can reuse them again.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

And I find this fascinating because a worm's gut must be like a little factory for microlife.

SPEAKER_02 3:24

Yeah, totally. So you would think a worm's gut to be like a compost tea machine. You know, if we make a compost tea, humans make a compost tea or an extract, maybe more concentrated and complex than an extract or a bioreactor. Another way to think about it, because manure is good, you know. We put manure out in the garden, we put it out in agriculture, it's great to have animals in grazing systems because of their manure and their urine. But um the gut of a worm, it's different to a mammal, like a cow or a sheep, because their gut it's more acidic, where a worm's gut is more neutral, and it is just great conditions for microbes to increase, for them to multiply, and there is something very intelligent about the worm's gut that when they move through the soil, they know what the soil needs. So they can increase a microbe in their gut by a thousandfold if they really need that microbe to break down chemicals, or they can cull microbes that are going to cause diseases. So if you think of a worm moving through the soil, it's there to create a healthy soil so that plants grow, so that then they have a food source and they can breathe and they want less pathogens around, they want everything balanced and happy because they're they're producing eggs and their offspring are coming through. So it's the one animal that produces like the gold premium poo.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

And I used to always think it was worm weed. Not, yeah, worms don't wee.

SPEAKER_02 4:57

Yeah, so they poo like us, but they don't wee like us. It's like they sweat nearly like they've got little pores all over their body, and all of this gooey secretion comes out of it. And there's reasons for that. So again, you think of a worm lining the soil to make the soil healthy. It's lining it with really good microbes, so a balance of microbes that keep everything in check. It's lining it with nutrients which are available and complex and plants can use. It's lining it with antibacterials, antifungals, so that they can breed and that their little worm babies can live. And surfactant, like they need it to be slippery and slide. So all of those things are really just to create healthy soil. But in our vermiculture recycling system, we miss the system and we collect all that excretion, not just washing through the castings. It's we need lots of worms in our system because the mucus around them is just gold.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

And you must need lots because I see hundreds of thousands of litres come out of these windmills.

SPEAKER_02 6:03

Yeah, we do. We sell hundreds of thousands of litres all over Australia. So our worms are our workers and they are our priority. So we monitor our worms weekly. We know on average how many there are, how many eggs there are, what's the pH of their worm bed, what's the moisture of their worm bed, what's the electrical conductivity, is it getting too salty for them? And we just want them in this big spreadsheet. So I could say, okay, in March, how many worms am I expecting? In February, how many worms am I expecting? When am I expecting them to breed? Why are they not breeding? You know, what's gone wrong? And that's how we track them and learn to understand what they like and what they dislike. Lots of things we don't know yet, but we certainly worked out a lot of things that are just expected. So, for instance, they have an expected cycle. They love rain. If it doesn't rain, we can feed them all the well water we want. We don't use town water, and they they just don't multiply the same way. So in droughts, we've found it a bit hard to collect liquid. So that's why we've had this big expansion. We've had to get more tanks so we can recycle the worm liquid back over to make it more concentrated to get it to the level that we need to be able to sell it.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Right. So, what's in the rainwater? Is it more nitrogen?

SPEAKER_02 7:23

Yeah, Jeff, there's microbes in the rainwater, there's nitrogen in the rainwater, there's energy in the rainwater, like it just brings them alive.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Wow, fascinating. Yeah. So, Nicola, how did Nutrisol start?

SPEAKER_02 7:37

Yeah, so Lynn and Graham, who own the business, they were on a dairy farm and then a beef farm, and they had three kids, and they were very they're health conscious. Like they always had homegrown food and they were into you know vitamins and minerals and amigas and all sorts of things. Water, you know, you wouldn't find coke in their house. It was very much driven by Lynn, you know, and we find this in agriculture. It's it's the um wife who who drives this health and focus on health because they've got kids and they want their kids to be healthy. Yeah, they were on the family farm and Graham had an accident. He was spraying out an insecticide and it was dimethylate, so that's for sucking insects. And what dimethylate does is it disrupts their nervous system and the insects get paralyzed and then they die, so it's a bit gruesome, and he was covered with it. So from there he had lots of health problems. And I I wasn't there back then, I can only sort of say from what I've heard, but um, lots of bouts in hospital and bed and depression. Um, he was just never the same again. Then they had to find another way to farm, and they started with worms and using the worm castings. I think they started trialing it on chestnuts first, and then they started putting it out on their pastures, and they were getting similar results to what they were getting when they were using superphosphate and lime. And they were over the years having to put on more superphosphate and lime, like the aggronist was just bumping up the numbers all the time. So it's it, you know, farming is hard to make money when you're having to put more inputs in, and those inputs were causing soil health problems and animal health problems as well. Then they worked out the liquid was actually just as efficient and it was easy to put out. So when I say the liquid, you think we've got big worm windrows, and we're misting those worm windrows with an irrigator a number of times, and we capture that liquid. So you've captured all the mucus off the worm, you've captured all the microbes in the castings and all of the nutrients and just a whole range of compounds that help plants grow. So they were capturing that and putting it out. They had lots of scientists involved, the whole family was involved, they were very passionate about it. You know, the girls were helping their dad write articles to put in the paper, and you would see them in the paper all the time. It was really new for Orbi Wadonga. Like we've got loads of clippings from the paper of Nutrisol starting. And then Graham went around setting up windrose on people's farms. But farmers found they couldn't get the food stock and they couldn't keep the water up to them, so they were dying. So then Lynn and Graham started going to field days and selling the actual product. So that's how it started, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

And would that be nearly 20 years ago, would it?

SPEAKER_02 10:34

30. So I found the first registration. Yeah, 30 years ago, Nutrisoil was named as a business. So it started very small. Like I remember I married Darren 22 years ago, and they were out on the farm then. I saw Nutrisoil containers around and 200 litre drums, and they would have maybe a field day once a year, but they were farmers, they weren't that wasn't their primary business. But I think around 2007 they decided, I think from their passion for it, and the accountants saying, Hey, this is probably a very good business. And Graham is a dreamer, an ideas man, an inspirational man when in his time, you know, you would just hang off every word he said in his time. He's older now and doesn't work in the business. He's retired, he's left this amazing legacy.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

I remember first being introduced to you guys in around 2007, 2008. Yeah, and it really sparked my interest for soil health. And especially when I spoke to Graham too.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

There's one day out in the paddock, I remember he looked at me and goes, Ah, the pennies dropped. And I felt like I got just a little bit of it, but I just wanted to keep learning more. And I guess from your point of view, too, you know stacks, but is there so much more we need to learn about what can be?

SPEAKER_02 11:48

Oh my gosh, yes. Oh my gosh, we know 5% of the microbes in the soil. Really? We're just getting into the science of DNA. I think AI is going to help us a lot, but technology identifying things. But at the end of the day, that interests us. But if you step back and you stop trying to kill things and you try to support nature to do what it's meant to do, then you have healthy soil. And I'm not a fanatical person that says no chemical, no fertilizer. Like there's a balance because industrial agriculture has got us to a point where our soils are depleted. So we need to make sure that we support plants with nutrients at the same time as putting nutriosoil on. It's context-specific. So some systems, like a grazing system, if they've got really good grazing management, nutrisoils are all you need. Where, especially cropping, monoculture cropping, you really need to still be doing soil tests, you need to still be doing SAP tests, monitoring it, supporting the plant, but adding biology with it.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

And using less synthetic fertilizers because that plant needs to work hard. If you give that plant all the synthetic fertilizers it needs, the microbes have no role. The root systems stay shallow, so it's not pushing through the soil. So you get lots of compaction, which means the microbes can't live there because they've got no air, they can't breathe, you can't fix nitrogen from the atmosphere because the microbes aren't living there, and you've lost so many functions of protection and resilience because you don't have that full suite of microbes there.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

So we're talking protection and resilience, so protection from the bad bugs coming in and uh resilience, such as a drought or frost. Yes, yeah. Absolutely. Can I go back to the windrose? Yeah. What do they look like and how are they set up?

SPEAKER_02 13:42

So they look like composting windrose. You would think that we had a compost turner, but we don't. The worms turn it on. They do all the work. We just need to keep them happy and healthy. So they're probably between 50 and 80 metres long. We've got about 30 of them at the moment. They could be anywhere from one to two meters high to two to four metres wide. We're doing some harvesting at the moment. You don't want them to be because it collapses all the plumbing underneath. They're all plumbed underneath and irrigated on top. So we feed the worms lots of diversity. The more diversity you feed the worms, the more diversity of nutrients and microbes into the system. So it's not actually the worms that break down the carrot or the fish or the or the straw, it's the microbes. So then the worms consume the broken down food that has all of the microbes in it. So that's how they're getting all of those microbes into their system. So food diversity is really important for the neutral worm wind rows because we get more diversity of microbes. And the more diversity of microbes, the more resilience you've got in your soil because they all do different functions.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

Thank you. And what are you feeding them?

SPEAKER_02 14:52

It's pretty standard and it depends on what's around as well. But we're really lucky because we're close to lots of factories and we're close to cattle yards and avatars and things like that. But our main staple is straw from a biologically farmed farm. So we get straw from our farmers. Manures, so mainly cattle manure, we also get horse manure, and we have to rest that because we're registered as a allowable input with Australian organics.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

So when you say rest it, in case the cow, the horse has been drenched for worms, so you've got to let that chemical dissipate.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, worms clean up chemicals, that's one of their jobs. They're like bioremedial type of animals. But if you have too much, they're overloaded. Like glyphosate in the soil. That's why a lot of our worms are just not there anymore. One of the big failures of a worm farm, if someone's starting out, is they've gotten manure that hasn't been rested.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

And the chemicals in there have killed the worms.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:53

And the way they do that is we say, put your manure in a bucket that you use and put worms in there and just see if they live.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Yeah, okay. So we've got straw, manure, but there'll be fish.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

Yeah, so from fishing competitions, they deliver them carp. We love carp. Like all the minerals that we want. So soft rock phosphate, crushed minerals, crusher dust, lime. You can't use too much lime because you kill them. Okara, they love okara. It's like porridge from a soy factory just over there. And that's got lots of nitrogen in it. We get food from food share, uh, like eggs or bread, anything we put through, except citrusy type of things. And it has to be in bulk because we operate in bulk. Like we can't just go into a shop and get their scraps type of thing. We have had factories approach us and saying we take their vegetables that they have left over, but needs to be fairly clean waste that we can recycle. You don't want Lynn Graham's place looking like a tip. No. Um, and you don't want, you know, our workers to be hurting each other with needles and glass. And yeah, so we've got to be careful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

So what actually ends up in nutrisol, for example, the liquid, is it phosphorus, nitrogen, calcium, mixture of everything?

SPEAKER_02 17:12

A mixture of everything, but it's in really low amounts. It still has an effect because it's complex. Like it's complex with all these carbon sources, amino acids and humiconforvic acids, which means that it just keeps those nutrients in the form that the plant needs. So when we're putting out a synthetic fertilizer, the plant has to work harder. It has to convert those nutrients into a form that that plant can then use. Where we're giving the plant, when you put out nutrisoil, these nutrients in low amount but complex, but also in microbial bodies and all of these other compounds like growth promoters that help that plant to grow. So it's a food source for your microbes in the soil, but it's a food source for your plant to photosynthesize more, grow bigger root systems.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

So, would you say if we feed the plant with neutral soil, the plant will feed the soil and in return grow a healthier plant?

SPEAKER_02 18:08

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It is a whole system. So if you're using lots of heavy machinery and a lot of chemical and all of those synthetics that are in high amounts, you're working against yourself. But if you're feeding the plant, you're feeding it microbes, nutrients, it actually takes those microbes in through the leaf of the plant. This is the whole rhizophagy process, and it uses those microbes, strips them of all their nutrients, and then sends them out into the root systems again, and that's mainly bacteria, and then they come back again and they go in again, and it's this whole just moving through the plant. But if a plant has nutrients that's been in the body of a microbe, it just takes that plant to another level of resilience and health because there's so many other things than just a nutrient in that microbe.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

You explain it so well.

SPEAKER_02 18:58

Oh, thank you. It's fun. I love I love talking about it.

SPEAKER_00 19:03

I think one day I'd love to come back and do another episode with you on the more of the science-y, the heavy stuff, but at the moment, keep it gentle. It's going well. What role do fungi and microbes play together in the soil?

SPEAKER_02 19:15

So you've got three types of microbes fungi, bacteria, and archaea. So fungi are your decomposers. They decompose like straw and the more larger things, they can transport microbes within them throughout the soil. They can grow like so far and they create this big network in the soil and they let out glues and they create soil aggregation in the soil because those glues are holding it all together and sticking it all together. You see under the microscope, these little bits of just like little spider webs, but it's glue from the fungi. They can deliver phosphorus and nutrients to the plant. They can also find water and hold water and store water for hard times and then give it to the plant. So that's that's another reason your plant can hold on longer because of this amazing fungi system. And fungi communicate. If there's a disease at one end of the crop, it sends communications to all of the plants in that paddock, and then they send out their defence mechanisms. So fungi are the most intelligent of all the microbes. Then you've got the bacteria, they're just single cell, they don't have a brain, they they just do their thing, there's lots of them, but they do lots of different functions. So they can fix nitrogen, they can solubilize nutrients, they can clean up chemicals in the soil. They are really essential as well. And then you've got archaea, and they're more your ancient type of microbes, but in an agricultural system, you don't have a lot of those. You're more looking at that fungal bacterial type of grouping together, and you just you want both.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

Fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

The life that's in the soil, or the chemical.

SPEAKER_02 21:11

They're like a community of people. And if you had a community of people with lots of baddies, then we have a bad life, you know, like things go wrong. Same as in the soil. You just got to keep a balance because we have to have good and bad. Like, if we didn't have bad in life, like bad anything, we wouldn't know what good is.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 21:30

That's how the whole world's made up. Like, we are just like, we're just like a plant. The soil is just like our stomach. Everything is just made the same, but so extremely complex and different, and just constantly changing, constantly.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

I reckon you could write a movie script with what happens underneath the soil.

SPEAKER_02 21:50

Oh, there's there's this really good book. It's called There's a Pooh in My Zoo, and I give it to kids all the time, and it's just about all the different microbes in. Their gut and that helps them understand the microbes in the soil and all the different functions that they do. So if the kids don't eat a divide diversity of food, if they don't rest, if they don't hydrate themselves, they're going to have less diversity of microbes in their gut. And that's what they're finding in kids with like autism and that type of thing. So, yeah, the human health side to the depletion of microbes in our soil is really concerning.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Yeah, I want to talk about the education side of it in a sec. But what are the main ways farmers can use nutritious oil? From my knowledge and what I've learned off you, I I think of three basic ones. It's foliar spray, it's uh inoculating the seed, such as a crop or oats or wheat going, inoculating it before it goes into the soil. And also I've learned uh one day out there with Graham, there was a farmer near Mangapla, he was dropping the liquid just below the seed. So when that seed wanted to shoot a leg or germinate, it was germinating quicker and trying to get down a little bit deeper.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

But I think there's also more with castings and so forth now. But can you give us an example for when we're going to use foliospray on pastures, for example? How would a farmer apply it?

SPEAKER_02 23:13

For pasture, it is five litres per hectare, and it is a 20 to 1 ratio with water. Generally, water's just the carrier, like you just want to make sure that five litres gets across the hectare, and you would do it in spring and autumn. So in the growing season. If it was dairy, you would do it more regularly. It's a higher use type of system, like they graze more quickly and rotate more quickly than a grazing system. But if a grazing system came to me and said, you know, I don't worry about grazing management. My sheep are set stocked in the same paddock all the time. I'd say, do not bother using nutritoil, you're wasting your money. You have to work together. So you've got to let that plant have recovery because nutrisol, when you apply it at five litres per hectare, will help that plant photosynthesize more. And it just needs that time to recover because when it recovers, it grows bigger root systems. Bigger root systems break through the compaction in your soil, feeds more microbes, so you've got more functions in your soil, and then you've got these healthier pastures that hold on longer, and the animals really are intelligent, they know a healthy plant from a plant that's not healthy.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

I was going to ask about that. You do see preferential grazing, do you? And they'll go to a paddock that's had, say, a nutritoil product.

SPEAKER_02 24:29

Yeah, they'll eat weeds that they wouldn't have eaten before because they're sweeter. So there's microbes in the soil that help all of the functions lead to tastier food, basically. If you feed a plant in a soil that has a low diversity of microbes and you feed it really high nutrients, so NPK is what we talk about: nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, we haven't fed them any trace minerals, and they're just drinking that up. They've got you know white root systems, there's no microbial life about it. It's a sour plant to an animal.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:04

So you think of eating something from a vegetable garden and then something from a mass-grown industrial farm. The tomato in the vegetable garden is delicious. The strawberry, oh, mouth melting, doesn't happen in the supermarkets. You've got to find people that grow food well, source them out.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

In an earlier episode, I interviewed Louis Diaga from Belgium, and he's all about soil health. And we discussed about at the supermarket we should be buying it off a nutrient value rather than a quantity. Yeah. And that would stem from a healthier soil, a healthier vegetable or whatever it might be. I think that's a good idea.

SPEAKER_02 25:48

Yeah, it's coming. There's a spectrometer being made. So a person will be able to go into the supermarket and put their spectrometer on that vegetable and on that vegetable and decide which one they want to buy on nutrient value.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 26:01

Yeah, it's a little way away, but it's definitely in the making.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

So going back to that farmer spraying out his pastures, he might have a boom spray or just a big spray on the back of his tank, and it's not necessarily the amount of water that's crucial, that's just the carrier. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

And you said about if you're a really fast driver, you don't need as much water.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Yes, right. Now, the seed inoculation, I find this fascinating. And you've got some good friends, and I can call them friends too, over in the West, where I've learned that they were putting it inside their auger just before it was being sown. And that was just putting like a membrane around their the coating of that seed. And they've had great results. Amazing.

SPEAKER_02 26:44

Yeah, that's the first thing you would do is coat your seed if it was step one. Because if you think of a seed, it actually has a microbiome in its seed, and when it germinates, it wants to go out into a healthy system. And what are we doing? We're putting a fungicide on it, so any fungi is just killed. So they've got these highly bacterial environments they're trying to grow in, and we're putting synthetic fertilizer with them. And again, I'm not I'm not saying no synthetic fertilizer, I'm not saying no chemical, I'm just saying how can you reduce it? How can you add it with biology? Chemicals, you know, can you add neutrosol with the chemical to buffer it so that's not as harmful on the microbes? But going back to that seed inoculation, you're coating that seed with beneficial microbes, you're coating it with um humiconforvic substances and all of these compounds that are just going to give that seed the best start to life. So it will put more energy into its root system, it won't jump out of the ground as quickly because it's going to be working really hard with that microbial connection, and that's what you want. You need to have these plants that are grounded in the soil and creating healthy soil.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

And these people we're talking about over in the West, Ian and Die Haggerty, aren't they clever people?

SPEAKER_02 27:58

Oh, they're legends. They are legends of regenerative agriculture. So they started using nutrients, I think, around 2007, and I didn't start here till 2013, but I was certainly around, I was in the family, and they just got it. Like they were using some synthetics at the start when they bought their farm, but they it just wasn't adding up for them. And they're in the wheat belt of WA, like rainfall is very low, their soils are not very fertile, so putting a lot of fertilizer on wasn't going to work anyway. But over the time they've gotten to a point where they don't have to use any synthetic fertilizer. But theirs is a whole system, so that's why I talked about context. So over summer they don't spray out their pastures, they or or their fallow, which is the in-between your crop and another crop starting. They let all their weeds grow, and then those weeds over the years turn into perennial grasses in the line where they're sowing. So you talk about that furrow and you're dripping that biology in that furrow. You go out there in summer and it's lines, you would think they sowed are perennial grasses. And that is just fixing so much nitrogen, it's adding so much fungi and biology to the soil, just keeping that soil healthy and cool over summer. And if you pour water next to that perennial grass, it sucks it up. If you pour water where there's no perennial grass, it just sort of pulls on top and repels it.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

So, in between crops, could even weeds like cape weed be a tool to add.

SPEAKER_02 29:37

Yeah, and again, so context-specific because someone can say, I've got cape weed, and you can, you know, be blasé and say it'll transition out. And sometimes it doesn't, so you do have to help it a little bit if it's got a really big deficiency. So, you know, that's why soil tests are important in different soils. So they again they had cape weed, the next year they had another weed, the next weed they had another weed, and it doesn't happen that you know systematically, but generally there's a transition. So there's these succession weeds, so they'll go through a higher succession of a more intelligent plant. But every weed is there for a reason. But we don't want a paddock full of cape weed, and if it doesn't transition out, you're gonna have to do something, and that could be in a natural system when that cape weed dies before it germinates again, so you know it's gonna come back again if you haven't been able to work it out. Plant something else, so then it doesn't have that opportunity to germinate. It's often bare soil, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

Yeah, and on that note, uh a big shout out to Ian and Dye Haggerty, Western Australians of the Year.

SPEAKER_02 30:40

Amazing, amazing, because of so much work, and from that, like they were nearly Australians of the year, like they were so close, but because of that, the Governor General is right behind them, and they are creating these groups of soil scientists, biologists, health professionals meeting with DAI and trying to study their system and work out how others can farm, or or even the benefits of that farming system and the food quality and the low chemical input imprint and how good it is for the environment. Like they are leading the way, they're absolute legends.

SPEAKER_00 31:17

And it looks like they're they're on stages right around Australia right now, aren't they?

SPEAKER_02 31:21

And their son too. They've got um Matthew, yeah. I mean, you remember Matthew when he was a tiny kid, just wouldn't eat his broccoli. But um now he's up there, he's suave and he's talking to talk, yeah, and people are following him. Fantastic. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

So, what would be the first things farmers would notice after using it?

SPEAKER_02 31:40

Sometimes nothing, and and you've really got to prepare people for that. Like it is a building process, but then there's been some unique times where you've seen a green, uh definitely a green line. And it's often when people have been using a lot of synthetic fertilizers and the soil's starting to sort of balance itself out. Sometimes you might have a plant that's really stressed, like it's gone purple, and you spray out new soil and it goes green again. But majority is you'll just see a nice pasture that's got you know nice diversity. Over time, that diversity changes. There has been a time, and look, I've been guilty of it, we've all been very guilty of it in the very beginnings of saying biology is all you need. But really, in an industrial agriculture system, which is what we're in, we need to absolutely monitor and help. So people will say, should I, you know, they'll send a soil test and it's really acidic, and they'll say, Where should I spend my money first? And I say lime. You know, if it's really acidic, spend money on lime, and then when you've got that acidity a little bit sorted out, start putting in biology. Great to do it together, but that's gonna hold back your microbes.

SPEAKER_00 32:51

And you said before it's about building the soil, so that's just not a matter of spraying neutrosil on once and walking away, is it?

SPEAKER_02 32:58

No, it's it's a regular building system, but and Diane and Haggerty are nearly leading the way here. They want to get to a point where they don't have to use anything.

SPEAKER_01 33:10

Ah.

SPEAKER_02 33:11

Like they've got synthetics out now. Yeah, yeah. They're still using nutrisol, compost extract, fish, molasses, all those natural products. But their dream is to have this system spot on, self-regenerating, like in nature. Like we weren't out there, you know, how many, let's say 200 years ago, because we went farming like this 200 years ago. We weren't out there putting out worm liquid and and compost tea and fulbic acid, all synthetic fertilizers. Uh so they really believe they can get to that point and and go them. And a really good grazing management system, sometimes, like if you're spot on with your holistic grazing, you probably don't even need neutral soil. But not many people have their grazing right, so it really does help them.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

On that note, say if there could be a shortage of fertilizer or urea coming into Australia from the Middle East soon, maybe. Is neutral soil a good option?

SPEAKER_02 34:13

Yes, so absolutely, and we'll help you through that. We've got a whole education facility where if you're a broadacre farmer and you come to us, we will fund a course called Reboot My Soil, which helps you to read a soil test with David Hardwick, who's an agroecologist, agroecologist, yeah, the coolest guy. Love David, and then we have a hub care team of um advisors who then help them with an action plan. Because the last thing we want someone to do is come and buy 20,000 litres of neutrosoil, spend all of their urea budget on neutrosoil, and expect it to work the same. You do have to use a little bit of liquid nitrogen with it. Maybe you dissolve urea and add it with neutrosol so you're using less because yes, it is going to get expensive, it is getting expensive, and there's there's potential of a non-supply. 2008, superphosphate went through the roof, so did urea, and we gained, we grew exponentially, and we kept those customers. We have these booms, things go on, and there's a boom for some reason it's a really good rainfall year or it's a you know fertilizer shortage. We keep our customers because we look after them. We make sure that we don't tell them we are the silver bullet. It is context-specific to your farming system and you need to look at the whole system.

SPEAKER_00 35:43

That's what I love about you guys. Your education to all these landholders is extraordinary, I think. And it's not all just about selling your product, you want it to work.

SPEAKER_02 35:53

Oh, absolutely. And like how embarrassing if if you were out there selling something and you knew it wasn't going to work because they just you didn't put the time in to help them. Like, no one wants to do that.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

Can you actually see healthy soil by just looking at it? The soil itself.

SPEAKER_02 36:08

Yeah. When you look at a soil, if it is got little aggregations, like little round pieces of soil all stuck together with root systems.

SPEAKER_00 36:19

So a little bit sticky.

SPEAKER_02 36:21

Yes, yeah, so that's how they're made is with sticky glues from the bacteria and the fungi.

SPEAKER_00 36:26

And what's that called?

SPEAKER_02 36:27

Uh yeah, glomelin um is the sticky bit. There might be something else, I think you're thinking.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

Rhizosphere or something.

SPEAKER_02 36:33

Oh, the rhizosphere is the root system where all the microbes and soils stick to, yeah. So first the structure, if it's got lots of little clods, it looks like cottage cheese, there's root systems all through it, you know that there's microbes in there. Like, just guaranteed. You don't have to send away a microbe test. You're you're like, you're winning. If you pull up a root system, and this is what you're talking about now, is that um rhizosphere, there's heaps of soil sticking to it, and it's not white, you know that there is microbes there solubilizing nutrients and making lots of sticky glues going in and out of that root system, so you know you've got good microbial life. I have been to a farm and they're a high synthetic fertilizer user, and we dug up the soil, and it was thick with white roots, just it they were all white and they were all going sideways. Like you needed sunglasses to look at them. I was so I couldn't believe those soils were out there. But you've you've got to have the microbial connection working at the root system and throughout your soil to have healthy soil, so you can see that, and you can see the horizons start to change. So if your soil was all one colour, you're potentially finding that you're not breaking down organic matter, which turns into humus and carbon and that type of thing. So you want a colour change.

unknown 38:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Can you smell healthy soil?

SPEAKER_02 38:02

Absolutely, yeah. Yep. So the microbes in there, you can smell just a lovely, I don't even know how to explain it, but I smell it all the time. A lovely healthy soil. There's no soil I don't go to that I don't get on my nose. Um, but you also can smell a sour soil.

SPEAKER_00 38:19

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 38:20

Or a non-smelling soil, that's concerning too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:24

So what are the main reasons farmers are using nutrients soil? Is it for yield, uh, plant health, soil structure, or all of the above?

SPEAKER_02 38:32

Yeah, all of all of the above. We've just sent out a survey and it was so interesting. The answers are still coming in, but soil health was above yield, and we were shocked. Like, it is important for farmers to get good yield, but not yield above everything else. Like, if farmers weren't profitable, we would run into a situation where they left the land and we didn't have food producers and we didn't have anything to eat. That's pretty extreme. But the corporations would take over. So, and their key driver is money. You know, farmers love the land, they they just I get tingles every time when I make that that distinction because there's a spreadsheet and then there's a farmer, and a farmer just wants to regenerate their land. There's no farmer out there that doesn't. So we need those kind-hearted, genuine people on the farm keeping us healthy, but they need education to stay profitable because we are in different times. We've got really varying rainfall, we've got droughts, we've got floods, and everything is rising. The costs of inputs are rising. So they need education, but they also need consumers paying more for their food when they know how it's grown because they're paying for health. Like we've got to value it. I mean, I know there's an issue with processed food, it's how you process it, but number one, it's how you grow it.

SPEAKER_00 40:02

Anakala, what you've just said, that's what this podcast is all about.

SPEAKER_02 40:05

Yeah. Farmers, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 40:08

Legends. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 40:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:10

And we need to give them more respect.

SPEAKER_02 40:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:13

Now, something a little bit smaller, home gardeners, they can use it too.

SPEAKER_02 40:17

Yeah, I mean, they a lot of home gardeners have their own worm farm. And they yeah, so they can produce it themselves, but vegetables, lots of the growth, the most delicious vegetables. Uh, any plant, a worm liquid can be used on any plant natives as well because it's a neutral pH, it's not acidic, you can't overapply the worm castings on smaller areas, they're really just the gold of compost because the microbes uh in worm castings are in the right balance. We can get compost wrong, we can get compost right, but you never get a worm product wrong. You can make a worm product better by feeding the system more diversity and making the worms really abundant, so there's lots of worms in there, and you make through it it make sure it has all turned into castings. But what comes out of their gut is always going to be right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:06

And I often say to people, I spray it on anything that grows.

SPEAKER_02 41:10

Yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_00 41:11

And but the only problem I've got is I've tried a little bit of it on the hair of my head, and nothing happened, Mikala.

SPEAKER_02 41:17

Oh, but that's so interesting though. Maybe not hair, but I actually think like spraying it on your skin gives you that biological film, you know, like I I I think it's a good beauty product. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

All right.

SPEAKER_02 41:35

Yeah, well, we've talked about it. We've talked about it.

SPEAKER_00 41:37

And just talking about the vegetables and so forth, or plants in general, it becomes a bit more frost resilient, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_02 41:44

Yeah. That's got to do with the thickness of the cell walls. Like when you're putting a lot of nitrogen on in particular, what happens is the plant grows more quickly than it's healthy for it. Like it doesn't grow well. It's like us being in the gym and taking steroids. Like your body can't cope with how big you get. The same as a nitrogen-fed plant. And I'm not saying a little bit of nitrogen, and I'll give you some context, you know. Like if you were putting out dissolved 30 kilos of nitrogen, 20 kilos of nitrogen, you know, you plant in a healthy system can deal with that. If you're putting out 300 kilos of nitrogen, you you really need to look at what you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 42:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:25

Because you're not going to be profitable. But the plants, like, it's not strong, it's laboratory, like the actual cells, and it holds a lot of water, and you think, oh, that's great. You want a lot of water, but you don't, not there. When the frost comes, it just freezes.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

And uh plant disease, too, like you're adding in the good bugs to fight off any bad bugs that might come in, is that right?

SPEAKER_02 42:48

Yeah, yeah. So industrial agriculture can create environments where the good bugs die and the bad bugs can take over. So that's why we're getting disease, that's why we're putting out pesticides and fungicides. So, what you want to do is make sure that that system is balanced out. And neutrosol is adding microbes, but those microbes some live, some die. You're actually adding tools to the toolbox because even when those microbes die, their DNA stays in that soil and their skills transfer to other microbes. So it's feeding microbes that are there, your native microbes, when you spray out nutrisol, but it's also adding microbes that are going into the plant, cycling around, and then they'll balance each other out. Yeah, but you've got to stop doing harm as well. Yeah. You know, buffer your chemicals, use less synthetic fertilizer, use less tillage, yeah, less overgrazing.

SPEAKER_00 43:44

I always get fascinated when I come here. It's such large scale now. Um, and just the other day I was driving past and there was a B double driving out. Where would that truck have been going to?

SPEAKER_02 43:53

Uh, that would have gone to WA. We've had a couple going there because they're just about to start sowing in the wheat belt. Yeah, but now it's Our busy time.

SPEAKER_00 44:01

So for someone wanting to know more or learn more about your product or purchase some, what are they to do?

SPEAKER_02 44:08

Have a look at our website, give us a call. We love to chat on the phone.

SPEAKER_00 44:13

Muturesoil.com.au website. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 44:16

Yep. And that's got our phone number on it. Go to a soil health event. We're often mentioned in all the soil health events. Our names dropped all the time.

SPEAKER_00 44:24

And you have lots of events for us.

SPEAKER_02 44:25

And we've events ourselves. We've got a podcast, the Biological Farming Roundtable Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 44:29

I was going to mention that. And where can they find that? That's on the main podcast platform.

SPEAKER_02 44:33

On any podcast platform. Just Google Biological Farming Roundtable. And we've got a huge following. So I interview farmers who are farming regeneratively as well as anyone to do with soil health, basically.

SPEAKER_00 44:46

It's a great podcast. I recommend listeners having listened to that too. And they can also find that at your website as well as videos and so forth. Yeah. With lots of interesting guests. Alright, Nicola, we're up to the off-the-wall questions. These are fun, a little bit quirky.

SPEAKER_02 45:04

I thought it was already fun.

SPEAKER_00 45:08

You mentioned Darren, your husband, before. He's responsible for the production side of it out on the farm.

SPEAKER_02 45:13

And Rob, yeah, we've got a plumber out there too, Rob. He they're the main guys. Graham helps as much as he can, but he's more retired.

SPEAKER_00 45:20

So therefore, if the worms could talk, what would they say about your husband, Darren?

SPEAKER_02 45:25

They'd ask him what's for dinner. They'd say what's in the mixer. Uh, what else would they say? He's the guy that gives me food.

SPEAKER_00 45:34

Does he sing to them too?

SPEAKER_02 45:35

Oh, he yeah, he's he's always out there singing away, absolutely. And look, he's a very he's a quiet person, so nothing happens quickly. He's contemplative, so you know, there's a nice energy out there for them. He's not rushing them.

SPEAKER_00 45:51

You say he's a quiet person, but I've seen enough on stage things at times with a microphone and guitar.

SPEAKER_02 45:56

Amazing, amazing. You see him in a group of people and he'll be quiet. You put him on stage and and look at that's how I met him on stage.

SPEAKER_00 46:04

Oh, there you go. What's the strangest thing worms have ever been fed before?

SPEAKER_02 46:10

I went out to a farm in Korowa and I saw lots of clothes in there. They were putting all their woolen clothes in there that they weren't wearing. So yeah, you can feed them anything.

SPEAKER_00 46:23

They'll break down the wolf.

SPEAKER_02 46:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:25

Oh wow. That is strange. If you had to explain soil biology to a 10-year-old or a five-year-old, how would you do it?

SPEAKER_02 46:35

I would relate it back to what they knew in their life. So in the soil, you've got lots of different microbes that do different functions. So you've got microbes that deliver food. So let's call them the Uber drivers and the, you know, Uber Eats, they deliver food to you, so they go, they get the food, and they take it to your house. Got those microbes in there. And then you've got microbes that are like the radio stations. They help everyone communicate. And we've all got to know what's going on in the world. And then we've got microbes that uh are the garbage collectors, so they come and pick up your rubbish each week. Imagine if you didn't get your rubbish picked up each week, how dirty and gaudy everything would be and how it would all just create stink. And then we've got, so you've got communicators, your medics, so there's an ambulance driver down there. You know, if you didn't have an ambulance driver coming to you when you were sick or you couldn't go to the GP and get medicine, we we would be in big trouble. So all of these diversity of jobs are down there, and if we take out any of those things, and if we took out any of those things in your life, imagine how difficult life would be. So we need to make sure that everyone down there is keeping their jobs.

SPEAKER_00 47:54

I love that. Love it. What would you change about how kids learn about soil at school?

SPEAKER_02 48:01

I think they're getting good at veggie gardens. So lots of schools have got veggie gardens and and they do have their ag department, but it's a little bit conventional. We we have lots of schools come here, so it is changing. We have lots of universities come here and schools and homeschoolers come here and we give them to us. But I think you know, relating it like I did that simply to their life, to the life down there. Like we our environment is just like an environment down there. So we've got to have all of the roles happening. Our stomach is like the root system of a soil. If we don't have diversity of food into our stomach, then and we don't have diversity of plants and animals and all sorts of things going into the soil, then again we're going to not feel well. We're going to get sick. So relating relating our environment, the environment down there, and how everything is connected. Every decision you make to the soil connects something in our environment, whether it be our food, whether it be how much water we can hold and how water flows through the system, whether it be um the greenhouse gases that we can we can capture or reduce from farming. We just want a healthier environment for the kids. And they're they're learning that. And I think the more that that is taught in schools, that the the soil and the community in the soil is just it's the gr it's the ground. It is the ground of us. We we need to be grounded in healthy soil.

SPEAKER_00 49:42

Thank you. And do worms ever surprise you?

SPEAKER_02 49:46

Oh, absolutely. You know, we do that monitoring all the time. Like we've learnt some things, you know, if it's too wet, they don't breed, if it's too, you know, too much lime will kill them. But there's times, you know, with that low rainfall, we're like, how can we get them to to proliferate more, you know, and we're still we're still searching for that answer. So there's times we can collect and times we can't. So we are constantly researching them. We do research grants all the time, you know, with the government, so they're supporting it.

SPEAKER_00 50:23

What would the world look like if every farm had a healthy biology in their soil?

SPEAKER_02 50:29

It would just be an oasis. Like, and it's not just looking at the farm, it's the food that would go to the people. So the food that would go to the people would be healthy and people would feel well, and there would be less conflict in the world, there would be less competition in the world because someone's not trying to take over someone else's country. Like, if we just looked after the soil microbiome, we would have a much more peaceful world.

SPEAKER_00 50:58

Nikela, you I just love coming out here. You and your team just give off such positivity, and you're very generous with information you give out, and you've been very generous with me today and your time.

SPEAKER_02 51:12

Oh, thank you. It's been an absolute joy.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

You're very clever. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_02 51:17

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for being so interested in sharing our story.

SPEAKER_00 51:22

Well, that's it for today's episode. A big thanks to the clever Nikala Matik for joining us and sharing the story behind Nutrasoil and Vermiculture. It's a great reminder that healthy soils really do start with the small things. Nutrisoil's website is in the show notes and definitely worth a look. Thanks for listening to Told of the Earth Farm Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you follow or share it with someone who might get something out of it. I'm Darren Greek. Until next time, keep your hands dirty and your spirits high.