Brewing microbes, and spraying my property once a week

Hoo-boy.  Here we go.  The simplest way to start healing my soil is by adding microbes.  And the simplest method of obtaining microbes is by brewing my own JADAM microbial solution (JMS).  There are other things you can do:

• Buying some EM, https://growingorganic.com/probiotics/how-to-use-effective-microorganisms/, but this costs more money.
• Making IMO or other KNF inputs, https://naturalfarminghawaii.net/learn-natural-farming/application-guide/, but the ingredients cost more than JMS, and the processes are longer and more complex.  I'm not ready for that.

If you haven't read my first post, you'll have missed the part where I discovered that our property has zero nitrogen, and I found out that my neighbor had been spraying the ditches that border our property with RoundUp twice a year, for years.  The chemical in RoundUp kills the microbes that fix nitrogen in the soil.  So, now I need to help them get back to a good population level.

Why microbes?  There have been many studies lately that confirm that soil with healthy microbe populations:

• Holds onto moisture better.
• Converts organic matter and rock particles into nutrients that the plants ask for.  (How do they ask?  They reward the microbes with sugars exuded from their roots when the microbes unlock the nutrients that the plant wants.  It's not a decision thing or a conscious thing or a mystical hippy thing, it's just cause and effect.)  

The results are: no need for fertilizer, and less need for watering, which is important in the global warming scenario.  You do need to keep adding organic matter to your soil, or rock dust.  I'm using mulch and bringing in other people's grass clippings and horse poop, and I might spare the expense on some rock dust once a year.

Here are some links about the importance of microbes:

• https://colsa.unh.edu/nhaes/article/2016/12/soilorganicmatter?ABk
• http://www.handsonpermaculture1.org/

So, I've started a weekly routine of making JMS, using Chris Trump's method, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4Uuy8DxGjA.  

For the "good soil", I grabbed some from the wild apple tree whose apples were the first apples that I gathered for seeds.  

It was hard finding what Chris called the "microbes".  They looked a bit like mycelium.  In my first batch of JMS, I used mycelium that I found growing in some of the horse poop my neighbor delivered.  MAN!  Was it powerful.  It smelled unpleasant but healthy.  After 2.5 days, it was a serious bubbling crude!  After 6 days it was dead and useless (no bubbles) and had some serious stank.  Chose not to do that again.

My second batch of JMS, I used mycelium from some wood and some leaf mold that I found in a conservation area.  Instead of cheesecloth, I used nylon sprouting bags that I had previously used to cover some jars of Rejuvelac that I made.  The resulting JMS smelled like... REJUVELAC!  Is it possible?  Could there have been some lactic acid bacteria on the nylon sprouting bags that started reproducing in the JMS?  Anyhoo, the JMS smelled healthy and good.  (I need a microscope to start identifying exactly what's growing in my JMS batches.)

I bought a 5 gallon backpack sprayer to spray the diluted JMS over my entire property.  It's exhausting, but if I listen to some good music, it's enjoyable.  Almost meditative.  And seriously good exercise.  I clogged the sprayer after my first use, though.  The little pouring basket that comes with the sprayer didn't filter out enough silt.  I took the fracking thing entirely apart before I discovered there was a super-easy-to-access filter sleeve in the stinking handle!  ARGH!

Now, when you make 4 gallons of JMS, and you need to dilute it with water in a 1:20 ratio, you're talking 80 gallons of water.  I don't want to pay for that every week.  Plus, our tap water is chlorinated, and I don't have enough bottles and containers to fill and let sit for 24 hours to off-gas the chlorine (chlorine kills microbes).  So, I finally set up our rain barrels (after two years!).  The first one filled and overflowed during the first rain, so I set up a second to catch the overflow from the first, but it didn't work because apparently I such at engineering.  I've got things working well enough now, until I can properly set them (and future barrels) up.  Now, I have a ready supply of more than 80 gallons of rain water.