How to breed gut microbes yourself

We may live in our cities of concrete and steel, but we are totally dependent on the Earth’s Ecosystem to survive.

Our energy comes from the sun captured by photosynthesis from the plants, plankton or algae. Our nutrients come from rocks, broken down by fungi, while the system of digestion and natural replacement is powered by the microbes.

But the microbes do more than that, they communicate with each other in our gut, creating natural intelligence which regulates our appetite, how much and where we store fat.

Sustained life is not possible without microbes, yet our modern food system has decimated the natural microbes and led to a worldwide crisis of chronic diseases, yet it is so simple to resolve.

Forget about thinking you can just go and buy a bag of microbes from your local chemist’s shop or online.

Microbes have a short life of around a day. They breed and die rapidly, typically in a day, in a state of dynamic equilibrium.

Of the microbes you think you are buying as probiotics, some may just survive if they are kept cold enough, but the real solution is to breed them yourself.

It is better and cheaper.

No, don’t think you need a Ph D in microbiology to breed microbes, they are a randy lot and breed like crazy with a little help from us. We just need to control the conditions so we breed the beneficial microbes and not the harmful ones that make us sick or even kill us.

This is not some wonder new technology; ancient hunter-gatherer tribes had a healthy gut biome, as do the few remaining hunter-gatherers. Their gut biome has been extensively researched, so we can be sure of that.

True, it can be a delicate process but I have experimented to find the easiest way so virtually anyone can breed their own gut microbes and have the benefit of a healthy gut.

Here’s how.

Containers

The easiest way, particularly if you live in a flat with no garden or growing experience, is to grow the beneficial microbes in containers, or more correctly, container sets.

You will need several to provide the volumes and reliable supply that you need, but let us just start with a single container set.

You will need two containers, which you can buy from any hardware shop.

Eventually, I suggest you buy a number of small containers rather than one big one. Technically, it allows much better control, and in practice, they are heavy.

I use 20-litre containers.

Most containers nest neatly inside each other, but some are designed so they can either stack or nest. Both work fine, but you need them in the nesting position.

You will need to drill a drainage hole, at least 15mm in diameter, in the edge of both containers, but preferably at the opposite end of the boxes, so the water has to flow through the boxes.

The top box

Fill the top box with any good potting mix and seed in the normal way.

The potting mix will not contain the beneficial microbes that you need in your gut biome, but we will come to that later.

Plants exude sugars

Plants use sunlight and carbon from the air to create sugars. They exude some of these sugars to attract and feed the microbes into the root zone.

Plants need these microbes to process the nutrients for the plants.

This is one of life’s greatest synergistic relationships, and without this relationship, you would not be here to read this article. It is the result of a billion years of evolution. Nature may take its time, but it produces incredible results in the end.

Different plants exude different sugars to attract different microbes. Gbiota distributors supply seed kits containing the needed spectrum of species to grow baby greens; the easiest and quickest plants to grow to breed gut microbes.

The bottom box

The bottom box is where most of the breeding action occurs. This is fuelled by organic waste, which you might otherwise throw into the green waste bin, at least if your local council is environmentally sensitive.

Put a piece of dishcloth over the hole so the waste does not fall out and make a mess.

You may need to poke the cloth with your finger from time to time so it does not silt up.

But this organic matter is not waste; it is a highly valuable resource which is part of the process of leading you to a long and healthy life. Pretty valuable!

But you can’t just throw in a load of kitchen scraps; the flies may be happy, but you will not be happy.

 

You will also need to add an inoculant kit to the bottom box.  This contains the starter microbes but also a variety of creatures of the soil, the great recyclers which break down organic waste for the  microbes to digest and have guts like us.

It is no coincidence that the microbes in our gut are also found in the soil.  Put it simply that is where they came from in the first place.

If you live in Australia you can sign up as a home grower when you will automatically receive a Gbiota inoculation kit in the post.  Delivery does have to be arranged as the kit contains living creatures which must be put into the Gbiota box as soon as it is received so they don’t die.

You can sign up to become a home grower here.

 

 

The recyclers

You need the aid of the recyclers, that myriad of creatures which recycle waste into something that is valuable.

There are many recyclers, each doing the job they are best suited to.

Worms are at the front of the list, but they don’t have teeth to break down tough waste, but they do have a very active gut biome, which can process their own weight in a day, but they do need the help of the other recyclers.

Soldier fly larvae do a great job here, but they won’t win any beauty competitions.

Beetles (not the musical Beatles, who have a good beat, but no beet) are also a critical member of the team.

But recycling is a team effort with many and varied species involved. Ask any soil micro-biologist and they will talk for hours about the world of recyclers.

But you don’t need to become a soil microbiologist; that is the job of the Gbiota breeders who supply the Gbiota distributors the material to make the kits, which consist of a combination of both the seeds and the inoculant.

All you have to do is buy the kits from your distributor.

Preferential breeding

Labile compost

If you just watered the top box, you would have two boxes: the top box growing plant in the conventional way. They will grow quite happily, but they will not be the beneficial microbes you need.

The bottom box is teaming with what is commonly called labile or young compost, meaning that some microbes will be the beneficial microbes you want, while others will not be properly processed as yet. Labile rhymes with nubile, which implies young

That is why you need two boxes.

Creating the conditions

But now comes the critical part, which is creating the conditions so the beneficial microbes will out compete and out breed any less beneficial microbes.

This may sound tricky, but in practice it is very simple – it is just a question of creating the right balance of air and water.

If the soil is too wet, the harmful microbes will breed; if the soil it too dry, the beneficial microbes won’t breed.

Goldilocks moisture

We need that magical Goldilocks moisture.

If you are one of those sorts of people who like to read long, boring technical articles, such as mine on how water moves through the soil and hydrophilic and hydrophobic soils, then please go ahead – but you don’t have to.

All you have to understand is that most soils love water and will hang on to it in a deep embrace and not let it go. Romantic but a bit of a pain.

So what we have to do is to thoroughly wet the soil until all the soil is saturated, then let the water drain away.

When the water saturates the soil, it will expel all the stale air, and when it drains, it will suck in fresh air.

Flood and flush

That is how we get the Goldilocks moisture, and it is just so simple and is actually less work than dribbling water in every day.

It is so simple. Take the drainage from the bottom box and add enough water to completely flood both the upper and lower boxes.

If you are using 20 litre containers, that may be about 5 litres, but you can easily tell, water needs to drain out of the bottom box and if it does not, then next time use more.

Soil blood

Unless you are wearing exceptionally dark sunglasses, you cannot help but notice that the so-called water is not clear water, but a dark brown.

If you are that sort of person, you may look at this under a microscope, when you will see that it is full of wriggly little creatures. Unless it is a very powerful microscope, you may not see the microbes themselves, but you will see that it is just full of life.

Where there is life, there is microbes, so you can be sure that when you pour this liquid over your plants, they will be covered in microbes.

We call this liquid soil blood because it is doing the same job as our blood – distributing air, water, nutrients, and other essentials around our bodies and among those essentials are the microbes that we need to regulate our bodies.

 

Does it work

Right now, I can’t tell you that it will extend your health span or life. It should, but now I don’t know for sure, you will have to wait a few more decades until you are really old, when it will be a bit too late.

But you can very quickly tell if it is working, maybe not right now but within a month or so.

You don’t need any complicated piece of scientific equipment to see if your appetite and food cravings are reduced. They should be, but there are some people who suffer from a genetic permutation that makes them continuously hungry, but that is very rare.

The most common cause of excessive hunger or getting fat is the wrong microbes in your gut.

You can also tell if you feel better. But if you want to be a bit more scientific, you can measure your weight or waist dimensions.

Risks and balances

But life is a question of risks and balances.

What are the benefits?

A longer health span and generally feeling better.

What are the costs? Apart from a bit of cost in setting up, the cost of the greens are a lot lower than buying decidedly non-fresh vegetables from the supermarket.

Apart from misreading the instructions and pouring raw sewage directly onto your plants, there is minimal risk from eating fresh home grown vegetables, certainly less risk than much commercially grown fruit and vegetables.

So what is the final conclusion?

In plain Aussie, just give it a go and see what happens.

Next read - Extinction or survive and thriveRegister for our Newsletter

 

Navigate to

main menu –  videos –  blogs – references

Colin Austin  © Creative commons this document may be reproduced but the source should be acknowledged. Information may be used for private use but commercial use requires a license.