Soil BioPacks were created to make soil biology practical for ordinary growers—so we can grow vegetables that are not just “big and green”, but genuinely nutrient-rich. This article tells the behind-the-scenes story: the delays, the lessons, and the hard realities of working with living systems. If you want tidy beds, chemical quick-fixes, and zero weeds, this is not for you. But if you want minerals, biology, and better food, read on.
The Soil BioPack Story — A Behind-the-Scenes Look
At long last, Soil BioPacks became available. From the outside they look simple—just a box of soil—but that simplicity hides a lot of learning.
Developing BioPacks was not as straightforward as it looked at first. It was a challenge, but also educational, so this is the story—warts and all.
A Warning Before You Start
Before you even think about buying a Soil BioPack, you need to decide whether growing with soil biology is really for you. Most of the world’s food is produced through chemically based monoculture. In one sense it is efficient: it produces food in bulk at low cost. The negatives are less obvious until you look closely—food can be short of trace minerals that matter for health, and produce is often picked before it is ripe, so plants do not have time to build many of the phytochemicals that help keep us well.
Organic farming recognised the dangers of excessive chemical use, but too often the emphasis has been on “avoiding toxins” rather than on the positive goal: improving health by improving the nutrient content of food.
What “Growing With Soil Biology” Is Trying to Do
Growing based on soil biology aims to increase mineral content and the important phytochemicals needed for health by relying on living soil to do its job: fungi, bacteria, worms, and the rest of the ecosystem release minerals that are otherwise locked up, and plants can ripen naturally and be eaten soon after harvest. The principles are good—but there are serious practical issues that must be stated up front.
The Practical Realities (That Many People Don’t Want to Hear)
First: soil biology—especially the critical mycorrhizal fungi—is delicate. It is easily damaged by working the soil. These fungi are living creatures that need looking after. It is not simply “sprinkle a little powder and everything is solved”. A certain area must be protected as a permanent refuge for the biology, and disturbance has to be minimised.
Second: soil biology is a working ecosystem. That means abandoning the neat, clean soil and perfectly organised beds many growers take pride in. In a biological system, crops are often grown alongside host plants that support the biology. The right hosts should not compete with your crops, and may even assist growth. But if you are a “tidiness freak”, growing with soil biology is not for you.
Third: a multi-culture system with highly fertile soil is a natural magnet for weeds.
The usual herbicides used to control weeds can quickly destroy soil biology. This approach does not lend itself to mechanisation, so you may end up swapping “no-till energy savings” for hand weeding. In practice, hand weeding can become one of the biggest ongoing costs—whether the cost is time, money, or both.
Story Time: Why This Matters
Once upon a time—about forty years ago—I watched red clouds of soil spreading across the sky. Millions of tonnes of topsoil were being lost in dust storms. That sort of sight changes you. It makes you realise how thin the living layer really is, and how quickly it can be destroyed.
For me, the BioPack idea sits inside a bigger question: if we keep treating soil like an inert medium—just something to hold roots upright—what happens to the food, and what happens to us?
The Core Idea: A Controlled Ecosystem (Not Sterile Dirt)
The aim of the BioPacks is a controlled ecosystem where plants and soil biology work together, while competition from “the baddies” is minimised. Plants are not optional extras in this system—they are the engine. Their photosynthesis provides the energy and carbon (in sugars) that powers the whole ecosystem. You cannot have an ecosystem without plants: they bring in energy from sunlight and carbon from the atmosphere.
Looking for One “Perfect” Host Plant (And Why That Was a Trap)
At one stage I thought I just needed one ideal host plant—something that would host fungi and other biology, grow alongside crops, and spread in a manageable way without being invasive.
Gota Kola: The Mark 1 BioPack
I thought I had hit the jackpot with Gota Kola. It seemed to fit the requirements, and it has another advantage: it can form a living green ground cover around vegetables.
Many people like clean bare soil (or mulch) around their plants. I don’t like bare soil. Even mulch can feel like “wasted sunlight” to me. I prefer green mulch that uses sunshine to feed the soil. If soil biology needs feeding, the energy ultimately comes from plant photosynthesis—so why leave sunlight unused?
Gota Kola seemed ideal because it was not too aggressive: it could give ground cover without outcompeting other plants. That was the theory. In practice, I ran into a problem: I had real trouble growing Gota Kola in isolation, which was the original plan for the BioPacks.
I don’t fully understand the mechanism, but it seemed to need other plants nearby to grow well. In mixed plantings it could thrive—tomatoes growing happily in a clump of Gota Kola—but in “pure” plantings it struggled.
A Lucky Failure (And a Better Lesson)
In a perverse way, failing to grow Gota Kola “cleanly” was a success. It forced a learning experience: nature is not built around one magic plant that does everything perfectly. In the real world, Gota Kola often grows in combination with other plants—grasses and weeds included.
That failure shifted the direction of the BioPacks. Instead of hunting for one perfect mother plant for the biology, I began to accept what nature keeps demonstrating: combinations matter, and synergistic plant communities can outperform single-species thinking.
Why Plant Combinations Matter
I have always been an advocate of companion planting, even when the “why” was not always clear.
The BioPack work made the reason more obvious: different plants contribute different root structures, sugars, exudates, and micro-habitats. The biology responds to that diversity.
The challenge becomes selecting a combination of plants that work together—supporting fungi and microbes—without becoming weeds in their own right.
Tap Roots and Fibrous Roots (A Useful Simplification)
This may be too much of a simplification for some horticulturists, but I tend to think of plants as having either tap roots or mat (fibrous) roots. Gota Kola is a tap-root plant, and my hunch is that it benefits from having a fibrous-root companion nearby.
If you want to go deeper into root behaviour, “Roots Demystified” by Robert Kourik is a worthwhile read.
Keeping the “Baddies” Under Control
Any productive biological system attracts competition—pests, weeds, and soil problems that enjoy the same fertile conditions you are trying to create. This is why “controlled ecosystem” matters. The BioPack approach is not about building a wild jungle you can’t manage. It is about building a living system you can keep stable and productive.
Adding the Biology
Even if you start with biologically active soil, it may not be enough—especially in worked soils.
So the BioPack method uses both existing soil life and specialist inputs to build a working ecosystem:
mycorrhizal fungi, rhizobium bacteria, compost biology, and worms.
Mycorrhizal Fungi: The Key Plank
Mycorrhizal fungi are often the most deficient in worked soils because they are easily damaged.
They can also be the hardest part of soil biology to build up—yet they play one of the most crucial roles.
That is why they are a central plank of the BioPacks.
The approach has been to improve natural mycorrhizae in the soil and combine that with commercially available spores. The spores are introduced by dosing roots directly, then reinforcing the inoculation by pouring spore-containing water into holes leading down to the root zone. This continues until the fungi have clearly “taken”.
BioPacks are then cut from the bed in a way that disturbs only a small portion, so the plants and fungi can regenerate for the next batch. While the system matures, extra spores may also be added to individual BioPacks before distribution—a belt-and-braces approach.
Minerals: The Law of the Minimum
There is a basic law in plant nutrition called the law of the minimum: plant growth is restricted by the component in shortest supply, regardless of how much of everything else you add.
Modern fertiliser technology means plants are rarely limited by a shortage of N, P, and K. This has shifted attention onto secondary nutrients—but there is another reality: humans require a much wider range of nutrients, particularly trace elements, than plants do.
Commercially it is perfectly possible to produce great-looking vegetables that sell well, yet still fail to provide the minerals and complex chemistry—vitamins and phytochemicals—needed for human health. That is why trace elements and minerals are added into the BioPacks.
Two choices exist for mineral supply: cheap rock dust from a quarry, or custom blended mineral packs.
The blended packs cost more, but were selected because they have better structure and defined content.
Growers can still choose to add extra minerals into their beds via quarry dust or trace element packs, depending on their goals and budget.
Compost: Building Microbial Activity
Properly prepared compost is the most practical method of increasing microbial action in soil.
Quality matters. Compost made with careful management of biology—and supported with inputs like seaweed products—can be excellent for encouraging biological activity.
Commercial “compost accelerators” can add concentrated bacteria, but if you are already using high-quality compost with well-managed biology, extra accelerators may not be necessary.
Worms: Mobility for Biology
Worms play a critical role in improving soil texture and—just as importantly—distributing biology.
Bacteria breed fast, but they don’t have legs. Without larger mobile creatures, biology can remain stuck in one area. Fungi spread more slowly as they grow outward through soil.
Worm eggs are more reliable in transport than live worms, even though they take a few months to mature and begin breeding. The BioPack approach uses a blend of worms: traditional composting worms that tend to remain in one area, and larger highly mobile worms that act as excellent carriers of soil biology.
Packaging and Distribution: The “Minimum Size” Surprise
One of the unexpected issues in developing BioPacks was postage. The original plan was smaller packs to keep postage cheap—after all, these are inoculants. But here was another learning experience: there is a minimum size for a viable ecosystem.
The pack size was upgraded to a 152 mm cube which, with some vermiculite, can be kept within the 3 kg limit. Posting fully grown plants with foliage turned out to be impractical. The contents get shaken and mixed in transit—sometimes it feels as if Australia Post has a special vibrating machine for the job.
The practical solution has been to trim plants to the top of the box and pack the remaining foliage in vermiculite so the box is tight and stable. This can disappoint people who have seen pictures of BioPacks in full foliage, because the box may arrive with no visible plants. But with water and sun, plants quickly refoliate.
Supply, Pricing, and How BioPacks May Be Delivered
At the time of writing, BioPacks were being shipped directly to customers. The pricing model described was $28 per BioPack, plus $15 postage, plus an extra $3 for each additional BioPack. Payment options included direct transfer (with account details after order confirmation) or PayPal.
Distribution through coaches was seen as an ideal pathway, because customers could see the ecosystem at work. Better still, coaches could incorporate a Soil BioPack into completed wicking beds offered for sale, so the buyer receives a system that begins with biology, not just a box of dirt.
The Final Point
The technical details—fungi, minerals, compost, worms, packaging—matter. But they should not distract from the main objective: growing systems that help ordinary people produce genuinely nutrient-rich vegetables, by rebuilding soil biology rather than trying to replace nature with quick chemistry.
Colin Austin — © Creative Commons. Reproduction allowed with source acknowledgment; commercial use requires a license.
Download ‘From Dirt to Living Soil’ (full PDF)
