How Microbes Brought the Worms Back to Old Cane Land

John Caverly ("Ginger John"), Farmer, Onomea, outside Hilo · USA (Hawaiʻi)

Part of the full session video: this talk runs from 0:00 to 5:52. Times below are the video's.

A Hilo-side farmer opens the Microbes (IMO) skill share on the lawn with his own story. His old cane land at Onomea had no earthworms and nothing would grow; after he began making Microbes with Dr. Park, seedlings given Microbes outgrew his organic mix, and 500 lb of IMO-4 laid under a diseased kalo field was followed two weeks later by worms everywhere. He says he has bought no organic fertilizer in seven years and that it takes about 40 days to go from rice to bagged IMO-4.

What they found

The question

Can a farmer's own Microbes (IMO) bring life back to worn-out cane land?

How they tested it

Old sugar-cane land at Onomea, outside Hilo: about 70 years in cane plus commercial sweet potato. He found no earthworms; kalo, bananas and cassava were diseased or would not grow despite bought mulch and organic fertilizer. Seedling test, about eight years before: flats of parsley and of poha, half with his organic mix, half with Microbes added; number of flats not stated here. Field: a large kalo field with mosaic disease, size not stated; on about 1 November, seven years before, during a storm, 500 lb of IMO-4 laid under the kalo and mulched; checked two weeks later. What happened to the kalo disease or yield: not stated. Current practice: Microbes, mulch and animal manures.

What was compared

Microbes in the seedling mix — Microbes (IMO) added to half the parsley and poha flats; the other half his organic mix only. Amount not stated.
IMO-4 under the kalo — 500 lb of IMO-4 laid under a diseased kalo field and covered with mulch, in the eye of a November storm. Field size, so rate per acre, not stated.
Ongoing — Microbes, mulch and animal manures; no bought organic fertilizer for seven years.

Results

Seedlings given Microbes were plainly bigger in two weeks

"From 100 feet away, you knew which ones had the IMO. They were huge, green, full of roots." Parsley and poha flats, Microbes vs his organic mix. Eyeball judgment; no measurements given.

▶ 1:55 As spoken
Worms everywhere two weeks after 500 lb of IMO-4 under the kalo

Before, he says there was not a worm on the farm ("we didn't have soil, we had dirt"). On Thanksgiving morning he pulled back the mulch and found worms everywhere. Whether the kalo disease cleared is not said.

▶ 2:52 As spoken
No bought organic fertilizer for seven years

He uses Microbes, mulch and animal manures, and says "it works really good". No yield figures.

▶ 4:11 As spoken
About 40 days from rice to bagged IMO-4

Rice out, then IMO 1, 2, 3 and 4: "takes about 40 days, just a little over a month".

▶ 5:33 As spoken

Hold it loosely

One farmer's story, told from memory; no measurements.
The only comparison is the seedling flats, judged by eye; how many flats and how they were scored is not said.
The worm count before and after was not measured, and the storm, the mulch and the season changed at the same time as the IMO-4, so the worms cannot be credited to the Microbes alone.
The diseased kalo's outcome and yields are not given.
Dates are approximate ("about eight years ago", "seven years ago").

For your farm

Test it yourself first: split a batch of seedling flats, Microbes in half, your usual mix in the other half, and look in two weeks.
Lay IMO-4 on the ground and cover it with mulch.
Earthworms are a sign to watch for: in his words, "it's the worms that do the farming".
Plan on about 40 days from setting out the rice to having IMO-4 ready.
Coming to a class isn't enough; go home and make it.

Next to Master Cho's teaching

Agrees

Lay IMO-4 on the ground and mulch it Cho says scatter IMO-4 so the topsoil is barely covered and do not bury it; in 2017 he adds that it needs mulching out of direct sun. Cho times it 7–14 days before planting; John put it under a standing, diseased kalo crop, which Cho's text doesn't cover. The 500 lb can't be checked against Cho's minimum rate because the field size isn't given.

Cho, Cho Han-Kyu's Natural Farming (Theory), p. 61
Agrees

Worms come back after Microbes Cho lists 'revitalization of the ecosystem' as a function of IMO: bacteria and fungi first, then nematodes, earthworms and other soil animals.

Cho, Natural Farming Agricultural Materials (Recipe), p. 8
Agrees

Treat crops and animals with parental love John quotes Master Cho correctly: Cho writes that a farmer should have a parental love towards his crops and livestock.

Cho, Janong Natural Farming (2003), p. 50

“And in two weeks from 100 feet away, you knew which ones had the IMO.”
▶ 1:55

“I started pulling back the mulch and it's just worms everywhere.”
▶ 3:11

“It's the worms that do the farming.”
▶ 3:19

“You've got to go home and do it.”
▶ 5:01

In this talk

Transcript

Transcribed and checked by hand against the recording. Click any time to play from there.

0:21 So I got this farm, this piece of old cane land in Onomea outside of Hilo. and when I purchased the land it was been in sweet potato commercial farming sugar cane for 70 years this much of the topsoil was gone and it was there wasn't a worm on the property at all it had just been poisoned it was dead look like it was napalm there's nothing there and my my passion is growing kalo I love growing kalo. I've been growing kalo for about 45 years. And so I started, you know, plant my bananas, my kalo, and my cassava and stuff like that. And I

1:06 couldn't get anything to grow. Everything was diseased and I was bringing in mulch and using, buying all this organic fertilizer and nothing was working. And I was getting really frustrated and I heard about this Korean natural farming using the microorganisms and I met Dr. Park and there was only a few of us at the time and we started experimenting with making these IMOs and I had just started some a good way to really test the truth of this mythology is that we had some flats of parsley and flats of poha berries and half of them we did with organic, our organic mix, and the other half

1:50 we put the IMO in it. We had made our first IMO, this was about eight years ago. And in two weeks from 100 feet away, you knew which ones had the IMO. They were huge, green, full of roots. So I built a shed and we immediately started making the IMO 3, the IMO 4, the 1, the 2, the 3, the 4. And it was seven years ago and I had a large kalo field and it was all diseased. It had this mosaic disease. And I was pretty disappointed, very frustrated. And at that time, it was the first of November, and I just happened to have my first like

2:32 thousand pounds of IMO 4 sitting in the shed. And we had a big storm. And in the middle of the storm, the eye of the storm came and it was like, you know how it is that the atmosphere just crackling with energy and nitrogen and I went up, some helpers, and we laid out 500 pounds of the IMO 4 under the kalo and mulched it and two weeks later and at that time there wasn't a worm on this farm you couldn't find the the the we didn't have soil we had dirt it was like laundry detergent it was lifeless there's nothing to it and two weeks later I went back out on Thanksgiving morning and

3:11 I started pulling back the mulch and it's just worms everywhere. I thought wow this is it because if you're farming worms you're farming because it's the worms that do the farming. They bring so many benefits to the soil and so basically you know what we're practicing now is what I call biological farming. We're working with the microbes, we're working with the worms, we're We're working with the foundation of our life. And the plant life, it just comes right along. It's just like within our body, we have four tons, seven trillion microbes in our gut. And that's how the nutrients from our food

3:54 get into our blood. And it's the same thing with the soil. If you have an abundance of balanced biology in your soil, with the microorganisms, you're going to have very healthy plants that are going to produce a lot of really good nutrition. So I haven't been down there to buy pallets of organic fertilizer now in seven years. We just use IMOs and mulch and animal manures, and it works really good. It's very simple. And the beautiful thing about this is that it really, as Master Cho says, that you should approach your plants and your animals with parental love.

4:38 And when you begin this type of farming, you really make a really strong connection to the natural process of the earth and how connected we are to nature and the miracle of this creation. And this here is such a blessing because it's here. You can do it. But what I try to tell everybody, that you come to these classes and you learn about this, you've got to go home and do it. You can read about it, ain't going to do you any good until you start doing it yourself. And it's all quite simple. We have a website, my wife Jackie

5:12 has a website, Kalapana Organics. And also I think there are books here. And you make your rice and you put it out. You know, the protocol is there and you make your IMO 1, you make your IMO 2, you make out your IMO 3, that's what we're gonna do today, and then you make your 4 and if you start from making your rice to when you get your IMO 4 bagged it takes about 40 days just a little over a month and once you start using it mmm you're gonna be very impressed it's it's quite a wonderful thing how your plants respond so immediately. So what we're going to do is like we use, we're gonna

About this talk

Speaker: John Caverly ("Ginger John")
From: Farmer, Onomea, outside Hilo
Country: USA (Hawaiʻi)
Length: 5:52
Session: Thursday, October 1: talks, skill shares on the lawn, and the keynote
Event: Natural Farming Symposium 2015, October 1–3, 2015

Who's speaking

John Caverly ("Ginger John") Farmer on old sugar-cane land at Onomea outside Hilo; has grown kalo for about 45 years (not named in this clip; identified from his matching accounts elsewhere)
Dr. Hoon Park Mentioned: the speaker met "Dr. Park" and a few of them began making Microbes with him
Jackie The speaker's wife; runs the website Kalapana Organics
Cho Han-kyu Mentioned: "as Master Cho says", approach plants and animals with parental love

How this was checked

Confidence: high

Whisper transcript checked line by line; unclear lines (opening, Korean natural farming, the storm and IMO-4 amounts, the gut figure, the website) re-transcribed from the master audio with a second Whisper pass; 24 contact-sheet frames checked (one speaker, no captions or slides). Speaker identity and the website name checked against the KNF corpus.

No transcript B exists for this stretch. The speaker is never named in this clip and no caption is shown. He is identified as John Caverly, "Ginger John", because his own introduction on Drake's 2015 symposium camera (MVI_0012) and his later tellings (2016, 2017) give the same story: Onomea farm, Dr. Park, parsley and poha flats, about 500 lb of IMO-4 under sick kalo in a November storm, worms on Thanksgiving morning, wife Jackie, Kalapana. Day 1: this opens the Na Leo 'Demonstrations' upload on the skill-share lawn, and he says 'you make your IMO 3, that's what we're gonna do today'. The IMO skill share was on day 1. The start is the Na Leo logo; speech begins at 0:21. The last line runs into the hands-on part.

7 corrections to the machine version

0:48 ~~my passion is growing callow ... growing calla~~ → my passion is growing kalo ... growing kalo Hawaiian word for taro, misheard throughout (also 'collo')
1:16 ~~this current natural farming~~ → this Korean natural farming Common mishearing of 'Korean'; context is Dr. Park and IMO
2:32 ~~thousand pounds of Vymo 4~~ → thousand pounds of IMO 4 Term misheard; confirmed by second pass
2:09 ~~a large collo field~~ → a large kalo field Crop name
2:52 ~~imo4 under the collo~~ → IMO 4 under the kalo Crop name and term
5:12 ~~Calipano Organics~~ → Kalapana Organics Jackie Prell's business name as written in her own posts in the corpus; second Whisper pass also heard 'Kalapana'
0:21 ~~line starting at 0:00 over the Na Leo logo~~ → line starts at 0:21 Timing: speech begins after the station ident

5 lines we could not confirm

0:21 Speaker = John Caverly ("Ginger John") Not said or shown in this clip; inferred from identical accounts he gave elsewhere. High confidence, not confirmed from this recording.
0:21 Surname spelling 'Caverly' His own 2015 introduction (by ASR) and a 2019 recipe book give 'Caverly'; other transcripts hear 'Cavalier'. The corpus notes it still needs confirming with the family.
1:34 "to really test the truth of this mythology" Both Whisper passes hear 'mythology'; he may have meant 'methodology'. Left as heard.
2:32 "my first like thousand pounds of IMO 4" then "we laid out 500 pounds" He had about 1,000 lb on hand and applied 500 lb; in other tellings he gives 500 lb or 1,000 lb applied. The amount applied in this telling is 500 lb.
3:46 "we have four tons, seven trillion microbes in our gut" Heard the same in both passes, but four tons can't be right; he may have meant a different figure. Left as heard; don't cite it.

Topics

bananas earthworms microbes mulch soil taro