how to collect Indigenous Micro-Organisms (IMO) from the correct location
IMO stands for Indigenous Micro-Organisms. It is a local (Indigenous) culture of soil biology (Micro-Organisms). It is meant to be collected as a culture of the complete ecosystem, taken from healthy, local soil. It is the key biological technology that defines Korean Natural Farming (KNF).
You do not need to know which organisms you are collecting. You do not need to know what the ratio of bacteria to fungi is. There are no must-have organisms, no magic species. Where the soil culture is collected, however, is important. A collection taken from a healthy, local site will have everything needed in perfect ratios.
Knowing specific species is incomplete information. Different strains of the same species can be very different. Just like different varieties of the same species of flowers can look very different, strains of the same microbe are also very different.
Take e coli for example. The e coli bacteria is everywhere, on skin, in the gut, in the soil, even floating in the air. However, certain strains of e coli can be absolutely deadly. Therefore knowing what species you have is not enough information, and can lead to some very bad results.
This may sound complicated, but it is not. The criteria for choosing a collection site are straightforward. The first step is understanding exactly what an IMO culture is.
IMO is a culture of a complete soil ecosystem. That means it contains organisms from all kingdoms of life, including ancient single-cell organisms, microscopic animals, and viruses, making the ecosystem in soils extremely diverse and incomprehensibly complicated.
Soil ecosystems differ based on their location, the climate, local conditions like soil type and weather, and the plants and animals in the area. In other words, soil ecology follows patterns. We use these patterns to decide where to collect and leave all the complicated, unknowable details to Nature.
In deciding where to collect an IMO culture, we look at specific criteria:
Local
Ecological Succession
What crops are being grown (location for collections for animals is not critical)
Plants with “sugar in the roots”
Areas that fit the above criteria but are slightly barren