Protozoa are a group of singled celled, microscopic organisms ranging between 5 to 100 times larger than a single bacteria. When it comes to living soil we are specifically interested in free-living soil protozoa including flagellates, ciliates and mainly amoebas. These protozoa are key members of the soil food web and a critical nutrient cycler within our Living Soil Mix, they are found in abundance throughout our compost and soil when observed under the microscope. Protozoa eat or ‘graze’ upon the bacteria populations found within our soil, the nutritional content of which is much greater than that required to sustain the protozoa, these excess nutrients from the bacteria are released by the protozoa in a form ready to be used by your plants. Although bacteria is certainly the majority of protozoans preferred diet certain amoeba also have the ability to consume fungi cell walls and eat the internal contents eventually releasing plant available nutrients too.
These processes are known as nutrient cycling and are part of the natural system for plant growth in wild ecosystems such as meadows & forests. This is plants preferred method of ‘feeding’ as opposed to being force fed and without protozoa this system of nutrient cycling would be much less effective and potentially shut down.
Despite being much larger than a single bacteria, amoebas can also become the prey. Predated on by earthworms, micro arthropods, predatory nematodes and in some cases larger amoebas have been known to eat smaller amoeba. All of these processes further demonstrate protozoans vital contribution to nutrient cycling & the complexity within the soil food web interactions.
If your bagged soils claim to be natural and deliver organic nutrition to plants but fail to have protozoa populations present, particularly amoebas then you should seriously question the integrity of said product as these little bacteria hoovers are vital to the natural cycling of nutrients within a living, organic substrate.
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