Soil Health Begins In The Spring - Take These Steps Now For A Better Harvest
Healthy soil = healthy plants = healthy you!
While most people who garden “KNOW” that healthy soil is where a healthy garden starts, most of us still spend more time washing soil off the plants we’re about to eat than working to ensure the soil truly is healthy.
We know that most grocery store produce is less nutrient dense today than it was 10 or 20 years ago. That can be directly attributed to the decline in soil health within industrial agriculture settings.
But what makes soil healthy?
Last week, I focused on the elements of spring gardening and design that help minimize pest problems later in the season.
This week, let’s look specifically at our soil, and how to promote soil health for better harvests later in the season.
Healthy soil is . . . .
Healthy soil is a superorganism of many co-evolved species that work together to:
cycle nutrients;
filter water, rendering it clean;
produce clean air by releasing organic compounds and oxygen;
mixing oxygen and gases into the top layers of the soil; and to
create the structure enabling plants to grow and animals to move across its surface.
Knock out one function, one pillar of the soil community, and you alter the characteristics of that soil.
So there is not ONE healthy soil, but thousands of soil types and stages and regional variations. Which is why there isn’t really one universally accepted definition of what healthy soil is.
And while my list of soil life functions above involves creating clean air and water as a function of healthy soil - soils without their complex communities intact instead contribute to water and air pollution.
Think of the difference between the scent of soil in the mountain forests and the way earth smells in an industrial site or heavily tilled field (if you can smell the soil at all there).
How do we create healthy soil for our gardens?
If we want healthy soils to grow food, we need to focus on creating soil that teams with life.
That means soils filled with bacteria, protozoa, fungi, nematodes, invertebrates (worms, insects), and vertebrates (amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals). All the sizes and layers of life are important to creating thriving abundant plant life.
Too often gardeners are taught about the importance of soil structure, but not about the importance of nurturing soil life. It is akin to doctors having one day on nutrition during their training.
Not every soil requires every single category of life to be associated with it. You may or may not want snakes to visit your garden (personally I celebrate them in mine). But when it comes to the microscopic end of the spectrum, we really want to be providing the soil elements that make those critical creatures thrive.
Fungi (yeasts, molds and mushrooms) play a critical role in this picture. Very thin soils are dominated by bacteria. Very deep soils in old forests are dominated by fungi. Grasslands typically sit at the half way point, being half bacteria and half fungi.
If you been following typical tilling advice, or filling bins and planters with sterilized potting soils, then your soils are on the thin side (not talking about depth here per se, but about life content).
By following more organic and no-till practices, you can enrich your soils and start actually generating top soil in your gardens. It’s possible to “grow the soil” as well as grow your food.
Here’s how to build healthy soil:
Try to only disturb the top layers - food gardening usually involves a lot of annual plants, and that means preparing seeding or transplanting beds. Keep your actions shallow to avoid tearing up the deeper soil layers. A gentle spring fluff up of the bed surface is better than a deep tilling.
Mix compost into the bed in spring - If you have a finished compost pile or have access to one, then integrating some compost into the top layer is a great way to improve soil structure. Just make sure the compost is “finished” so that it won’t start to generate heat again when mixed with the soil.
Plant through mulch - Avoid bare soil as much as possible. That means as soon as your seedlings or transplants are large enough to get mulch around them, then go for it. I like grass clippings, but you do have to take care not to get them too close to tender new stems. Straw, crushed leaves, cardboard, compostable films are all great options. Avoid wood chips though as these will suck up the nitrogen from the soil and leave your new plants yellow and sickly.
Add sticks and bark - Instead of wood chips as mulch (which is too much of a good thing!), you can use short pieces of branches and trimmings to provide the basis for improved fungi presence. An occasional chunk of bark in your garden bed provides all kinds of habitat for important garden helpers like ground beetles and millipedes. AND that same bark chunk is a great trap for slugs and snails who are hiding during the day (just flip it over and collect up the slugs for disposal - or duck treats).
On a side note - the eventual result of more fungi in the garden is mushrooms - do NOT eat wild mushrooms unless you have absolute confirmation that the ones in your garden are safe for humans.
Top dress with compost or more mulch - as the garden season progresses, adding more compost and/or mulch around the growing plants gives them that slow release boost of nutrients needed for great productivity. And it protects and feeds the soil dwellers you are enhancing. I like to weed and then add more mulch or compost.
Grow your soil
So essentially, building healthy soil is about creating great habitat for all those creatures that make up the superorganism.
That really makes for a kind of Goldie-Locks recipe for healthy soil:
Not too much and not too little:
water,
materials that will break down,
soil turning to introduce air and space for planting,
mulch or living plant cover to protect soil from sun and wind and rain,
sticks and bark for habitat and fungi, and
most of all it means avoiding chemical fertilizers and herbicides/pesticides that destroy the living components of soil.
If you see a nutrient deficiency showing up in your plants (e.g. yellowing from lack of nitrogen or purpling from phosphorus deficiency), try using an organic soil amendment rather than a chemical fertilizer. I like the Gaia Green Organic brand myself which I use on my houseplants and container gardening if needed. Over the long term, work to address the nutrient issue with compost and check your soil ph because that can affect nutrient availability too.
This spring I am installing several metal Grow Boxx beds in my garden (Canadian owned, Canadian built!). My sister loves hers and I am excited to get my own going. I will layer in cardboard and some branches into the very bottom of these beds, add some compostable materials over those, and top with finished compost before planting. (I’ll try to remember to take some pictures as I get them installed)
I also like the idea of installing a mesh basket with a lid into these types of large raised beds. The idea is that can throw compostable materials to feed worms and other soil dwellers right into those covered baskets. The scraps can feed and support soil life while not endangering plants or attracting rodents with fresh materials. I plan on trying this out too.
Did I miss one of your favorite soil building tips? Please share them in them comments.
It’s about Your Health too!
While nutrient-rich food from healthy soil cannot help, but contribute to your health too, did you know that putting your hands in soil has direct impacts on your microbiome?
A 2023 paper in the journal Urban Agriculture and Regional Food Systems has shown that after gardening in organic rich soils, participants had increased microbial presence on their skin for up to 12 hours later.
While some of you may be thinking - yikes grab that soap! - the reality is that we evolved in the natural world with protagonist and antagonist microbes that make our immune systems function. When we no longer put our hands in the soil, or breathe the organic compounds related to soil microbe activity, we are missing components that help create mental and physical wellbeing.
- from “The Scent of Soil . . . . “ TNH post
We are all connected. Those little soil bacteria, protozoa, nematodes and fungi that we mostly cannot see are responsible for creating the environment that our food plants thrive in.
This spring, make use of your garden journal and take some mindful action to create healthy soil. Just like fluid checks in your car, or recharging a battery, we need to become soil keepers as well as gardeners.
This needs to become a thing: Have you checked your soil yet this month?
Happy Gardening!
S
The Naturalized Human brings together the science and human experience of the mind-body-food connection. I hope you stick around and become part of this community seeking to understand how the food we eat, and the environments we live in, impact everything about our minds and bodies.
I would add: maximize the number of plants growing and photosynthesizing. They feed soil life, from microbes to earthworms. Great post!
Been no-dig/till for about ten years now and I now feel like leaving my soil healthy is my legacy.