Your soil is your plants lifeline! It must provide nutrition, air circulation, and a place where they can spread their wings (or roots in this case).
Nutrients, oxygen, and protection are three things you must supply to have a healthy garden.
Here’s how to do it.
Nutrition
Compost is the food for your soil. It provides your plants with essential nutrients, adds composition which makes the soil lighter, as well as beneficial bacteria and fungi. Compost is easy to make at home.
The simplest way to make compost is to simply make a pile with brown and green layers. These layers will mesh together and decompose to make compost. Then you just spread it on the garden.
Straw, shavings, grass clippings, animal manures, leaves, vegetable, and plant wastes are all good for the compost pile. Simply add these things to the compost pile in layers like you are making lasagna.
Try to add at least a minimum of three inches each year of finished compost to your garden soil. Work the compost into the soil with a tiller of shovel or let the earthworms do that for you.
Oxygen
We don’t typically think of our plants as breathing. But they do and they need oxygen in the soil.
Earthworms are the workhorses of healthy soil. You can not have enough worms.
Do a test.
Go to the center of your garden and dig a hole six inches by six inches. How many worms did you find?
If you found no worms – oh-oh that’s not good.
If you found 1-3 worms – OK doing better but there is room for improvement.
If you found 4+ worms – doing great keep up the good work.
Learn how to test you soil for fertility
Worms tell you several things.
1. They indicate soil health. If your soil is rich in nutrients the worms are happy as they have good food.
2. Earth worms help to mix the soil and add nutrients by digesting and expelling soil.
3. Soil that is compacted lacks oxygen, doesn’t drain well, and won’t allow the roots of your plants to expand.
4. Does your soil have good oxygen levels?
Best of all worms add oxygen. All those worm tunnels the worms leave behind. They allow oxygen to come into the soil. This allows the plant’s roots to expand and secure themselves. Roots are important because they take in nutrients.
Soil that is full of oxygen is lighter and less compact. In addition to adding oxygen that light soil also absorbs water readily but doesn’t become a quagmire.
Plant Residues
We don’t often think of plant residues as a positive element. However, they break down and add nutrients to the soil, can reduce weeds and feed your worms.
Plant residues may be in the form of organic mulches or cover crops. Both protect the soil.
Mulches such as straw and wood chips protect the soil from rain and sun. Basically, they help the soil stay stable. In addition, they keep mud and soil pathogens from splashing onto the plant.
Cover crops are a plant that is grown to benefit the soil. Some benefits include soil protection, adding nutrients and out competing weeds. After the cover crop grows it is often tilled back into the soil.
Cover crops are easy to grow. You can pick a cover crop to meet your needs.
For instance, buckwheat is good at out competing and reducing weeds. Clover is good for adding nitrogen, and wheat is good for adding texture and bulk to the soil.
Take Away
These 3 things you can do are simple, easy and not expensive at all. Start today to improve your soil.
Author, Ame Vanorio, is the director of Fox Run Environmental Education Center