Simple Tips for Better Garden Soil
Instead of thinking of your soil as an input-output system, treat it as a living food web that you feed and protect.
April/May 2009
By Barbara Pleasant
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Using compost and mulch while limiting tilling will nurture your soil’s food web and give you better harvests.
ELAYNE SEARS
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What techniques will you use to build better soil this season? Whether you’re filling new beds with bags of compost or tinkering with loam you’ve been nurturing for years, your first task may be to change the way you think. Sure, soil holds roots in place and helps them find moisture and nutrients. But truly superior soil goes beyond providing plants with a comfortable place to live and a seat at nature’s table. When it gets really good, soil does things we humans are just learning to appreciate.
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Some gardeners think that building better soil is mostly a matter of adding the right amounts of the right organic amendments, and this is basically true. Above-average levels of organic matter are one key to developing soil that functions well as a nutrient storehouse and is a root-friendly place to be. But looking to compost or any other type of organic matter as the one thing your soil needs is like reading the first chapter of a book and saying you’re done. There is much more to the story.
Mulch More, Dig Less
Take microscopic fungi, for example. Some beneficial, soilborne fungi help some plants take up phosphorus, and others manufacture nitrogen — two of the big three plant nutrients normally provided in a bag of fertilizer. In return, the plants provide nutrients and a habitat for these helpful mycorrhizae, a general term for microcritters that live in, on or alongside plant roots. We can’t see them, but they are down there, big time.
The group called arbuscular fungi is especially interesting, because many of them penetrate plant roots with a spider web of branched hyphae (fungus “roots”), which also spread out into the surrounding soil. This symbiotic union extends the plant’s root system, helping it gain access to nutrients and moisture that would otherwise be out of reach. In return, the fungi get a share of the carbohydrates produced by the plants. As hyphae die (the invisibly small structures live for only a few days), the decomposing tissues feed bacteria, protozoa and all kinds of microscopic soil critters. And as this food web thrives, it releases nutrients for your crops.
The story gets better. The hyphae and spores of these plant-friendly fungi are coated with a sticky substance called glomalin, identified and named as recently as 1996 by USDA scientist Sara F. Wright. Glomalin is largely responsible for a soil’s tilth, or crumb structure, and it’s part of the soil’s nutrient storehouse, too. More soilborne fungi (producing more glomalin) lead to healthy, happy plants. Glomalin is also one of the compounds responsible for that earthy smell of fertile soils.
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