How to Add Nutrients to Soil

Grow better crops by understanding the intricacies of the soil food web.

By Andy Wilcox
Updated on October 1, 2024
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by Andy Wilcox
Worms are some of the key helpers of the soil.

Learn about the basics of healthy soil growth, and how to add nutrients to soil to promote healthy microorganisms, bacteria, and fungi growth while promoting worm activity.

Soil. Dirt. Earth. It seems like pretty simple stuff. We stick a seed in the ground, and up pops a zinnia or a pumpkin. We dig a hole to plant a tree or a bigger hole to pour a foundation for a house. Sometimes, earth moves (unfortunately), but mostly, it just sits there, doing nothing. Why talk about it?

If you ask a small child what soil is, you might be told it’s dirt. Ask an 8th-grade student after their earth science class, and they’ll tell you it’s weathered pieces of bedrock broken down by erosion into smaller and smaller particles. A high-school student will have forgotten about it, and a farmer will tell you land is valued by the fertility of its soil. A farm with “good” soil sells for more than one with poor soil. Gardeners, the strangest of the bunch, pick up handfuls of soil and smell it, inhaling deeply and smiling.

Soil is more than all of these definitions, and more than a collection of weathered minerals, little pieces of granite, mica, and quartz jumbled together. It’s a structured, layered composite of minerals, decayed and undecayed organic matter, air, water, and an entire community of living organisms — billions of them in a handful.

More Than Worms

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