As an environmental consultant for the last 26 years, I have learned many things about our soils and water. One of the most important has been the necessity of creating living ecosystems within our soil structures and waterways. Whether you are growing grass in your yard, maintaining golf courses, sports parks, and municipal recreation areas, raising your own garden, or growing commercial crops for sale to the public, our company philosophy is: “Farm the soil, not the plant”!
Healthy Soils
What does it mean to have healthy soils? Healthy soils are alive! The soil food web, as it is called, consists of sand, silt, clay, humus, living organisms, and organic matter. Living organisms are what I want to address in this article.
Many of us are aware that we carry 3 to 4 pounds of microbes in our stomachs at all times. These microbes help digest our food and provide nutrients to our bodies. Microbes are equally important to our plants and water.
Microbes act as the stomach for our plants, breaking down nutrients in the soil and making them available to the plant. In turn, the plant produces sugars that are transported to the root zone to help the microbes do their work. In short, this symbiotic relationship between plants and microbes keeps them both healthy and thriving.
Evidence of this relationship can be seen in the soil, where microbial colonization is 100 times greater around plant roots than it is just ¼ inch away. As in our own systems, if the microbes stop working, the soil becomes unhealthy, and so do our plants. In one teaspoon of healthy soil, there are more microbes than people in the United States, and in one handful of healthy soil, there are more microbes than people on this planet.
Our job, as growers of everything from grass to flowers to vegetable gardens to commercial crops, is to keep soils alive and healthy. Healthy soils create healthy plants.
Signs of Unhealthy Soils
During the last several decades, we have seen our produce decline in nutritional value, taste, texture, and longevity. Could this be attributed to the use or overuse of chemically based plant nutrients and plant protection products?
A few years ago, I met with a chili grower in New Mexico. His soil was so depleted that it had the same consistency and color as cement. The clods in the soil were the size of footballs and would not break when thrown on the ground.
When asked what kinds of problems he had with his fields, he replied, “None.” Yet he then advised me that over 25 years, his crop production had decreased by 75%, despite continual increases in the use of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. At the time of our meeting, he was applying 10 times the recommended amount of fertilizer required to grow chilies.
Unhealthy or dead soils create increased compaction problems, yellowing of plants, more soil diseases (such as fungi and mold), and anaerobic conditions like black layer on golf course greens and sports fields. Unhealthy soils are more prone to severe compaction, weed infestations, crop and plant insect damage, soil pathogens, and, above all, the overuse of our precious water resources. Standing water and runoff into the street are possible signs of unhealthy soil conditions.
Signs of Healthy Soil
Plants grown in healthy soil are more heat-tolerant and may require as much as 50% less water. Grasses are more vibrant, with less yellowing and fewer weeds such as dandelions. Soils become more porous, allowing for better water usage, and plants should develop much heartier root zones. We have seen healthy soils create better crop yields, higher-quality and more nutritious produce, and more uniform crops.
Healthy soils usually require less fertilizer. We have growers who have been able to cut fertilization by as much as 75%.
For the last two years, we have worked with an organic peach grower in Colorado who, last year, picked a peach from one of his trees that weighed 2.53 pounds, with several others weighing in excess of 1.5 pounds. His crop consistently has higher sugar content and better firmness.
What can you do to create living soil?
Use fertilizers that are organically based. Fish emulsions are a good source of organic nitrogen for plants.
©Rick Allen, BioLynceus®