First, let’s be clear about the difference between dirt and soil.
The way the words sound almost says it all. Dirt is what’s on the driveway and kitchen floor, while healthy, living soil is rich and dark brown in colour, has the heavenly scent of damp earth, is slightly crumbly to the touch and loaded with worms, bugs, microbes and other life forms.
Soil is the foundation of everything we do in our landscapes and food gardens. Here’s why.
The soil food web in living, healthy soil is a highly sophisticated, biologically active, interconnected and interactive environment of untold billions of busy micro and macro soil organisms that are continually eating, digesting, multiplying, gas converting, pooping, tunneling, etc. These critters are the fungal and bacterial microbes, worms, insects and other microscopic organisms, all playing a critical role in the soil health and structure, and dependent on each other for survival.
In other words, this is an ecosystem and a habitat that these soil dwellers have created for themselves, depending on the conditions they find themselves in, and we don’t what to muck with it by digging, flipping and tilling it all up. It might look nice and tidy and weed-free afterwards, but you’ve just collapsed or destroyed this entire wonderful world. Over and under-watering, using toxic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides will also collapse this ecosystem.
So what do we do instead? Nature has a top-down method of gardening, which is what we’re now taught to do as well. Organic matter such as leaves and needles, are continually dropping on the surface, which we call the litter layer. (We create a litter layer by mulching). The soil organisms and worms then do their job of breaking it down into smaller, more nutrient-available forms for your plants and other soil dwellers to take up.
The end or stabilized product is a fine, dark soil called humus. Humus acts like a nutrient and water holding tank, and you want to have lots of it in your soil makeup, which depends entirely on the amount of fresh organic matter you’re adding to the food web. In the meantime, the worms tunnel away, creating air spaces, places where plant roots can travel more easily and water can flow more freely. The more worms the better.
I know this subject came a little late in the season and most of us have already started our gardens. Some of you are probably looking out at that neat, beautifully-tilled garden, wondering what you’ve just done to it. Not to worry for now – we’ve all been doing it because that’s how it’s always been done.
In order to re-establish the soil food web’s microbe and worm populations, add a good two to four-inch layer of mulch, which will provide food for them and kick everything into gear again. But from here on, leave them alone to do their thing.
You can also re-establish your microbes and increase the nutrient level in your soil by adding some good compost tea, or you can even buy microbes on-line through the Organic Gardeners Pantry located in Victoria. Over time, with a continual food supply on the surface, the soil critters will build you the healthy, living soil that your plants will love and save you a lot of hard work and time.