How can we maximize the health of the soil in order to ensure that our landscapes are vital and living Regenerative ecosystems? (And save water and resources at the same time…?)
First it’s important to understand how plants get their food. The Soil Foodweb is responsible for nutrient cycling, and this elegant synergism of microbes was set up LONG ago (a billion years or so) before chemical fertilizers and pesticides came on the scene. To lay it out in a very basic way, the bacteria and other microbes, including fungi, feed on exudates from plant roots. Other microbes such as protozoa eat the bacteria and other microbes. Since the protozoa, etc. only utilize a relatively small percentage of the nutrients derived from eating the bacteria and other microbes, the extra nutrients are released in a form that is directly available to the plants. While this explanation is overly simplified, it can serve as a very general description of the nutrient cycling process.
Though there are several important steps to creating a truly Regenerative Landscape with viable living soil, the first thing to do is to analyze what you have to work with, starting with the site’s soil. The soil should be carefully analyzed at the beginning of any landscape project. The results of these tests can be mapped on the site plan, and different soil remediation strategies developed for each area.
I’m not just talking about your ordinary Soil Fertility Test, which analyzes the basic chemistry of the soil. While this kind of test is important for identifying certain soil characteristics, and you can gain valuable information from the standard soil test, it’s also important to perform a separate test to analyze the biology in the soil, also known as the Soil Foodweb.
The soil biology test, or Soil Foodweb Analysis, will give you much more information regarding what’s really going on in the soil. While a standard soil test will tell you levels of soluble nutrients, contrary to popular belief this doesn’t tell you what’s actually available to the plants. Many nutrients are held fast in the organic matter and in the soil particles, just waiting for microbe action, and will not be measurable by a standard soil chemistry test. When the correct ratios of microbes are present in the soil they will unlock the nutrients from the compost and other organic matter, and deliver them to the plants. By analyzing the ratios of the various microbes, the bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, etc., we can get a much better idea of what nutrients are available to the plants.
The next step, once we identify the existing biology, is to stimulate and enhance the beneficial microbes that make up the Soil Foodweb. The right soil biology will improve soil structure, increase the water holding capacity of the soil, cycle nutrients to the plants, minimize runoff, minimize weeds, prevent disease, and will maximize the health of the entire ecosystem. We have a fabulous tool for adding biology to the soil, in the form of Actively Aerated Compost Tea, or AACT. By using properly aerated and balanced compost tea, tailored to the specific types of plants that will be grown, along with other selective nutrient sources, we can help the soil move towards a balanced, regenerative state.
I’ve mentioned before how presumptuous I think it is for people to think that we need to pump chemical fertilizers into the soil to enable plants to grow. Well, it may also seem presumptuous to think that we need to ‘heal the soil’ by adding biological concoctions to the soil, such as compost tea. Well, the problem is that we’ve caused so much damage to the soil that we need to step in and help nature heal itself, to mitigate for all the soil compaction, soil degradation, and pollution we’ve caused. Our role is to assist in balancing the biology, and then step back and let the microbes do their thing!
By re-balancing the biology in the soil the vitality of the ecosystem can be dramatically improved. This translates to improved soil structure, better water holding capacity (which means less water is needed), more efficient nutrient cycling (so fewer added amendments are needed), reduced pests and diseases, reduced carbon footprint, reduced pollution, and, the bottom line - significant cost savings! It’s simply a win-win proposition!
Post by Suzanne Schrift
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