The ‘Good’ Dirt on Dirt

HEALTHY SOIL MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN YOUR GARDEN
 

What makes a beautiful garden? Plenty of sunshine, lots of water, the right environment. Of course, there are other tips and tricks that are passed down to help us benefit from our labor of love, but what is the most important thing to focus on when gardening?

The answer: healthy soil.

Everything starts from the ground up, and understanding our garden's soil will help us make the right decisions about how or if we can amend the soil to make it better.

Healthy soil can affect plant growth in various ways including: root penetration, root aeration, retention of nutrients and water availability. When a garden has healthy soil, there is less need for fertilizers or pesticides. Providing plants/crops with healthy soil is providing them with good health.

Think of prepping your garden the same way you would take care of yourself: The better the environment you are living in and the better the food you provide yourself, the more successful you are going to be. The same goes for your garden. The better the soil, the better the crop.

Valerie Dantoin, a professor in the Sustainable Food and Agriculture Systems program at Northeast Wisconsin Technical Collage, will admit that “soils” is possibly one of her favorite topics. Dantoin teaches a variety of classes that often cover the importance of soil and its physical properties and how healthy soil helps us as gardeners.

So what should a gardener look for when considering healthy soil? Dantoin teaches that one of the most important things to consider is the soil’s texture.

Soil texture is “what we can feel when we rub the soil between our fingers,” explains Dantoin. Mineral soils are a combination of sand, silt and clay. When determining if your mineral soil has the proper texture, it should be the perfect balance of the three, creating what is called a loam.

Loamy soils will hold the appropriate amount of water, air and nutrients. “In northeast Wisconsin, we have some soil that contains relatively large amounts of clay. These soils stay wet longer than loams, and when they do dry out they “shrink-bake” into a very hard surface. In some areas, the soils are very sandy (perhaps old lake shores). These soils do not hold water well at all,” says Dantoin . “When particles are larger than sand, and there are significant amounts of larger rock fragments, soils are said to be gravelly. Gravelly soils are typically not suitable for farming.”

When prepping your garden this year, remember that light, fluffy soil is the best soil! Healthy soil should be roughly 25 percent water: Too much sand in your soil will leave your plants dry, whereas too much clay in your soil will cause your plants to become waterlogged. And just like humans, plants need the right amount of oxygen both above ground and in the soil.

Think of prepping your garden the same way you would take care of yourself: The better the environment you are living in and the better the food you provide yourself, the more successful you are going to be.

With proper soil health, there will be just the right amount of spacing between particles to hold air for plants to use. Heavy clay and silty soils will be too closely packed, leaving little air for your plants; further, sandy soil particles are too spaced out and leaving excessive amounts of air, thus leading to a fast decomposition of your plants and their organic matter.

Although the soil being used for your garden this year might not be perfect, and finding the right balance of soil texture may seem like a tough task, there are millions of friends here to help you. These friends are the healthy organisms that live in the soil! From bacteria, to fungi, earthworms and even mites, all of these healthy organisms help provide basic soil nutrients.

Just like before, we need to think of our garden like we would ourselves: Provide the best environment and nutrients available. We can do this by presenting compost to our gardens. Compost not only adds nutrients to our soils, but also provides a suitable home for the healthy organisms to flourish.

“Consider that compost’s job is to create habitat for the “good” fungal hyphae. These hyphae work with plant roots to make them hundreds of times more capable of foraging for nutrients by helping them cast a wider net,” Dantoin explains. “The secret of compost is that we are amplifying both bacteria and fungi through giving them what they need to thrive; a nitrogen source, a carbon source, air, moisture and a decent pH.”

Another benefit of composting is that it adds more organic matter into our garden. Unlike fertilizer, compost feeds the soil; whereas fertilizer feeds the plants. Knowing the key to good gardening is having great soil health, we can begin to understand why composting is so important. The best thing about compost: you can make it at home! The key to a great at-home compost is keeping a carbon and nitrogen ratio.

Your compost pile should always have more carbon matter than nitrogen matter. Carbon-rich matter is comprised of items like branches, stems, dried leaves, peels, bits of wood, bark dust or sawdust pellets, shredded brown paper bags, corn stalks, coffee filters, conifer needles, egg shells, straw, peat and more. Carbon matter gives compost its light, fluffy body. (It is important to note to not put dyed paper, wrapping paper, plastics, etc. into your compost bin.) The other part of the ratio is nitrogen. Nitrogen, or protein-rich matter is compiled of items like manures, food scraps, green lawn clippings and green leaves. Items you should not compost that are considered nitrogen-rich: meat, bones or fish scraps, diseased plants, pet waste and citrus fruits.

When preparing your garden this year, remember that good soil health is the key to maintaining healthy crops. Proper soil texture, beneficial organisms and added amendments like compost are all ways to keep your soil content and healthy. Happy gardening!