Soil is a whole lot more than just dirt. While dirt is dead, soil is alive with microorganisms. You’ve got bacteria, fungi, and nematodes eating dead plant and animal matter and turning it into nutrients. You’ve got insects and worms breaking up organic matter and creating burrows in the soil that let nutrients and water reach plant roots. When soil is healthy, it’s a thriving community that works together with your plants.
Unfortunately, some of the things gardeners do can damage the soil that’s so important to keeping our plants healthy. Chemicals in herbicides, pesticides, and even fertilizer can kill beneficial insects and microorganisms. Neglecting to add organic matter or using the wrong kind of mulch can deplete nutrients in the soil. Even something as normal as tilling garden soil isn’t always the most sustainable practice.
I think most of us can agree we’d like to have healthier soil for our gardens. As an added bonus, it’d be great to make the soil better in an environmentally sustainable way. That’s what this post is all about.
1) Add Organic Matter
Adding organic matter to your garden is the single most important step you can take toward improving the soil. Organic amendments make soil more fertile and improve its texture, which also makes it easier for air and water to get to plant roots. It’s a good idea to add a 3- to 6-inch deep layer of organic compost to the garden soil each spring.
Composting is probably the most sustainable garden practice you can adopt. Making compost lets you recycle organic waste like dead leaves and kitchen scraps into a natural fertilizer for your garden. You get to cut back on waste going into landfills while also making your garden healthier. It’s a win-win for you and the environment. You can even use it to fertilize your lawn.
Livestock manures are another great way to add organic matter to your garden. However, they must be used carefully. Manure contains so many nutrients that applying it fresh can “burn” garden plants. There’s also a good chance that some of the nutrients from fresh manure will leach out of your garden before plants can use it.
In general, it’s a good idea to apply fresh manure in the fall so it can break down over winter or to compost the manure before application. If you do apply fresh manure to a growing vegetable garden, then make sure you wait at last 3 months between the application of manure and the time when you harvest root crops or leafy vegetables.
2) Minimize Use of Chemicals
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Americans go through 75 million pounds of pesticides each year. Those chemicals kill bugs that will hurt your garden, but they also kill beneficial insects as well. Making matters worse, when lawn and garden chemicals get washed into the waterways they can poison fish and other aquatic creatures.
The solution is to go organic whenever possible. If you’re following all the tips on this list for improved soil management there’s usually no need for synthetic fertilizers. Plus, in response to the growing awareness around the dangers of lawn chemicals, more and more organic alternatives to pesticides and herbicides are now on the market. You can also attract beneficial insects to your yard to help combat pest problems naturally.
Of course, there are times when a chemical solution is the best choice. For example, certain turfgrass diseases won’t go away without being treated by a fungicide. But if you’re cutting back on chemicals as much as possible and follow application instructions carefully, it won’t be as bad for the environment when you do need to use them.
3) Rotate Your Crops
Crop rotation means that you don’t plant the same type of plant in the exact same garden spot in back-to-back years. Instead, you rotate the placement of crops so there’s a different type of plant in each location. This helps prevent disease and increases soil fertility.
Many diseases are specific to a certain family of plants. If you rotate that type of plant out, then the disease will die off because it doesn’t have a host to feed on. For example, a disease that targets plants in the nightshade family (like tomatoes and potatoes) won’t affect plants like lettuce, corn, or beans. Rotating crops stops diseases from getting a chance to carry over year after year.
Another reason to rotate plants is that legumes (like beans, peas, and lentils) add nutrients to the soil. If you plant legumes in one part of your garden the nitrogen they fix in the soil will be available to the plants that go there next year. Then you can plant legumes in another part of the garden, where they’ll once again add nutrients.
4) Cover The Soil
A lot of the beneficial insects, microorganisms, and nutrients that make your garden healthy live in the first few inches of soil. You’ll want to protect this soil from erosion and continue to add nutrients each year.
One way to do this is by using mulch. Make sure you use an organic mulch so it will add nutrients to the soil as it breaks down. Compost makes an excellent mulch in established garden beds, letting you add nutrients without working the soil around perennial plants. Shredded leaves, wood chips, and weed-free hay or straw are also great choices for mulching.
Planting cover crops also helps improve the soil and prevent erosion. Depending on which type of cover crop you use, these plants can help break up compacted soil, add nitrogen to the soil, or bring nutrients from deep in the soil up to the surface. All cover crops will also help prevent erosion and add more organic matter to the soil. When you’re ready to plant something else, simply till the cover crop into the soil. Alternately, you can bury the cover crops in a layer of mulch or pull them and use the cover crop as mulch.
5) Be More Careful When and How You Till
Conventional wisdom says to till garden soil each year as deeply as possible. However, research shows this practice isn’t all that healthy for the soil. Deep, excessive tilling mixes up different layers of the soil profile and disrupts the web of healthy microorganisms. It also breaks down the loose, open soil structure that you want in a garden bed. More and more people, including large-scale farmers, are moving toward no-till farming.
There’s no need to till in established, permanent planting beds. Even in vegetable gardens, planting deep-rooted cover crops can take the place of tilling for breaking up compacted soil. However, tilling is very useful in certain situations. It’s the easiest way of turning a cover crop into the soil or working organic matter into a vegetable garden before planting. But for healthy, established gardens there’s no need to till deeply into the soil each year.
Whether or not you choose to use a tiller in your garden, you’re going to need reliable tools to maintain soil health. Here at Richardson Saw & Lawnmower, we carry Echo, Stihl, and Honda tillers as well as top-quality Corona hand tools. We’ll be happy to help you find exactly the right tools to keep your garden healthy.
