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Soil Life

© Deborah Turton

What is soil? It's that stuff that holds your plants up so they don't fall over, right? Yes, technically that's correct, but soil is so much more than that. As an organic gardener, your soil provides the nutrients and organisms your plants will need to survive and fight off disease and pests. Organic soil is alive with insects, fungi, slime molds, bacteria, and protozoa and more. It's a fascinating ecosystem.

Healthy soil is like good food. People thrive on variety in their diet, and plants thrive on variety in their soil. Plants evolved in soil teeming with life; therefore, it's not surprising they do well in living soil.

So what is soil made of? Soil is made of minerals, spaces (or pores), and organic matter.

Minerals come from the underlying rock, the rock that is broken down to produce the particles found in soil. Rocks can be broken down by physical action such as wind, water, and ice; chemical action, such as reacting chemically with the water; and biological action, such as plants and animals that break up rock.

Let's see how this works. Think of a cliff covered with lichen. The lichen breaks down the rock. A mountain goat walks over the rock and breaks off a piece. This falls down the mountain, landing in a riverbed where the water physically breaks it down and chemically reacts with it, further breaking it down. Eventually the rock is reduced to small particles, which are flooded over the riverbank and deposited, forming the mineral part of the soil.

In between those mineral particles are pores filled with water or air. The pores allow plant roots, insects, water, and air to move through the soil. Without spaces between the soil particles, it's much harder for life to gain a ‘roothold.'. Think about a hard packed clay and a light fluffy compost enriched garden bed. The latter has plenty of pores for life to use, but hard packed clay is generally not a very hospitable place for plants.

The organic matter in soil includes living and dead plants, animals, fungus, bacteria, slime molds, etc. All of this organic matter is also important to your plants health. The more organic matter you have in your soil, the more stable it will be. Living creatures recycle nutrients and hold those nutrients in the soil until your plants need them. The creatures eat each other and pests that arrive in your garden. It's a veritable bug eat bug world down there in your soil. These creatures never rest, so your soil is always changing and evolving into something else.

The copyright of the article Soil Life in Organic Gardening is owned by Deborah Turton. Permission to republish Soil Life in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.