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How to Build Healthy Soil Naturally

Written by: Claire Yu

Reviewed by: Rebecca Newbold


Have you ever realized how significant the ground that you walk on every day is for sustaining a thriving garden, agriculture, or even human life? If you answered yes, you’re in luck! No matter whether you’re an aspiring gardener, farmer, or planter, this guide will help you ensure the health of your soil through natural processes. 


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What is soil health?

Soil health is defined as the capacity of soil to function as a vital living ecosystem that supports plants, animals, and humans (1). Healthy soil has five main functions:

  1. Regulating water –– soil helps control where rain, snowmelt, and irrigation water goes.

  2. Sustaining plant and animal life — soil is integral for the diversity and productivity of living things.  

  3. Filtering and buffering potential pollutants –– soil has minerals and microbes that degrade, immobilize, and detoxify organic and inorganic materials.

  4. Cycling nutrients –– soil stores, transforms, and cycles carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and many other nutrients.

  5. Providing physical stability and support –– soil structure provides a medium for plant roots, and soil soil supports human structures while protecting archaeological treasures.


Quality soil consists of water, organic matter, air, mineral particles, and microorganisms (3).

Soil testing is vital to understand soil health
Soil testing is vital to understand soil health
First steps

If you’re working on building your garden or farm, and have no idea how to get started with developing the health of your soil, read further for some helpful tips! 


To start off, you can test your soil to see if it has good quality. Understanding your soil will allow you to create an optimal soil ecosystem (2). You can submit a sample of your garden soil to a local soil testing lab, and receive results that reveal information on soil texture, pH, nutrients, organic matter, and fertilizer recommendations for the plants you plan to grow (Note: for those in Georgia, you can visit the UGA soil testing site to learn about cost-effective soil testing near you!). However, if inconvenient or unachievable for other reasons, don’t worry — there’s an alternative! 


Instead of conducting an official test on your soil, you can still gauge part of its quality by giving it a feel. Dig up a sizable soil clump, and rub a small amount of soil between your fingers (4). Good soil structure should feel crumbly or granular, and would have visible clumps. There also might be loose pieces of soil with clinging plant roots and decaying organic matter.


Speaking of organic matter, your next step is to prioritize adding it to your soil. Organic matter improves soil air and water availability, which leads to healthy root growth. Examples of organic matter include living plant roots and organisms, decomposing plant and animal residue, and enzymes secreted by soil organisms like worms, fungi, and bacteria. As these organisms break down plant and animal parts, nutrients become available to plants, and the plants in turn feed the soil with their remains. Highly decomposed plant material is called humus, and is a stable and crucial source of plant nutrients. For all plants to grow, they need both macronutrients and micronutrients. Organic matter can be the solution to this; compost is a source of macronutrients like nitrogen, in addition micronutrients like manganese and zinc.



Step-by-step guide

For a more concise version of the information in the previous section, see the list below!

  1. First, test your soil to see if it has good quality! You could submit a sample to your local soil testing lab for results on soil texture, pH, nutrients, organic matter, and even fertilizer recommendations for the plants you plan to grow! If you can’t access a lab, try giving your soil a feel. Good soil structure should be crumbly and granular, and would have visible clumps, as well as loose pieces with clinging plant roots and decaying matter.

  2. Next, add organic matter to your soil! Examples include living plant roots and organisms, decomposing plant residue, and enzymes secreted by organisms like worms, fungi, and bacteria. These organisms break down plant and animal parts and allow nutrients to become available for plants. In turn, the plants feed the soil with their remains. For all plants to grow, they need both macronutrients and micronutrients; organic matter achieves this as compost is a source of nitrogen (macronutrient), plus manganese and zinc (micronutrients).


Further tips

Mulching

To keep guaranteeing the health of your soil, you should seriously consider the following tips. Firstly, you should protect your soil through organic mulching (4). During mulching, you apply mulches as a 2 to 4 inch uniform layer over the top of soil. It’s as simple as that! Organic mulches improve soil by retaining soil moisture (shading the soil from the sun), moderating seasonal temperature extremes, lessening weed germination and growth, decomposing to add nutrients and boost structure, and retaining rainwater and mild runoff. Some options for organic mulches for a home garden are shredded bark or hardwood, shredded leaves, pine needles, and straw. Mid-spring is a good time to mulch garden beds.


Minimizing soil compaction

In addition to organic mulching, try to avoid soil compaction. Soil compaction compresses the soil’s aggregate structure, which reduces pore spacing. This then causes poor water infiltration, runoff, erosion, and ponding, as well as difficulty for plant roots to grow and find water, air, and nutrients. Too much foot

Instead, practice no-till gardening, or if necessary, till very lightly to avoid disturbance. 
Instead, practice no-till gardening, or if necessary, till very lightly to avoid disturbance. 

traffic and the use of heavy equipment or loads, especially when soil is wet or saturated, leads to soil compaction. So don’t forget to treat your soil with care; walk on paths, keep carts on paths, and don’t park or ride heavy vehicles on the lawn. You should wait until garden soil is relatively dry in the springtime before digging, planting, and stepping on it. Furthermore, avoid excessive mechanical rototilling! Newly rototilled soil may look loose and friable, but if watered and stepped on during planting, the soil can easily compact and become firm. Instead, practice no-till gardening, or if necessary, till very lightly to avoid disturbance. 


Wondering how to break up compacted soil without tilling? One solution is to try the broadfork method! You can crack the soil open by sticking the tines of the fork vertically down the soil, as far as the fork will go (7). You will need to step on the main crossbar of the broadfork to let it go all the way down into the soil. Once it is fully sunk into the soil, step off of the fork and pull the handles back toward your body until the soil cracks open. Then pull the fork out of the soil. Repeat for every 12-24 inches or so, but don’t majorly disturb or flip over the soil. Another solution you can perform is planting deep-rooted plants. For instance, radishes are a great way to aerate heavy soil (8). Other techniques include adding peat moss and earthworms to the soil, using gypsum, a soft white-gray “clay breaker” that is particularly helpful for aerating dense soil types, like in Georgia (9).


Reducing pesticide use

Another thing to avoid for the sake of your soil is pesticide use. Remember that it’s normal to see insects on outdoor plants; most do little or no damage. Spraying pesticides can kill beneficial insects, including pollinators (see our other resource, “Pollinators 101” to learn more about why they matter). Pesticides taken up by plant roots and leaves can also hurt other wildlife. If you run into harmful insects, instead of utilizing pesticides, you can try farmscaping! Farmscaping is a whole-farm, ecological approach to increase and manage biodiversity, and its goal is to grow the presence of beneficial organisms (5). Methods incorporate the use of insectary plants, hedgerows, cover crops, and water reservoirs, which attract and support populations of beneficial organisms such as spiders, amphibians, reptiles, bats, and birds that parasitize or prey on insect pests. 


Plant cover crops

Thinking about what varieties to plant in your garden? Cover crops are a solid possibility. They keep soil covered during the winter and other periods of time when crops are not growing, which reduces the risk of erosion (5). Moreover, the biomass produced by cover crops is usually returned to the soil, enhancing organic matter levels. Cover crops with taproots can create macropores and alleviate compaction, and fibrous-rooted cover crops can promote aggregation and stabilize the soil. Some species of cover crops that host mycorrhizal fungi, like grasses (ex: cereal rye, wheat, oats) and legumes (ex: clovers, soybeans), can maintain and increase the population of these beneficial fungi (6). Legume cover crops can add nitrogen to the soil through nitrogen fixation, and cover crops in general retain nitrate and other nutrients that are susceptible to leaching losses.


A few other tips for natural soil health include rotating crops, adding aged manure to the soil, and cultivating a diverse range of plants. We wish you the best of luck in your planting adventures!


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