Building Soil
Life on land begins and ends with the soil. With its ability to recycle and renew, let's learn what soil building is and why it's essential.
What is building soil?
To break it down simply - building soil in your garden or land is allowing for organic matter from plants, mulch, and other elements (such as rocks or minerals) to break down and become part of the earth it lands upon. This is building soil, this is what is happening in every naturalized area unknowingly due to the growth and decay cycle where every living thing has a part to play.
The top couple of inches of the soil, known as the humus portion of the garden space, and leading into the top soil portion, is a hot spot for life! This is why it needs to be protected, and given space to breathe. Building this area to grow invites a healthy ecosystem to thrive and become a functional garden. Active with microbes, roots, fungi, helpful bacteria, earthworms, and insects - they are looking to feed! This is where you can step in to keep this cycle in motion.
Now, for such a simple concept, it gets overlooked constantly within many garden practices. Most people who have not heard of permaculture, food foresting, or regenerative gardening, they will most likely be attached to the "clean" garden aesthetic which is very harmful to building healthy, nutritious soil in the garden. These practices all revolve around the same theme - LEAVING THE SOIL BARE! If you want to be building soil in your garden, the number one most important rule is to keep your soil covered. Meaning do not rake up your leaves, keep mulch down while a garden is young/exposed, or follow the "chop and drop" method (see further details below).
Why is this practice important?
As mentioned in the subheading of this blog, the soil is where all life on earth begins and ends. This is why engaging in keeping our soils healthy, growing, and thriving is essential on a small and larger scale.
Soil that has become hardened and dried out will lead to depleted and nutrient-deficient plants. This is especially diabolical if you are wanting to grow edible plants, as it will be a struggle to obtain a large harvest and will not have the same vitamins and minerals as the plants should. In many different industries to do with growing food or obtaining resources, the precious top layers of the soil are being depleted at an irreplaceable rate. This is by way of machinery and clear-cutting. As much as we can do to spread the word about the importance of this soil we are losing, we can not stop it completely, so the next best step is to take control of your gardening practices and begin to do it yourself! Play a part in feeding your soil within the complex system of the soil food web (demonstrated below) and get a deeper sense of nature's design unfolding. You will see that all parts of nature are always working to be in harmony and in the best interest to support life to thrive!
Creating a healthy soil environment for all the living beings that reside there is, of course, beneficial to their life cycle and completing their purpose here in helping keep the biodiversity strong within the garden. Building the soil in your garden also builds resilience for your plants to withstand different weather changes, droughts, or diseases. Having an abundance of organic material that creates loosened soil will also make it easier for rainwater to permeate the ground at a slower rate, causing this water to truly sink in and not run off. You can see that there is not really a negative side to working towards building your garden soil - but if not for the other life forms we share a space with when we garden, how about doing it for the health of yourself. Keeping up with soil-building practices will help you to be doing less work within your garden in the long run. Setting yourself up for success with growing any garden or healthy veggie garden begins with reciprocity with your soil!
Ways of achieving soil building within your gardens.
Building your garden soil is easy when you leave it up to nature to do the work for you. All you will need is a few things;
1. Time & Patience.
In our modern world, we have learned to expect instant satisfaction. The natural world is here to teach us a different lesson, one of patience and perseverance. When you begin planting a new garden, you need to accept that it can take several growing seasons to achieve your main goal!
Unfortunately, we are in a devastating situation of losing precious soil layers every day due to agricultural practices and deforesting industries. Soil degradation is occurring at an alarming rate, as it can take hundreds of years to grow soil even a couple of inches. But do not lose hope, it is important to understand that the natural world is operating in a very different time frame than humans, and anything you are doing to help is focused on future regeneration.
Slow and simple solutions is one of the permaculture principles for a reason, it follows in line with nature's law. So with that in mind, know that your efforts to build healthy soil in your gardens have future beneficial factors. Plants take time to grow together and become fully functional gardens. Give the plants the nutrients that they need by creating healthy soil. Understand that they are on their timeline and it will take some love and time to see the results of your work. Creating a lens on your garden to be that of time and patience is going to allow you to be steadfast in your work towards helping out the future life on earth.
2. Create a garden space containing layers, such as shrubs, trees, and perennials. This garden will need to be a permanent space for the years to come.
As mentioned above, growing your soil takes time. So the garden you are growing must be designed properly to grow into maturity and reap the benefits of a closed-loop working garden. This can happen by planting proper layers within your garden (refer to the 7 layers within a permaculture garden design). This will also ensure that your soil is receiving a large diversity of nutrients from the different plant species and intermingled root systems, as well as inviting many different beneficial living beings into your garden space. All the organic matter you gather from maintenance, leafs falling, or harvesting should be left in your garden to decompose. The more green matter there is on the soil floor, the more insects, bacteria, and fungi will come to feast on the decomposing matter and speed up the process of turning it into new soil. This is all the more reason to be in a reciprocal relationship with your garden and to view it as its own flourishing living system network.
3. Working systems that contribute to building your soil!
Mulching in all forms is one of the best ways you can start to contribute towards building soil in your garden. This comes in the form of laying down natural woodchip mulch of your choice. Keeping the soil covered is the number one priority, this will also hold moisture and stop elemental exposure from taking away the structure and nutrients of the soil.
The 'Chop and Drop' method is one of the most widely used in permaculture gardening to utilize all parts of the plants within your garden. All you want to do with this is chop all trimmings, prunings, leaves, and any other organic matter into smaller pieces and leave them in your garden's soil. Usually, this is referred to as living mulch! It is easy to do, and it creates less work by taking different materials out of your garden and creating a use for all that wonderful organic matter! By doing this you are also helping to break down things like branches and woody parts quicker and turn them into the soil faster. You can work them into the soil as well, but you want to avoid creating any compaction. Things to stay away from when doing this would be leaving anything that is larger than your hand on the ground, and if you can, try to compost grass clippings, fruit and veggies or other kitchen scraps before adding them onto your garden.
Some other examples of working systems that will contribute to building your soil can be; creating your own compost that can be added to your soil every time it is ready (usually a cycle of 1-3 seasons). Or having a lot of perennials that die off naturally every season. The parts that grew all summer above ground will die off and will become the perfect material to cover your soil over the winter months, and offer great mulch and nutrients.
Lastly, if you are going to be creating a garden for the first time, consider using a 'no-dig' garden method (also known as lasagna gardening). This is where you build a garden on top of an existing space without disturbing the topsoil layers by applying a thick layer of cardboard and paper before adding your soil and beginning the creation process! This is a brilliant system designed to keep all the goodness of the humus and topsoil layers intact to add to the health of your new garden. Keep in mind when doing this process you may need to wait to plant anything until your cardboard or paper has broken down and smothered the grass or land beneath it. You will find with enough planning, that this creates some of the best, light, and fluffy soil to work with for future gardening. Garden enthusiasts such as Charles Dowding or Morag Gamble have some great examples and information on doing this. C
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So in conclusion, we hope that this article has inspired a newfound interest and love for your soil! You can take some empowerment into the health and wealth of the earth on which you get to participate with. Learning why and how to be building your soil is vital to the permaculture gardener. And knowing that you are taking care of your garden in an ecological way will echo out into the larger area where you live, with your neighbours whether they are human, or that of the broader natural world. Taking the first step and understanding your journey with your garden is having a goal, a dream to see a healthier world for the future.
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