What holds true in Nature also holds true in the garden. In Nature, soil does not need to be manually cultivated for spectacular forests to grow. That, in a nutshell, is why we don’t dig the soil! Working With Nature, A Smarter Way to Garden Yes, chemical fertilizers kill soil life! It’s really a fool’s game to destroy the soil life for a short-lived, once off nutrient boost, which really shows gross ignorance and a complete lack of understanding of soil ecology and what makes plants grow! To further compound the problem, chemical fertilizers are pumped into the dying soil, which effectively kill off what soil life is left. The catch is, it only works once, and then your soil is sterile and the plants are worse off, and they become more prone to diseases, and require even more fertilizer than they normally would. The reason is that the tiny little bodies of all the soil organisms that have just been killed by digging break down, releasing their nutrients to the soil. So why are the farmers so fond of this destructive practice? Well, they found that when you first dig up the soil, fertility goes up, and plants grow better. Tillage is the term used to describe the agricultural preparation of the soil by digging it and turning it over. The delicate soil structure is destroyed, compaction of soil occurs, leading to hardpan formation, and reduced water infiltration in the soil, and more surface runoff, which increases soil erosion. It also loses a lot of its organic matter, and as a consequence, does not retain water as well. The soil loses a lot of its nutrients, such as carbon and nitrogen. Most of the soil fungi occupy the top 15cm (6”) of the soil, while the rest of the organisms live at all different levels.ĭigging and turning over the soil exposes a very delicate ecosystem to the air which dries it out, and to the ultraviolet rays of the sun, which sterilize the soil – killing the soil organisms. The soil organisms carry out the important functions of nutrient cycling, improvement of soil structure to aid water and air movement through the soil and also the control of diseases and enhancement of plant growth. So what are all these critters doing in the soil? The soil bacteria form a beneficial relationship with plant roots, and soil fungi form a beneficial relationship with tree roots, helping them access nutrients. Furthermore there are arthropods and insects in there as well, including earthworms. These organisms include Bacteria, Actinomycetes, Fungi, Yeast, Protozoa, Algae and Nematodes. By comparison, the human population numbers just over 7 billion currently. There are about 50 billion microbes in 1 tablespoon of soil. In fact, the soil is more abundant with life and more complex than any other ecosystem above the ground.
The soil is not just ‘dirt’ to anchor plant and tree roots, though that’s how many people treat it! The soil is a very complex ecosystem, teeming with very diverse life. This then raises the logical question, why is the soil compacted in the first place if it’s constantly tilled? There are several causes re-compaction of tilled soil, namely animal-powered and mechanised farm equipment, such as tractors and oxen, people walking on the soil and rain impacting on bare soil!īefore we can understand the reasons for not digging soil, it’s important to understand what soil is, otherwise it’s not clear what we’re dealing with. ploughing) helps loosen compacted soil which makes it easier to plant into, rips up weeds, and buries the scraps left over from harvesting. You may be asking “Why do farms till the soil anyway?” The answer is because tillage (i.e.
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Historically people have treated their gardens like miniature farms, people looked at how huge areas of land were farmed, and then did the same on a smaller scale, because that’s what they knew how to do. So how did we get into the habit of digging up our gardens in the first place? Basically it’s just old tradition. Everyone agrees that gardening would be way more fun, and many people would be more inclined to take up gardening if there wasn’t the need for all that back-breaking hard work such as digging… It may be a surprise to many people, but digging IS NOT a necessary part of gardening at all!
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