Healthy Soil and How to Make It (2024)

Healthy soil is essential for growing plants, a lawn, and trees; no matter what soil you start with, you can make it healthy. It involves more than buying a bag of fertilizer and spreading it around. It includes knowing more about the soil, pH, organic content, composition, and changes you can make. Healthy soil makes plants less prone to pest and disease issues and grow and look better.

Here's more about what healthy soil is and tips for improving the soil you have.

Healthy Soil Characteristics

While fertility is an aspect of good garden soil, several other components make healthy soil:

• Good texture: The soil's "crumb" is its texture. In gardening terms, the term for an organically rich, crumbly texture is how "friable" it is. Good soil is crumbly, like cookie crumbs.
• High organic matter content: Organic matter is dead plant and animal tissue that decomposes and enriches the soil, creating "humus." Humus helps improve soil's texture by binding smaller particles together, increasing the soil's aeration, improving the soil's ability to absorb and drain moisture, and providing nutrients to plants. Microorganisms help break down organic matter into essential elements, enabling plants to absorb and use it.
• Healthy pH: Soil pH measures the acidity or alkalinity of your soil. This pH can affect how your plants can uptake the nutrients in the soil. Generally, most plants respond best to neutral pH soil, although some prefer acidic soil.

Three Main Types of Soil

The next thing to consider is the structure of the soil. There are three main types of soil:

1. Clay soil: Clay has tiny particles that stick together, forming large clumps. Clay soil tends to be more fertile than other soil types but is not optimal for gardening because its texture makes it difficult for plant roots to spread. Improving clay soil is possible.
2. Sandy soil: Sandy soil is easier to work with, with a larger particle size than clay. However, its particle size can be problematic for some plants since it acts like a sieve, allowing water and nutrients to drain away quickly.
3. Loam: Loam is an ideal garden soil for many types of plants. It's crumbly, full of organic matter, retains moisture, and drains well. For most plants, this is "healthy" garden soil.

Tips for Improving Soil

There are several things you can do to improve poor soil:

• Test your soil: Try a couple of DIY soil tests to learn more about your soil's pH, composition, and texture, or get a soil test from your county's cooperative extension. Tests will alert you to deficiencies or pH problems.
• Add organic matter: Adding organic matter is the number one way to improve your soil, whether it is clay or sand, low in nutrients, compacted, or has poor drainage. Compost will improve your soil immediately and introduce microorganisms that will improve your soil by further breaking down organic matter. Add some in spring before planting. Side-dress your plants with it throughout the growing season, and add more in the fall when you put the garden to bed. Besides compost, other beneficial organic matter to use includes grass clippings, shredded autumn leaves, aged manure, or coffee grounds.
• Adjust your soil's pH: Once the soil is tested, you'll know whether you have a pH imbalance. If your soil is too acidic, there are several things you can do to change the acidity level.
• Don't compact the soil: Prevent stepping on or putting weight on the soil; this compacts the soil, making it more difficult for plant roots to grow or pull in nutrients or water from the soil.
• Disrupt soil as little as possible: No-dig or no-till gardening is becoming more popular. Tilling rakes into the ground, turning the soil, which is good for aeration in poorly compact spots. However, it can also disrupt the delicate ecosystem of insects and microorganisms that naturally turn the soil into healthy, arable soil. Instead, topdress or add organic material to the top inch or two of soil, allowing the insect activity to work the compost further down into the soil.