Healthy Soil (2024)

FAQs

What is considered healthy soil? ›

Healthy soil is that which allows plants to grow to their maximum productivity without disease or pests and without a need for off-farm supplements. Healthy soil is teeming with bacteria, fungi, algae, protozoa, nematodes, and other tiny creatures. Those organisms play an important role in plant health.

Soil health is “the continued capacity of soil to function as a vital living ecosystem that sustains plants, animals and humans.” The soil health foundation consists of five principles: 1) Soil armor; 2) minimizing soil disturbance; 3) plant diversity; 4) continual live plant/foot; and 5) livestock integration.

What are the five ingredients for soil? The five ingredients of soil are minerals, water, gas, organic material, and living organisms.

Signs of healthy soil include plenty of underground animal and plant activity, such as earthworms and fungi. Soil that is rich in organic matter tends to be darker and crumbles off of the roots of plants you pull up. A healthy, spread-out root system is also a sign of good soil.

Feed and Protect Soil

Other options for organic matter include compost, grass clippings from a non-treated lawn, chopped leaves, manure, cover crops, and straw. In the quest for healthy soil, it's also important to protect soil structure from compaction.

To raise the PH of your soil, try adding limestone – most packages will tell you how much to add to increase your PH to the correct levels. A test result above 7 means that your soil is alkaline. To lower the pH of your soil, you can add sulfur, compost, pine needles, or pine bark.

As old soil might be deficient in plant nutrients, you need to replenish it. Here are some ways you can add nutrients and organic matter to soil: Add a handful of a slow release fertilizer like manure. Mix in one part compost for every three or four parts of the old potting mix.

What is unhealthy soil? ›

Soil that is hard to work, overly cloddy, loose, fine and sandy, 'floury', or filled with stones and pebbles are of poor quality.

The ideal mixture for plant growth is called a loam and has roughly 40% sand, 40% silt and 20% clay. Another important element of soil is its structure, or how the particles are held together - how they clump together into crumbs or clods. A loose structure provides lot of pore spaces for good drainage and root growth.

Poorly drained soils are often high in clay, in low-lying areas, or compacted. Soils have poor drainage when rainfall or irrigation water cannot easily enter (infiltrate) or move downward through the soil (percolation). Water displaces air in the soil pore spaces depriving roots of oxygen, leading to wilting.

Healthy soils are biologically active soils. The presence of biological activity can give you insight into the soil's state of health. Essentially, we are referring to the presence of earthworms, earthworm castings, dung beetles, etc., or evidence of their activity.

Unhealthy soil does not have the nutrients to support as many plants as healthy soil. Fewer plants in the ground means that less photosynthesis occurs, which in turn means that less carbon is being pulled out of the air and stored in plant roots as carbon-based sugars.