Rebuilding Soil With Organic Matter
by John Yazo
Organic matter as a soil amendment in your organic garden beds will greatly improve its structure and health. Soil nutrients get depleted over time if the soil in your garden is overused. Feed the soil and it will provide the crops you are growing the nutrients and support they need to thrive.
The best way to improve a soil structure is to let nature do the work for you. Mulching with organic mulch and growing crops, or cover crops, that will deeply penetrate the soil will benefit a soil structure by loosening it naturally. Tilling, or turning over soil can harm the natural biology that is working hard improving a soil structure. The less you work a soil in an organic garden, the better off you will be.
Applying compost as a mulch, and composting over soil, known as sheet composting, can be used to replenish life back into your garden soil. Sheet composting will increase the population of beneficial soil microbes and earthworms, improve the soil capacity to retain both nutrients and water, and suppress weeds at the same time.
Planting green manures, legumes crops, like beans or peas and then chopping them down, once you harvest your crop, to be used as an organic mulch will generate lots of biomass which will decompose and create humus to improve the soil structure. Other benefits with legumes crops is that they will add nitrogen back into the soil, and the ability of their root systems to penetrate deep into the ground provides void space for air and water to penetrate the soil.
The one main thing when designing and organic garden, is to keep it so you can work the garden beds,or even rows so that you don't have to walk on the soil you are growing your crops in. Walking on the soil will cause compaction, and reduce the infiltration of both air and water that plant life need to survive.
A healthy organic soil structure is full of life, and keeping this vast community of organisms and microorganisms in the soil happy and healthy is very important. All you need to do is feed the soil, and nature will provide you with a soil structure that is full of the nutrients and support your plants need to thrive. Composting is the best way to have organic matter on hand to use as a mulch for your gardening needs, and it is free, along with being healthy for the environment.
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