Soil: We Need to Stop Treating it Like Dirt

Gardeners can improve their soil.

Why is soil important for gardeners?

We’ve all heard about growing the right plants in the right places so they’ll survive, but without healthy soil, your plants (even the right plants) will suffer or even die. So let’s look at what’s under our feet.

 (This article is an updated version of one I wrote for a garden blog several years ago, which is no longer available online.)

Healthy soil ecosystems are a complex interaction
 between bacteria, fungi, insects, & more.

Soil: the ecosystem beneath our feet

Soil found in native habitats is a complex ecosystem of bacteria, fungi, nematodes, earthworms, ants, salamanders, toads, insect larvae, moles, and more, all living in a substrate of minerals and humus. The minerals are a mixture of rocks, sand, silt, and/or clay. The humus or organic matter consists of fully or partially digested plant and animal parts. As humus is broken down into simple compounds, it provides a living for the decomposers, and eventually yields nutrients for plants. 

One gram (about 1/5 teaspoon) of healthy, non-poisoned soil could contain one hundred million bacteria, one million actinomycetes (a filamentous bacteria), and one hundred thousand fungi; if strung together, their filaments or hyphae would measure about 16 feet (5 meters) in length. This same gram of soil could also contain hundreds of nematodes living on the damp surfaces of the soil particles and maybe a few insect eggs or larvae and some earthworm cocoons. The exact proportions of each of these organisms will depend on soil conditions such as moisture, acidity, aeration, amount of humus, and the local plant community growing in the soil. 

A Quest for a Perfect Lawn: a Case Study

This graphic makes the point about how
out-of-step people are for trying to
maintain unnatural&unsustainable lawns.

To celebrate Earth Day, this post is about rethinking the "perfect" lawns, which are maintained with applications of fungicides, insecticides, herbicides, synthetic fertilizers, and never allowed to go into seasonal dormancy. In Florida winter-dormant grasses are over-seeded with cool-weather grasses, irrigated through the dry season, & fertilized. 

Today's lawn expectations go way back to how European formal gardens & lawns around castles and manor houses were kept to show others how wealthy the owners were.

Today, lawn-"care" organizations can make lots of money by encouraging homeowners to have "perfect" lawns, but does it make sense or cents? As a botanist, naturalist, and a sustainable gardener, I would say, "NO!" 

There are so many reasons for replacing most of your lawn acreage with unpoisoned native habitat & pollinator gardens and then freeing the remainder of your lawn from all pesticides & synthetic fertilizers, mowing it less often at the highest setting, letting it go dormant in the winter & allow a variety of plants that tolerate mowing to grow there.

The Birds are NOT OK

What is the birds-eye view of your yard
your community?

Birds Aren’t Just Declining.
They’re Declining Faster!

Scientists studying data collected for more than three decades found accelerating losses. The steepest losses in the study, from 1987 to 2021, were seen in Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Arizona. This research offers clues about the causes. Here are links to a gift article in the NY Times that looks at this research and to a WashingtonPost gift article, which both cite the same study.

This research showed a correlation with increased use of pesticides in agricultural regions, but it also linked back to an older study showing that cats cause huge harm to our birds. I wrote about that as well and how controversial this is in this article.

This Red-shouldered Hawk provided its
opinion on how humans treat birds.

BUT...

Whatever the causes for their decline, we are NOT helpless and, as Joan Baez stated, "Action is the antidote to despair."

There are many actions we can take to make our yards and our communities more bird friendly. I've covered this topic from several different angles over the years, so I've gathered some of the most relevant articles here to make it easier for people to up their game at this critical time. The birds need us to act now more than ever.

It's Time to Think Globally, but Act Locally.

www.climatewiselandscaping.com 

Climate change is real!

We are seeing its effects on the weather with more frequent, stronger and slower-moving hurricanes, more severe droughts, more fires, and rising sea levels. But Sue Reed and I did not debate the reality of climate change or what has caused these rapid changes when we wrote our award-winning book, "Climate-Wise Landscaping: Practical Actions for a Sustainable Future." Instead we said, "Let's roll up our sleeves and get to work."

The same thing has happened in the writing of my 7th book with the working title "Living Shorelines for Florida: A Practical Guide for Building Resilience," which will be published in 2025. I and my three coauthors did not debate sea level rise or discuss what the causes might be, but plans for dealing with rising sea levels are included in our various actions and designs for more resilient shorelines.

So what actions can we take and will it make any difference?

While actions we take in our yards and in our communities may seem insignificant, there are many millions of homeowners and communities, and together, we are a powerful force. What follows are some ideas and links to resources for some of the most significant actions. 

Why talking about native plant landscapes is so important

Consumers are presented with this array of mostly
nonnative plants in full bloom to plant so their yards can
decorated with plants at peak bloom all the time.

Where are the native plants?

New homeowners and beginning gardeners find displays similar to this photo that I took at a big box store a few years ago. It's filled with mostly nonnative annuals in full bloom. Each tray is not too expensive, but after they fade in a couple of months, people are expected to come back to replace them with the next set. 

Examples in garden magazines and gardening TV shows with their instant landscapes imply that garden installations are events, and not ongoing projects that develop over the years.

The hand of the gardener in native landscapes

Plant more natives!

In 2013, a volunteer beautyberry shrub near the edge of the
lawn is surrounded by several water oaks.

Ecologists and environmental organizations have been urging people to plant more native plants, to build bird-friendly and pollinator-friendly habitat, and to do this by removing at least some of their lawn.

One prime example is Doug Tallamy's HomeGrown National Park where you can register your yard to be part of of this park by replacing at least half of the lawn with native plants.

This is great and I hope that millions of homeowners and other property managers take this step to build native habitat, but there are some important steps to take, especially in urban and suburban areas, to increase the acceptability of these native landscapes. Our yards and our community landscapes, even if they have a good portion of native plants are not wild spaces and will need some regular care. (Actually, I wrote a book on this topic. See below.)

Our freedom lawn

We let our lawn go wild!

When we first moved into our house, the lawn-care guys who had worked for the former owner stopped by to offer to continue their services. When I refused, they said that without their poisons (fungicides, insecticides, and herbicides) and their specially-formulated fertilizer and weed & feed applications that our lawn would die. Well, as it turns out, a few months later some brown spots did develop, but they were soon taken over by other plants, which those lawn guys would probably have condemned as "weeds."