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. 

Alders Fix Nitrogen

Smooth alder or hazel alder (Alnus serrulata)
Photos by Georgia Native Plant Society

Hazel alder or smooth alder (Alnus serrulata) is blooming now with its showy yellow catkins. The woody female flower heads look like little pine cones. It's a tall multi-stemmed shrub to small tree in the birch family (Betulaceae).

This alder is native to freshwater and brackish water wetlands from Texas to Maine and into North Florida. It plays an important role in these wetlands because it fixes nitrogen in its root nodules using Frankia, a genus of anaerobic, filamentous bacteria in the Actinomycetes order. 

When soil is wet all or most of the time it is anaerobic (without air) and in these conditions, the normal soil microbes cannot survive and most plants cannot obtain enough nutrients from this soil. The alders' symbiotic relationship with this weird bacteria provides the nutrients they need to survive and they do so without much competition from other plants.

Florida Betony

Florida betony develops ridged tubers that
look sorta like a rattlesnake tail and are edible.

Florida betony (Stachys floridana) is an aggressive perennial wildflower. Most botanists think that it was originally endemic to Florida, but now has spread to most of the Southeastern states from Virginia to Texas. It's a member of the mint family (Lamiaceae) and has the typical square stems and opposite leaves along the stems. The beautiful bilateral flowers range from whitish to purple arranged on a spike. It does best in damp soils.

The tubers are edible

It's also known rattlesnake weed because of its rattle-like tuber. Florida betony tubers are edible when harvested in the spring when they are firm and white, but only if the area has not been poisoned with lawn-care chemicals. They have the crispness of a water chestnut with a taste reminiscent of a very mild radish. Most people don't eat them later in the season when they turn tan or yellow and are not as crisp.

Sticks as Mulch

Using sticks as mulch reduces weed growth.

Mulches & mulching

Over the years, I've written about mulching and mulches in my seven books and in various articles: 
- Pine needle mulch (the most read post on this blog)
- Wood chip mulch 
- Too much mulch
- Rock-scaping & more.

But for the past several years, I've also been using sticks as mulch near buildings to reduce weed infestations. Unlike other mulching materials, there's a lot of air or space between the sticks, so there's nothing there for seedlings. Eventually, some weeds that spread via rhizomes or stolons, such as fog fruit (Phyla nodiflora) or Florida betony (Stachys floridana) work their way into the space, but very few seed-spread weeds. 

This type of mulching works well for our yard because have lots of trees. A good time to create a stick-mulch area is after a high-wind event. Yes, we also have several stick piles to create habitat for small birds and various insects, so I don't usually raid those piles for sticks for mulching. 

This year's roselle crop was amazing!

The roselle was almost as tall as the house.

This year's roselle (Sabdariffa gossypiifolia formerly Hibiscus sabdariffa) crop was amazing even though we were out-of-town for almost 2 months starting at the end of March and again for a month in midsummer. I planned for survival of the roselle shrubs during these trips in a couple of ways. 

- I'd planted them on the back (house-side) of a 10'-long swale and surrounded the area with several wire tomato cages to keep them upright and also to protect them from the deer. 
- The bottom of the swale had been enriched with several loads of kitchen scraps when the roselle shrubs still were small. (Read this article for details on composting in place.) 
- I'd planted tomatoes mostly to one side of the roselle bed, but then strung the sprawling tomato plants onto the front tomato cages. This was also to keep the deer away, because they do not favor tomatoes.
- Before we left on our trip in March, I placed the end of the rain barrel hose into the swale and left the rain barrel on a very slow drip. This way all the water from that downspout was used to irrigate the roselle. 
- Before we left on the second trip, I propped up the plants and tied them together to two 12' poles and to the house. 

Growing onions and garlic in North Florida

Onion planting day: November 26

Onions and garlics

Both onions and garlics are in the genus Allium, which contains several crops that are divided into two groups:
1) Onions, which have hollow leaves and 
2) Garlics, which have flat, solid leaves. (*See note below on the family.)

Onions (Allium cepa) are treated as a long-season annual in Florida. Botanically, they are biennials, where in a natural habitat, they would grow leaves and form a bulb the first year, go into dormancy, and the second year they would use the stored energy in the bulb to form flowers, which are borne on a specialized stem called a scape. We interrupt this cycle by harvesting as the plant goes dormant and when the bulb is at its maximum size. 

Peat moss is never sustainable

There are many reasons why peat moss is never recommended for gardening.

Soil sequesters carbon

An unexpected drainage project

A complex location, with a raised sprinkler head, a newly
reinstalled downspout, and the access to the septic system.

Rain barrels on the move

We moved the three rain barrels that we'd installed at the back of the garage. Initially, years ago, they were elevated on a wooden platform, but when the wood gave out due to stress from all that weight, we reinstalled them in the same place on separate cinderblock towers. I wrote about them here: Three more rain barrels and here: Reworking the elevated rain barrels.

Well, since there was no cross bracing between the towers, the cinderblocks tipped and sank into the soil at different rates. This caused a problem with the plumbing since the barrels are connected together to have one spigot. 

My husband disassembled barrels and reinstalled the downspout for this end of the gutter that runs along two sides of the garage. The other end feeds into two different rain barrels. 

The three barrels sat unused through the summer, but the dry season was coming and I'd be growing a large selection of cool-weather crops and I'd need the capacity of those three barrels. In looking at this location we could not install a concrete pad to provide more stability because the main septic pipe from the house runs through the area. We decided to move barrels to the north side of the garage where there was already a concrete pad and to move the ten-foot gutter to gather the water.

A South American engulfed my resting vegetable beds

I had put my veggie beds to rest for the winter. What could go wrong?

I knew we were going to be out of town for the first three months of 2020, so I did not plant our normal winter crops. After the last summer/fall crops in three of the beds, I weeded them trying to disturb the soil as little as possible and then covered them with a four-inch layer of pine needles. (6 reasons to use pine needle mulch in edible gardens) In two of the other three beds had the native salvia and other wildflowers growing, so I did some light weeding and left them alone. In the last bed I planted some wildflower seeds and I'll cover this bed in my next post.

So in those three beds, a visitor from South America came calling...

This innocent-looking plant is a monster!

The native range for this oxalis is shown in green while the purple areas show where it's escaped. 

Sequester this carbon! Don't throw it away.

Sequester this carbon! Don't throw it away.

Carbon sequestration is tremendously important because keeping the CO2 levels low in the atmosphere will help keep the earth cooler. It’s the most abundant greenhouse gas.

As I found in doing the research for the Soil section in "Climate-Wise Landscaping," soil sequesters four times more carbon globally than all the terrestrial plants added together, including rainforests. It varies by region and soil type with the peat bogs doing much of the heavy lifting.

Enrich soil for crops by composting in-place

Time to remove more lawn and replace it
with larger edible garden beds.

Several people have requested more information about how I compost in place, so this post includes extreme details.

More lawn removal!

This adventure in gardening began with more lawn removal. In the fall of 2016, I'd created a new bed in front of the rain barrels. It was only about 5' x 4'. Here are the details of "Creating a New Bed."  

April 29, 2019

Over this past cool-weather season I'd grown broccoli and curly parsley in the new bed, which had done fairly well. I keep picking the broccoli florets after the initial big curd harvest, so the broccoli season lasts for a long time, but now they were at the end of their cycle. The parsley would last for a while longer.

Bucket gardening for your edibles

Wes and his self-watering bucket garden

Two years ago, I was in Maryland and when I visited friends Wes and Tammy for a gathering at their house, I was intrigued with the self-watering bucket garden that Wes had set up.

Advantages to a self-watering bucket garden

This self-watering bucket garden has a number of important advantages;
- Protects crops from damage by animals such as rabbits, chickens, ground hogs, armadillos, and pets.
- Because of the water storage in the lower bucket, your soil stays evenly moist for a week or so depending on heat and humidity before you need to refill the bottom bucket.
- Reduces water usage because all the water is right in the bucket, it does not drain away and no water is lost due to irrigation onto non-growing areas.
- Eliminates weeds and soil-based pests, such as root knot nematodes, cutworms, slugs, and others, if you use purchased or sterilized soil.
- No bending over once everything is set up for the season. Everthing is waist high.
- No plowing or other soil disturbance, so your soil can continue to sequester carbon.

Dealing with hydrophobic soil

Hydrophobic

Hydrophobic is defined as "afraid of water." When the term is used to describe soil, its meaning is modified to "repels water." This is of concern to us as gardeners and landscapers, of course, because if water is not being absorbed into the soil then it is not available to the roots of our plants.

This is particularly serious for newly sown seeds, which must have even moisture supplied by the soil in order to germinate and during their initial growth period when a scarcity of water can kill newly sprouted seeds. Also, newly-planted trees, shrubs, or herbaceous specimens are already stressed and in are extreme need of water to rehydrate their leaves so that photosynthesis can take place to provide as much energy as possible during their transition into new locations.