Soil and soul, two words with only one letter difference but so intricately interwoven. Soil without soul is just dirt. Feed your soil some soul, in the form of compost, nutrients, and create a life, a soul, for your living soil. Feed the soil, and in turn, the soil will feed your crops, and your crops will feed you! And the cycle continues.
The soul is also fed by working with the soil. I find such therapeutic value in working with soil - I don't need a therapist or counsellor - working in the garden creates an opportunity to connect with the earth and with my own soul. I don't need a gym membership as working in the Great Outdoors, hands in the soil, sun on the skin, is all the workout I need (okay, truth told, since I am coming up to 60 years on this earth means maybe I do need a bit more cardio - better get my walk on!!)
So how do we increase the soul/life of our soil?
Create compost to feed your soil (watchout for that blog sometime in the near future). Compost is an excellent way to recycle your garden and kitchen waste, and can be a great soil improver, as well as increasing the soil water holding capacity.
No compost bins? Then start making compost tea - easy to make! Check out our little video here: https://youtu.be/h1vOWqYhlns
Don't dig up and turn your soil over each season, as this can disturb the soil macro and microbiota (soil life). Rather stick your garden fork in and gently open to aerate rather than turning the soil.
Mulch the soil (a layer of protection) to protect the soil life, maintain moisture, reduce weed proliferation and keep roots of your crops protected from drying out. Mulch can be wool, newspaper (a few layers which you need to moisten) or cardboard, tree mulch, dried grass clippings, hessian coffee sacks etc. Anything that will hold moisture in and exclude light.
Lightly dig in herbivorous animal aged manures, sheep, alpaca, rabbit, poultry - (hopefully without any antibiotic treatments). This increases the organic matter in the soil, as well as microbial and earthworm activity. It is best to use aged manures, to stop any paddock weeds taking hold in your veggie garden beds.
Seaweed - this can be in the form of organic seaweed washed up on rocky shorelines, aged, chopped up into compost and then added to the soil, or you can cheat and buy Seaweed pellets to add to the soil as I do. Seaweed compost tea is also excellent for spraying straight onto the soil.
Worm Castings - start a worm farm! These little voracious guys chomp through all your kitchen scraps and even cooked food (no meat, fish or chicken scraps though) and produce a thick vermicast (worm poos) which can be collected and used to add to your veg beds. Castings contain beneficial microbes and concentrated trace elements. The liquid vermicast (think worm wees) is actually just watered down worm poos again, and once diluted, can be applied to the soil with a watering can.
So, in closing, I can't emphasize enough that the formula is really simple:
Healthy Soil = Healthy Plants = Healthy People
Feed your soil some soul! I feel a soulful song and dance on the soil coming on........
