Is soil health important?

With the growing season in full swing, and hopefully you have picked up some native wildflowers or grasses, it's important to consider the health of you soil for optimal growth- especially in the peak of Summer. You may be wondering, "Is soil really alive?' "How can it be healthy?" and the answer is yes, let me tell you. 

Soil type and the condition are considerations to be made when assessing your soil. According to Jim Islieb, MSUE's UP crop production educator, he says"...in general, most U.P. soils are of low‐moderate fertility and are either fine (high clay content) or coarse (high sand content)." Now, most homeowners in the UP probably aren't producing cash crops but to the majority of people we want to look at pH levels, drainage, organic matter and biological activity. 

Just like learning about a typical food web where the wolf eats the deer, the deer eats the plants, the plants get their food from the sun via photosynthesis- soil has a food web, too. This is a bit more complex because of the interactions of fungi and bacteria that pick up soil nutrients, break it down, and make them more available for plants. It is kind of like us, when we eat healthy and take vitamins we are less likely to get sick. Soil health directly impacts how hearty the plants become. 

Healthy soil can be characterized by texture; where it is compact enough to provide structure but porous enough to allow air in the soil. 

What are things you can do to encourage healthy soil in your yard?

1. Plant diverse species. All plants play a different role in the ecosystem and do different things for the soil like bringing nutrients in different ways or encouraging beneficial bacteria. If you plant only a monoculture- if you only want to plant one type of plant- that diversity is reduced and the variety of roles is lost. 

2. Don't disturb the soil too much. If you are working hard to encourage growth and health- its best if you leave it alone and let it do its work. If you walk on the soil too much or build things it can compact the soil and encourage the beneficial organisms to leave. 

3. Opt for organic compost over synthetic. I've been seeing this a lot lately where gardeners take mulched leaves and use that instead of rocks or wood chips. You may be thinking but you just said compost, yeah that's the great thing about the leaves. So they lock in moisture but not too much and they break down over time which adds nutrients to the soil. All you need to do is once a year add some more leaves. If you get it mulched (just run the lawn mower over them) they actually look pretty aesthetically pleasing as well. The rocks and woodchips don't have as many benefits as do leaves and they are a lot more expensive. 

4. Try not to fertilize unless it's organic and infrequent. This gives your native plants a chance to fend for itself. Native plants are known to be hardy when they are planted in the right zone and habitat type.

If half of American lawns were replaced with native plants, we would create the equivalent of a 20 million acre national park- nine times bigger than Yellowstone or 100 times bigger than Shenandoah National Park." - Doug Tallamy