saving soil: no cost,
the simple easy way

If your garden is a desert, saving soil does not require anything more than you putting in less work on what you normally do and saving that effort for new tasks. An article on six principles for regenerating your soil's fertility explains how. But first I will delve into natural additives that help increase your soil organic matter. The first secret of soil health that saves you time is constant cover, with either plants or mulch, which allow oneself and the environment to benefit from healthy soil.

You can also increase the life in your soil with other home made active additives, like the probiotics you take for your own health. These are composting, and vermiculture and then some highly effective magic from permaculture, including nurturing the presence of fungi. Connecting soil fertility and saving water, see the article on our super cheap humanure hack and album of pictures on humanure composting and building a compost toilet, and maximizing your composting space with a pentagonal composter, as well as a method of combining worm farming and gray water recycling. One can also process a lot of organic waste in a biodigester with anaerobic processes. I have discussed some of the types of biodigester. Fertility and water retention is much influenced by your soil type. I've worked a lot with pure sand, and a rock hard mix of shale and clay that makes digging impossible, in both cases you can improve soil with green manures otherwise known as cover crops and growing mushrooms outside in garden beds.

present drought creator and future desertbad soil practice, naked soil, present drought creator and future desert

Saving soil saves your back too

If at the moment you are digging and weeding till your back breaks and watering the soil, to no avail because it remains as dry looking as the Sahara... just stop... do not dig, weed, or water. Do this instead:

!) Go out and collect organic material, anything you can find it really does not matter 

2) Put it on your garden 10 cm to 20 cm deep, not just on the beds, on the paths, the open areas, on everything.

cover every inch with living plants or mulch (dead plants)cover every inch with living plants or mulch (dead plants)

3) Do not leave an inch of naked soil anywhere. Especially where you are currently sowing seeds.

4) Every year put organic material on your garden again, 10-20 cm deep. It is called 'mulch'. It is the basis of good gardening. Without it you can put away your tools.

rejoice in mushrooms, they show your soil livesrejoice in mushrooms, they show your soil lives

Saving soil is free

carrot seed emerging through mulchcarrot seed emerging through mulch

What is called 'mulch'
applied every year, is saving soil

5) Mulch is not compost, it is un-decomposed organic material, straight from the tree or the garden refuse bag. It need not be fine like it is in the picture books. That is only to make it pretty. You could cover the ground with logs, but it would be uncomfortable walking. However, cover the ground. Cover it completely.

5) Materials for mulch are anything organic, twigs, dead plants, lawn clippings are  excellent. When you sweep up leaves, put them on the garden, when your neighbours do not sweep up their leaves, count it all joy, sweep them up and put them on your garden. Straw, wood-chips old weeds or hedge clippings...everything is mulch

6) Now that you have covered your soil you can start gardening. You can think about irrigation, sowing and compost. But first cover the soil, and allow the covering to start regenerating the soil.

7) Without the covering of mulch, your soil dies. That is why it looks like it does in the picture below of a local garden.

8) The more you 'garden' if you understand gardening to mean digging, weeding and watering, the more you kill your soil with each day of loving care you spend on it.

So much 'gardening' to get this ?

Why ?

Why saving soil requires applying thick layers of organic matter

under layer of cardboard, mulch on beds and paths, and you need less water and weeding and food plants thriveunder layer of cardboard, mulch on beds and paths, and you need less water and weeding and food plants thrive

Organic matter protects

Organic matter prevents the soil from drying out. And from wind. Under the mulch in the moist atmosphere, in the presence of organic matter, soil bacteria, fungi and other organisms grow.

Soil bacteria

Organic matter is food for soil bacteria. Without it they cannot survive or multiply. Soil bacteria digest the organic matter and make it available to your plants as nutrients, but they do something else which is more important. They help create humus. Humus is made from the dead and living bodies of tiny soil organisms and organic matter. Humus is like a sponge. It sucks up and retains things like water and nutrients. Without humus, especially in sandy soil, the water and nutrients very soon drain away, leaving nothing for your plant roots to live on. Humus also gives the soil the right 'crumb' structure. This means that water soaks into it and wets it properly. Water just runs off dry soil. It also means the soil is loose and the roots can move easily through the soil searching for nutrients and water. 

Soil fungi

Organic matter especially woody and stalky material is enjoyed by fungi. Fungi have networks beneath the soil for feeding themselves. These help plants to exchange nutrients and levels the nutrient playing field in your garden. Without fungi your soil is not truly healthy, when you see mushrooms, rejoice.

Weeding destroys

If you pull up weeds and replace them with nothing for weeks, you have removed the skin of your soil, the protective layer and like a human without skin, it will lose water, and life in it will die. That life in the soil sustains your food plants. 

Digging destroys

When you dig and turn the soil, you take all the life in your soil, thriving in the oxygen rich top twenty centimetres and bury it where there is no air. You also take this moist living layer and expose some of it to the sun where the sun's rays sterilize it and dry it out. Soon, with much tilling, your soil will be sterile. It will remain sterile until several weeks after you add organic matter again. Digging kills everything in your soil. It should only be used if you have a problem with pathogens.

Watering naked earth destroys

When you water naked sand you leach all the nutrients it does have out of it, and cause erosion. Only water when you have organic matter or plants on or in your soil. Till then you are damaging it with watering.

 in a nutshell

Stop digging, weeding and watering without need. Only weed when you are going to plant something the same week, only dig when you have a soil infection or pathogen and only water when there are plants or organic matter in or on your soil. Instead of all this 'gardening' spend effort on collecting bags of organic matter and scattering it 10cm deep over every inch of the garden. Mulching is the basis of saving soil.

only after saving soil:

After you have applied the six principles for creating living soil, and followed through with the importance of perennial plantings for soil health, you can enjoy the benefits of healthy soil. In the meantime, have you protected your soil with organic mulch ? You will find yourself doing less 'gardening' and more water-wise practice, and you will have the spare energy to learn about other fertility treatments for your soil like composting: organic or hot, aerobic, and anaerobic composting, how to make vermicompost, a worm-culture expert, green fertilizers, liquid plant based fertilizer, and modeling your soil treatment on nature. 

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this soil needs only a little care to be saved

it is so easy to save this soil and bring it back to life Not rated yet
A garden in the neighbourhood where gardeners have expended work, its so sad. Mulch is free, in every gutter in every street in this area there are inches …

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