Soil Basics

Have you ever stopped and studied the soil in your garden? Is it that you think of it as nothing but soil that may or may not grow healthy plants?

To all soils, there is more to it than meets the eye. The soil must perform many functions for plant growth. Having quality soil is a key element in gardening.

If your soil is poor in nutrients there are many ways to improve it. Let us look at some ways to make soil healthier for plant growth.

The most asset of soil is to provides a healthy medium to support plant life. It provides support both physically and biologically. Physical support is provided by allowing the plant to grow its roots through the soil to hold itself in place.

Biological support is provided by its ability to hold nutrients and water that the plant needs.

There are other types of life it must help to support also. Insects and microorganisms live in the soil as well as helping to aid in plant growth by having decaying organic material added to the soil for adding structure to the soil.

They help with the plant growth of food crops which are consumed by people also plants that help with the producing medicine creation. Some fungi and bacteria that live in the soil are used to produce antibiotics.

Life is dependent on these either directly or indirectly. That includes plant life.

The major components of soil are water air organic matter and mineral matter. Stones and gravel make up mineral matter. They are considered inorganic elements that makeup mineral matter. This makeup up 40% to 60%  of the volume of the soil.

Decayed remains and waste of plants and animals have an effect on the chemical makeup of the soil and is considered the organic matter. These have a great effect on the chemical properties of the soil e.g. availability of nutrients.

Almost 40%-60% of a soil’s volume can be space and this is occupied by water and air.  Soil texture is defined as the size distribution of different mineral particles.

These mineral particles are at their most basic level the following: sand, silt, and clay. Sand particles are 2 to 0.05 mm in diameter, silt particles are 0.05 to 0.002 mm in diameter and clay particles are less than 0.002 mm in diameter.

The combination of these particles exhibits different properties in soil and some combinations favour plant life better than others. The following are the most common classes of soil texture which are clay soil, silty soil, loamy soil and sandy soil.

Each type has a different effect on plant growth. We will get into the benefits of each soil in another post in the future.

Until then Happy Gardening!!!