Tending Your Soil

How you tend your soil affects whether seed germinates and if seedlings develop into a crop. It also affects climate change and bio diversity.

Here are three methods that tend our soil:

· Dig the soil over.

· Sow seed directly i.e. don't dig the soil over.

· Use minimal cultivation techniques.

Digging This is a conventional method of preparing soil. The garden's top soil is turned over with a spade. Further cultivations create a fine tilth that is ideal for sowing and germinating seed.

Direct Sow Sowing seed directly involves broadcasting seed and raking or harrowing it into the top of the ground.

Minimal Cultivations There are techniques of minimal cultivation that compromise between turning all the soil over and sowing seed into hard ground. They disturb enough soil to ensure surface drainage. Discs or tines are used in agricultural situations.

Digging, ploughing or rotorvating top soil make it loose, introduce air and guarantee excess water will flow through the surface to drains deeper in the soil profile. Fresh turned earth looks tidy but small creatures use leaf litter and organic detritus on the surface of the ground for habitat. These mini beasts are mostly beneficial to growing crops. Composting worms and woodlice shred and break down organic material into smaller particles that earthworms can distribute throughout the soil profile.

Digging introduces vast amounts of air into the top soil; aerobic bacteria respond by multiplying. Huge populations need food. Their diet is carbon. The carbon in soil exists in the form of humus and organic material. Large populations of aerobic bacteria digest the humus from between the soil particles. They use oxygen and carbon then excrete carbon dioxide and soluble substances. Soil is a vast sink. It can contain large amounts of carbon as humus, and organic material. When we turn over soil the result is extra greenhouse gas in the atmosphere and soil erosion. Rain or irrigation washes the soil; the organic matter having been processed by the aerobic bacteria into solutions is flushed into drains.

A direct sow method that avoids turning soil can give disappointing results. Seed germinating onto hard ground will establish a patchy crop. The surviving plants sit in surface water and develop stunted roots; stunted roots equal a stunted plant.

Minimal cultivations offer a compromise. If cultivation discs or tines are used to create narrow drainage channels; the surface water can drain. A small amount of loose soil brought up by the minimal cultivation technique, can be used to produce a fine tilth. Seed can be sown in bands of loose soil above narrow drainage channels.

Narrow drainage channels leave the majority of the surface layer undisturbed; providing opportunity for biodiversity within leaf litter. There is permanent soil each side of the narrow drainage channel. The ground is firm we can walk or drive over it without making deep foot prints or wheeling's. The soil keeps its structure it is resistant to compaction. Permanent soil retains moisture and nutrients. Root systems of crops that are propagated using minimal cultivation techniques can break into the surrounding soil that is structured naturally. They find burrows that worms have made or cylinders of space left from previous crop roots that have decayed.

There are various methods of tending your soil. Digging and turning soil over is conventional we know it works and fresh dug earth looks tidy. The alternative minimal cultivation saves time and effort; the crop has many benefits. Self-structured permanent soil is moist in a dry time and slowly releases nutrient. Less soil disturbance sustains wildlife while contributing to slowing climate change.

Andrew Astle trained and qualified as an agricultural agronomist with Fisons/Boots Agriculture in the 1980s. He went on to grow flowers commercially and has grown fruit and vegetables on his own account for thirty years. Andrew wrote the book "TINE" How to Garden Without Digging available from: http://www.soilisalive.com

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