How to create healthy soil

How to Create a Healthy Soil

What is Healthy Soil?

A good, healthy soil will look like moist cake crumbs and will be quite loose when held.

One of the easiest ways to understand what this looks and feels like is to experience it for yourself. Visit your nearest mature woodland, dig down into the leaf cover with your hands and you will be able to feel how light, soft and aerated the soil underneath is.

A healthy soil should be:

• Nutrient rich
• Free draining but moisture retentive
• High in organic matter
• High in diverse lifeforms
• High in bacteria and fungi, which form symbiotic relationships with plants

The smell of a healthy soil should be earthy, nutty and sweet.

A healthy soil is also reliant on organic matter, and in a domestic space the best way of getting organic matter into the soil is to create compost. Organic matter feeds the insects, bacteria and fungal networks in our soil, which in turn make nutrients available to plants, while improving the structure and water retention of our soil.

This compost should be laid on the surface of the soil, mimicking what happens in nature, where soil is always covered.

Other Ways of Improving Soil Include:

Chopping and dropping

The process of cutting down leaves, which are a good source of carbon and in some cases rich in nutrients, leaving them on the surface of the soil to decay.

Adding green manure

Growing plants with specific nutrient profiles through the autumn and winter and then chopping them down to decay into the soil in spring or summer. Just remember to do this before flowering.

By saying no to fertiliser

If we are feeding our soil with organic matter, we don't need to use fertiliser. Fertilisers – both organic and chemical – can harm our soil and make our plants lazy, disrupting vital fungal networks.

Maintaining Healthy Soil

Composting locks carbon into our soils and stores it in a stable, solid form. This keeps carbon out of the atmosphere, and stops it contributing to global warming.

Healthy soils can also help keep us healthy, and regular contact with soil is hugely beneficial for our gut microbiomes, as we are exposed to so many beneficial bacteria.

Helping Poor Soil

If your garden soil is compacted or of poor quality, incorporating more organic matter into it is the solution, it really is that simple.

You can fix all your soil problems by laying a thick layer of compost, ideally 10–15 cm, on top and letting the life in the soil do the rest.

While we can't change the type of soil that we have, we can always improve it by feeding it with organic matter. Covering our soil with an organic mulch – whether that's compost, wood chips, manure or leaves – is the best way to heal it.

It's also important to assess whether the problem is actually with the soil, or whether we might have put the wrong plants in the wrong place.