Your Soil Health

How Does Healthy Soils
Make for a Healthy Life?

A healthy soil is a living ecosystem in which dead organic matter forms the base of a food web consisting of microscopic and larger organisms. Together, these organisms sustain other biological activities, including plant, animal and human health.

For a good article about building healthy soil

if you need some background information - Click Here

Biochar

    Biochar is a valuable Soil Amendment.  This 2,000 year-old practice converts agricultural waste into a soil enhancer that can hold carbon, boost food security, and increase soil biodiversity, and discourage deforestation. The process creates a fine-grained, highly porous charcoal that helps soils retain nutrients and water.
     Biochar is charcoal used as a soil amendment for both carbon sequestration and soil health benefits. Biochar is a stable solid, rich in carbon, and can endure in soil for thousands of years. Like most charcoal, biochar is made from biomass via pyrolysis. Biochar is under investigation as a viable approach for carbon sequestration, as it has the potential to help mitigate global warming and climate change. It results from processes related to pyrogenic carbon capture and storage.

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Worm Castings

COMING SOON:
     We will be offering worm castings for soil health this year.  A way to improve soil health quicker.
What Are Worm Castings?
     In a nutshell, worm castings are worm manure or poop if you ask a young child. But unlike other animal manure, worm castings are a finished compost with a neutral ph of 7.0. This means it can be used immediately to build healthy soil in the vegetable garden, herb garden, fruit guild or even to feed potted plants.

Compost Tea

     Compost tea is a concentrated organic liquid fertilizer that is made from steeping biologically active compost in aerated water.  Compost tea is nutritionally rich and can help provide plants with beneficial soil bacteria and fungi. A compost tea is generally produced by combining one volume of compost to 4–10 volumes of water, but there has also been debate about the benefits of aerating the mixture. Field studies have shown the benefits of adding compost teas to crops due to the adding of organic matter, increased nutrient availability and increased microbial activity. They have also been shown to have an effect on plant pathogens.
     Check out the following link to find The Secrets to Making Great Compost Tea.

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Mycorrhizae

What is mycorrhizae?
     A fungus which grows in association with the roots of a plant in a symbiotic or mildly pathogenic relationship.
What does mycorrhizae do for plants?
     Mycorrhizae actually connect to plants in two ways. One form, called ectomycorrhizae, simply surrounds the outside of the roots. The mycorrhizae absorb nutrients such as phosphorus and magnesium and bring it directly to the plant roots. Here, they exchange the nutrients they’ve collected for some sugar.

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When we go out on a hike through a healthy forest it is obvious to most that the trees are often their best genetic expression in the environment that they have been thriving for hundreds, or even thousands of years. These beautiful plants and trees exchange sunlight in sugar form for nutrition from the decaying forest floor, all without human interaction. Indigenous microbes that facilitate this exchange have survived here for a long time. When we bring them back to our trees in an urban setting, where soil is often lacking in many ways, these vigorous microbes will enable our trees to feed themselves and ask the mycelial network for what it needs when it is needed. Not only does this process make an immediate impact on your soil, it also is equipped to endure the harsh climate of the rocky mountains, through the surprise freeze, to the long drought.

Here are some of the many benefits of a strong microbiome in your soil:

-As many of us know there is a lot of carbon in the atmosphere, storing in our soils will assist in cleaning our air and fighting against climate change.

-By inoculating with a vast diversity of microbes you greatly decrease the risk of any opportunistic pathogens or disease, and you also ensure that whatever you decide to plant will have its choice from a buffet of beneficial microbes.

-Most microbial bodies are around 80% water, that in itself should speak to the water retention of a living soil, compared to plain old dirt which water seeps through and away to the abyss it sometimes seems.

-Dr. Mercola recommends getting your hands in some healthy soil. It builds your immune system up, and believe it or not it acts as an anti-depressant. (Get out there and get dirty!)

-Your trees will love you.