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Organic soil
A fundamental principle of organic gardening is to feed your soil and then let the soil feed your plants. By providing the materials that the natural fauna and flora in your soil need to thrive, you will encourage more and more of these hard working little organisms to grow and multiply. The result, an ever increasing quality of soil with more and more available nutrients. As your soil develops the effects spread further up the larger ecosystem. Good soil promotes a healthy populations of worms and worms attract larger garden visitors. It's not long before even the smallest garden starts to see signs of hedgehogs, toads and other more substantial beasties. Their presence further adds to the quality of your soil. You'd be amazed just how much nutrient comes out of the feathery posteriors of the typical family of birds.
What can you add to your soil to help things along?One of the best answers to this is, of course, compost. See our tips on how to make organic compost page or alternatively take a look at our organic compost retailer directory. Reading through some of the best guides on organic gardening will turn up a sizeable range of dusts, meals, sprays, feeds and more. If you have the time and size of garden that will allow for specific plantings of compost enhancing crops and sacks of manure hung in water barrels then you will be able to produce some seriously organic, home grown, soil enhancers. For most of us, however, we need a rather more accessible solution (no reference to the water barrel above). Fortunately the organic label has entered our garden centers with a range of different organic fetilisers. Even better, a number of companies now offer some excellent products directly over the Internet. For more information on this please see our organic fertiliser page.
Related organic gardening features
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A
healthy soil, rich in nutrients and life, is the essential building block
of any garden. Soil is a complex and delicate ecosystem in its own right
with a multitude of organisms converting a wide variety of inactive materials
into the essential nutrients that your plants will thrive on. Chemical
fertilisers can destroy these organisms and pull you and your garden into
a cycle of dependency.