Soil Health
When it comes to soil health and available nutrients, soil scientist William Albrecht says that "Most of the nutrients in healthy soil are 'insoluble yet available.'"
When it comes to the care of our gardens and our farmlands, the main fertilizer that is used is water-soluble fertilizer. While plants are readily capable of absorbing the nutrients found in this state, plants usually only use about 10% and rarely more than 50%. This means that the remaining nutrients in our water-soluble fertilizers wash away into the groundwater and can create toxic levels of nitrates in our water supply. High nitrate levels can also be caused from runoff or leakage from landfills, septic systems, feed lots, and wastewater along with fertilized soil.
When using water-soluble fertilizers, we can also end up creating a chemical dependency . Over time, there will be an imbalance in the soil, as the carbon to nitrogen ratio is no longer 30:1, which is the balanced diet needed for microorganisms to break down plant matter and turn it into soil.
With too much carbon, our microbes go on a breeding frenzy, spurring a breeding frenzy among the beetles, ants, and spiders. To sustain them, they devour any available nitrogen that comes their way before the plants get it. If no new nitrogen is being added into the soil, the microbes will begin to rob plants of nitrogen. When this happens, plants begin to yellow and die from the lack of nitrogen keeping them alive.
With too much chemical fertilizers, microbes begin to seek out carbon to sustain themselves. Over time, without carbon being added to the soil, microbes will eat any available carbon they can find until the soil life begins to die, starved of carbon.
Poor soil health is characterized by the lack of organisms, dry, crumbly and sometimes hard-packed earth. Poor soil also has bad water holding capacity and poor drainage.
As soil life dies, so do the organisms within it. Many of these organisms have special tasks; breaking down compounds, fighting fungi, secreting antibiotics, or transferring essential nutrients. Without the help of these organisms, the ones that remain are those that have learned to thrive on plants, the only source of carbon remaining. This is what we see when we find countless issues of mildewing, spotting, blackening, chomping, and sucking taking place on plants. Nature is out of balance.
The question for many of us is, well, what is a better option? You say to not use fertilizers, but how then do we take care of our plants, keep them healthy, and help to eliminate pests, fungi, and other diseases that may come their way?
Read Soil Health Part 2, coming soon, to learn how to grow beautiful and healthy plants with abundant soil life.