May 26th

By Mutt Mulligan

Healthy Soil, a Key Ingredient

Healthy soils can mean the difference between disaster and success for your greenscape.  Healthy soils, acc. to the Sustainable Sites Initiative, allow rainwater to penetrate, preventing excess runoff, sedimentation, erosion, and flooding.  Soils also help clean, store, and recharge groundwater.  By storing water and slowing the delivery of water to plants, healthy soils play a significant role in vegetation health.

Fact: Soils can contain as much as or more carbon than living vegetation. For example, 97 percent of the 335 billion tons (304 billion metric tonnes) of carbon stored in grassland ecosystems is held in the soil.

Preserve and protect healthy soils
Before you plant, determine where soil is healthy and where it has been disturbed by previous uses, or is clearly not healthy.  Then, have an action plan for improving the soil.  

Use plant trimmings as compost to nourish soils. Reduce waste during maintenance by using yard trimmings for compost and mulch. Compost reduces the need for fertilizers by supplying nutrients in a slow-release manner. It also holds more rainwater onsite, decreases runoff, and provides increased soil moisture and filtering capacity.

Improve soil health
To improve soil, you’ll need to deal with compacted soil, make sure organic matter is abundant and that you have some soil organisms in existing soils.