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March 10, 2010

‘Invisible’ creepy-crawlies make for healthy soil, plants

Do you want to know a dirty little secret? Microbes.

Otherwise known as microorganisms – “An organism of microscopic size, especially a bacterium or protozoan” (American Heritage Dictionary) – these “dirty little secrets” live and thrive right under the soles of your shoes (or feet, if you’re a barefoot gardener). If it wasn’t for their presence, the things we grow in our gardens and landscapes probably wouldn’t survive without some type of inorganic help in the form of artificial fertilizers.

I think there needs to be more emphasis on creating healthy soil. When plants grow in healthy soil, they are naturally healthy, versus manmade healthy. Plants that rely on chemical fertilizers, given to them by overzealous gardeners who want bigger instead of better, might be deprived of healthy root-protecting fungi that are killed after chemical fertilizers are applied.

Therefore, if you want a natural and healthy landscape for your garden, it’s necessary to understand a little science concerning the soil, its inhabitants, and the relationship that exists between them and the plants gardeners like to grow.

Writing in “Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web,” Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis tell us, “Sure, it (the science of the soil food web) requires a bit of effort, but for too long, for too many gardeners, everything we needed to know came in a bottle or jar and all we had to do was mix with water and apply with a hose-end sprayer: instant cooking meets home gardening.”

Until I became a Master Gardener, I never gave much thought to what went on down under and how it affected the flowers and vegetables I grew. After realizing the important synchronicity between soil and plants, I began gardening with a different mindset.

So, what exactly is this “soil food web” anyway? Understanding what’s going on between plants and the organisms that live in the soil. That’s the basic definition. I’m positive you know about and have seen the larger organisms living in your garden soil – earthworms, centipedes, ants, slugs (yuck!), beetles and their larvae, and more. But you probably didn’t know that “A mere teaspoon of good garden soil, as measured by microbial geneticists, contains a billion invisible bacteria, several yards of equally invisible fungal hyphae, several thousand protozoa, and a few dozen nematodes.” It’s these unseen microbial life forms living in the soil that help our plants develop healthy root systems.

With so many organisms living in and under the soil, each requiring energy, Lowenfels and Wayne call it a “eat-and-be eaten world,” and offer a succinct definition of the soil food web: “Most organisms eat more than one kind of prey, so if you make a diagram of who eats whom in and on the soil, the straight-line food chain instead becomes a series of food chains linked and cross-linked to each other, creating a web of food chains, or a soil food web.”

Consider this an introductory article about the soil food web. I’ll continue the series in next week’s column. Between now and then, please take some time to do a little research on your own, and jot down any “dirty little secret” questions that you might have.





T.C. Conner is a Master Gardener and columnist for Allied News. He can be reached at tc@thewritegardener.com. Check out his blog at www.the writegardener.wordpress.com.

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