Let’s take a deep dive on how you can grow vital soil on your patch by rethinking how you use your shovel. Should you dig? Do you use a shovel? What is the science behind this?
To dig or not to dig
Well, if you have a vital soil, you’ve got extensive microbial activity in terms of all these networks of tunnels and mycelium all in your soil, and when you dig, you actually turn them upside down. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my house turned upside down, my things broken, my pantry shattered and thrown everywhere.
That’s pretty much what you do when you dig a soil. And then coupled with it being bare, no plants in there. There’s no food for me. There’s no food for microbes. All that activity that comes from the photosynthetic sugars that the plants deliver to the soil laid away, is gone. So there’s no food, there’s no habitat and my house is upset. I don’t think digging is a great thing for a vital soil, especially if it’s comprehensive.
Don’t worry, there are other options.
What can you do? Well, you can plant above the ground. You can plant in the tops of hay bales. You can make sure that you use a fork that doesn’t change the soil aggregation too much. You can, if you have to dig, dig small patches so that the disturbance area is not so large.
So I challenge you, I dare you… leave the shovel in the shed, rethink the tools that you use in your garden so that you can have vital soil in your patch.
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