Building Healthy Soils

Healthy Soils = Healthy Plants, People & Pets

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There are three pillars of healthy soil and addressing each area is important in getting your garden to flourish:

1

Soil Texture

2

Soil Nutrition

3

Soil Life

When we get all 3 working together, we reduce our impact and the soils and plants work symbiotically together to improve garden soil. 

Soil Texture

Soil Texture is the technical term for the sand-silt-clay ratio. Your soils need sand to drain water, clay to hold water, and silt to hold on to nutrients, roughly speaking. When we have the ideal combination, we have “loamy soils,” that allow lawns and most of the common landscape plants to thrive.

Soil Nutrition

Soil Nutrition is the food in your soils and is critical to plant health. Of the 17 nutrients used by plants, 3 are considered “macronutrients” because they are used in the greatest quantity, nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium (N-P-K). Fertilizer technology over the last 70 years has focused on these three macronutrients and have largely forgotten the minor nutrients. Using only premium organic fertilizers, we make sure your lawn and plants get all the nutrients they need, not just the top 3. 

It might be helpful to think about your soils just like the refrigerator in your kitchen — both are a place to hold nutrients until they are consumed. If we wanted to know what nutrients were missing from your refrigerator, the best thing to do is to open it up and look inside. We can do the same with our soil. That's why we always start with a Soil Test to see what’s in your soil’s "refrigerator" and make a plan to stock it with healthy nutrients.

Soil Life

Soil Life refers to the probiotics in the soil. Probiotics are the microbial activity that not only breakdown nutrients in the soil and free them up for plants to use but are also a plant’s immune system. These microorganisms ward off plant diseases by forming a protective biological film around the root hairs of plants. Nutrients can get in while invading viruses stay out. 

For your lawn and plants, we brew our own probiotic tea, FertileTea, to restore the life in the soil. We apply this at scheduled intervals that coordinate with seasonal plant cycles. We boost our FertileTea with nutrients such as sea kelp, hydrolyzed fish, micronutrients and trace elements, mycorrhizal fungi, or humic/fulvic acids. By suspending these nutrients in a liquid, we can deliver them right to the root zone where they can be quickly absorbed. Hence the name FertileTea, since it is more than just a fabulous worm castings tea.

Learn about your soil's health and schedule a Soil Test with us. We’re eager for you to see the results!

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