Your Good Soil Guide

by Ilyhana Kate Kennedy ã 2002

Basic Principles

Basic Principle Number One:  Mother Nature does know best!

§     The farmer or gardener who regards Mother Nature as the expert, observes the natural cycles of growth and decomposition, and makes great soil by paying attention to how Nature does it.

Basic Principle Number Two:  Soil is a living eco-system.

 §     Good soil is alive! It hosts a complex system of interdependent microbiological lifeforms which support plant growth, maintain plant health and are responsible for recycling of spent vegetative matter. Good soil also conducts energy in the form of the Earth’s magnetic field energy as well as the process of electrolytic ion exchange. This subtle energetic flow is conducted through the microweb of water bearing capillaries which are developed and maintained by microbiological life.

Basic Principle Number Three:  Soil is a cycle.

§      Soil is an animate and mobile system. It is not a static collection of chemical and mineral elements. Soil perpetually cycles its components within an energetic system.

Basic Principle Number Four:  Every part of the soil eco-system must be present and active to maintain the peak health and sustainability of the whole. If not, the soil is in repair mode.

§      Good soil must have present a balance of the following elements: surface cover, humus, decaying organic matter, available primary and secondary mineral elements as well as the full range of trace elements, the full spectrum of microbiological lifeforms, superior quality moisture, air and access to light. When any one or more of these is missing, Nature is less able to sustain peak soil health and imbalance occurs. Nature then goes into repair mode.

§      Some examples of repair mode are:

•      The dangerously spiny and deep-rooted saffron thistle grows prolifically on degenerated compacted soils, deterring foot traffic of creatures that would further compact the soil, while at the same time breaking up the soil with its deep roots and bringing minerals up from the sub-soils to the surface soils

•      Elements become locked up in soils, which are outside a healthy pH balance, discouraging the growth of certain plants and encouraging the growth of others, which would tend to balance the pH if left to mulch down into the soil.

•     Weeds rapidly germinate to provide surface cover for bare soil

•     Black wattle springs up as a pioneer plant in cleared areas with the purpose of fixing nitrogen in the soil to prepare the soil for tree growth.

Basic Principle Number Five:  The health of the soil is dependant upon the health and quality of the water that provides the moisture content. Water is the lifeblood or lifeforce of the land.

§    The quality of the water is measured in terms of mineral elements, light, oxygen and energetic quotient retained as memory. The quality of the water is also dependant upon the quality of the soil over which it flows, or the air through which it falls as rain.

Basic Principle Number Six:  There is a critical point of degeneration beyond which Nature is unable to repair the soil without direct and appropriate intervention.

§    The good farmer or gardener knows that a good soil eco-system is the basis of a healthy garden or farm eco-system within which the soil is an integral participant. No matter how the plants may appear, they are only truly healthy and at the peak of their nutritional capacity or flowering capacity, if the soil eco-system is in peak health.