This time of year is an important time to work on your soil to help it produce good results next spring and summer

Soil, more than just the dirt below our feet made up of organic remains, clay, sand and rock particles. It is a rich vibrant living ecosystem that provides a host of services for us. Within it live a myriad of organisms, ranging from the microscopic to the more recognizable minibeasts such as springtails, nematodes, earthworms and ants to name but a few.

Together with fungi and the above-ground decomposers they work to provide the first and most important aspect of soil – a nutrient rich medium for us to grow plants for food, fuel, animal feed and medicines, and for Mother Nature to grow her wonders too.

They do this by digesting dead plant and animal parts which release the nutrients held within so that growing plants can absorb the nutrients through their roots. This allows new plants to grow; which animals (including humans) eat; they in turn eventually die and the decomposers digest them - and so this nutrient cycle keeps turning. Mother Nature has a strict waste not want not policy which is lucky because it takes around 500 years to produce an inch of topsoil, the most productive layer of soil.

And there are a lot of organisms making this happen. There are more microorganisms in a handful of soil than there are people on earth. And almost a quarter of our planets biodiversity can be found in soil!

Soil is actually at the starting point of most food chains on earth, it is the cornerstone of almost all life. In fact it, it is estimated that 95% of our food is directly or indirectly produced from our soils yet we don’t seem to notice or care just how much we abuse it. The area of fertile soil covering our planet is limited and being reduced every day through poor land management in agriculture, forestry, mining and building developments and if we don’t start to take care of this precious commodity we risk losing so many essential services it provides for us.

Some of these include:

Helping keep our water supplies clean by trapping pollutants before they reach the groundwater and get back into our water supplies.

Acting as a very important buffer against flood damage. One acre of healthy soil can hold 9200 tons of water! But as the human population increases and build on more and more land we are losing the area of land able to provide this flood reduction service.

Now is the ideal time to dig the garden over and leave the soil over the winter time to be broken down by the weather and allowing air in to assist the organisms within the soil to increase in time for next years crop and especially if we are wanting to add manure, this is the best time to allow the manure to be broken down by all the soil organisms allowing the nutrients to be readily available next year when we are ready to plant

So the next time you get mud on your boots think of all the wonders it holds!

Lyndsay Torrance