Everyone thinks they have the secret to growing the best Cannabis. But we know the real secret. It’s not about growing healthy plants folk, its about growing healthy soils!
We sometimes think of agriculture and farming as just growing plants. We prepare beds or fields using tillage, we add fertilizers and pesticides, and we marvel at how well our crops grow. It can become formulaic; calculating the amount of fertilizer our crop will need and making sure we add enough to yield what we want. But this method of production, focusing on growing plants, has led to the degradation of soil health worldwide. Chemical fertilizers shift microbial communities, tillage disrupts structure and permeability, pesticides lose effectiveness due to evolved resistance. This means that it takes more and more inputs to reap the same benefits. Cost of production goes up. Amount of profit goes down. Year after year, the soil degrades more.
This thinking is unsustainable. It is time we switch our thinking from feeding plants to feeding the soil. But how do we feed our soil? By growing plants.
Soil as an ecosystem
We are all familiar with the idea that plant roots take up nutrients and water from the soil. This process is driven by transpiration, the pull created from the evaporation of water from stomata pulls water, and dissolved solutes, into the plant. What we aren’t as all familiar with is the fact that plant roots also deposit carbon-rich chemicals attract microbes, form aggregates, and free nutrients. Microbes build structure and breakdown substances that can feed more microbes, or they can be food for larger microbes. Larger microbes are food for small insects. Small insects are food for large insects. Large insects are food for birds and mammals and other animals and so on. At each stage, waste gets recycled back into the soil until eventually the plants take it up as nutrients. Even then, leaving the roots in the soil after harvest will allow them to break down and recycle stored nutrients back into the soil. Year after year the soil health improves.
Grow soils not plants
This philosophy, grow soil not plants, is key to improving and maintaining soil health. Using mulches and cover crops can help reduce pesticide inputs, not removing organic matter – or carbon – from the soil can keep soil biota happy and well fed. Happy soil biota encourage nutrient cycling and can suppress disease while increasing yield and secondary metabolite production. Maintaining plant cover can protect soil structure and permeability, attract beneficial insects, and improve fertility.
Healthy soils are more than just a growth medium. They are a grower’s greatest asset. Healthy soils lead to healthy plants. Healthy plants yield more, are more nutritious, and are more resilient to disease and environmental stress.
Three central tenets
Growing healthy soil is based on 3 key tenets: Keep it covered, Keep it whole, Keep it planted. I whole heartedly recommend the book The Living Soil Handbook by Jesse Frost, who does a great job of explaining, in practical terms, how growers can promote soil health. We will briefly explain these tenets, and in future posts offer some strategies to accomplish growing healthy soil, but check the book out if you can.
1). Keep it covered – Constant ground cover will preserve soil structure, discourage weed growth, breakdown to nutrients that can get cycled through, and help retain moisture. Mulches, manures, cardboard, tarps, and plant residue are all great options.
2). Keep it whole – Tillage breaks up soil aggregates and structure. Tillage also depletes the soil of organic matter. All this leads to lower retention of nutrients and water and decreased habitat for soil organisms.
3). Keep it planted – Living soil, that is healthy soil, requires nutrition. Living plants provide that nutrition. Keeping growing plants in the soil encourages nutrient cycling, good soil structure, and a healthy soil biota community.
Keep an eye out for our next entry into our soil health series as we explore the 3 tenets more in-depth. Not only will we explain how you can implement these ideas, but we will also offer some practical ideas on how to start improving your soil health!
