Build Your Soil

The best way to a high-yield, pest-free garden is to build good, healthy soil! You can have great soil regardless of what you start with -- clay or sand, pebbles or shale.

For the average home or community gardener cultivating a relatively small patch of land, soil building is crucial to the success of your garden. With little or no room to rotate your crops, the same soil is intensively cultivated year after year, depleting the nutrients and leaving little behind for the earthworms and soil microorganisms to live on.

When soil nutrients are limited, microbes will take up what little is there leaving none for the plants. By adding organic matter, you are feeding both your soil and your plants. Your soil's ability to retain both moisture and oxygen is greatly improved with the addition of organic matter. And you're literally injecting life into your garden by adding a multitude of beneficial microorganisms. Some of these organisms "fix" nitrogen in the soil making it available to plants in a readily useful form. Others manufacture antibiotics that protect your plants from diseases. Using pesticides in your garden eliminates these beneficial organisms and leaves you with lifeless, nutrient-poor soil.

So, go ahead and feed your soil. Fatten up those earthworms with a healthy diet of leaves, compost and manure. And, be sure to serve a nice helping of organic fertilizer for dessert.

For more details on all of these ideas please take a look at our fact sheet called Feed Your Soil. If you cannot open the file, please read our Fact Sheet page.