About YOUR Garden
Let me ask you a question...
How do you feel about your current garden?
We hope things are going well...
Veggies are productive, nutritious and tasty.
Flowers are blooming so strongly that compliments from the neighbours are commonplace (who might even secretly be a little envious).
Weeds and pest outbreaks occur rarely, and when they do they don’t completely take over because your plants and soil are strong and resilient.
Your garden takes minimal upkeep once things are in place. Leaving you time to enjoy it and dream up creative ways to expand.
Look, we hope this is the case for you.
However, the above scenario is unfortunately far from reality for a lot of Aussie gardeners who are feeling discouraged by their current gardening attempts.
Maybe you can relate to the folks who:
- Are sick of spending time, money and energy on synthetic fertilisers and other chemical applications that give you at best a temporary fix to growth and pest problems.
- Aren’t thrilled about the idea of you and your family being around the garden after applying toxic chemicals… and then consuming the produce that has absorbed these toxic chemicals.
- Enjoy spending time in the garden, but don’t like feeling as though you HAVE TO or else everything will rapidly fall apart.
- Have decided to renounce chemical applications in their garden altogether (a smart move in our opinion), but are struggling to achieve a naturally healthy and productive garden without them.
If you can relate to any of the problems above, you’ll probably want to pay close attention to what we’re about to share with you.
Because when you start focusing your gardening efforts on this ‘one thing’ - dealing with those problems listed above can quickly become a thing of the past…
The One Thing For A Healthy, Productive Garden With ZERO Chemicals
This one thing alone can make the difference between a thriving, rich garden that almost takes care of itself and a weed-ridden, pest-infested patch of dirt.
So what is this ‘one thing’?
The One Thing For A Healthy, Productive Garden With ZERO Chemicals:
Cultivating A Healthy and Balanced Soil Food Web
For those of you “in the know” about organic gardening, you may already understand about the importance of healthy soil biology (also referred to as soil microorganisms or “microbes”) and the cultivating the Soil Food Web.
If not, here’s a brief explanation of the soil food web by world leading soil biologist Dr. Elaine Ingham:
As Dr. Ingham explained in the video - the healthy balance of beneficial soil microorganisms creates abundant plant ecosystems that are completely self sustaining - such as the great forests of the world.
Soil With Balanced Biology (read: a healthy Soil Food Web) Can Naturally Provide Plants With All The Nutrients They Need As Well As Dramatically Increasing Immunity To Pests, Diseases And Weeds.
Here’s another short video by Dr. Ingham explaining how the Soil Food Web provides plants with all the nutrients they need 100% naturally without the need for fertilisers (and for free!):
Hopefully by now you can understand the importance of cultivating a balanced Soil Food Web in your garden and the natural benefits it can provide to you as a gardener and those who consume your produce.
However, many gardeners unknowingly damage their soil biology, bringing the Soil Food Web into a state of imbalance - resulting in many less than desirable consequences!
How Does The Soil Food Web Become Unbalanced or Damaged?
For the majority of gardens, the main culprit behind damage and disruptions to the balance of the Soil Food Web is chemical applications and synthetic fertilisers.
You see, most chemical pesticides and herbicides that are designed to kill off pests, diseases and weeds also damage and kill off the soil microbes that would provide the ongoing immunity and protection from pest and diseases if they were healthy and in balance.
For example, have you ever sprayed for a pest or weed, which worked in the short term only to have the problem come back again (but worse) after the treatment wore off?
And then required more applications to manage?
This “downward spiral” experience is common to many Australian gardeners and also farmers. Which can be easily explained like this:
The more unbalanced the soil biology, the more susceptible to pests, diseases and weeds the plants & soil becomes.
In order to manage the symptoms of this soil imbalance, the need for more synthetic treatments increases - which continue to harm the integrity of the living soil biology, resulting in more problems that require more treatments that continue to damage the soil biology.
This downward spiral happens progressively over time, but eventually results in degenerated “dead” dirt holding virtually no microbial life and becoming useless for productive growth.
The complete opposite to living soil with a healthy food web.
Synthetic fertilisers are another major cause of damage to the soil biology over the long term as they inadvertently cause the soil microorganisms to starve.
As explained in the Nutrient Cycling video by Dr Ingham above (the second video), in a healthy soil food web the plant exchanges its own sugars in return for the plant available nutrients that the soil biology produces.
However when a plant is able to get access to synthetic nutrients in the form of fertiliser WITHOUT having to exchange its own sugars in return, the nutrient-energy exchange sites around the plant roots are “switched off” by the plant so it can conserve its own energy and rely on these “free” nutrients provided by synthetic fertilisers.
The result is another downward spiral where the plant becomes more and more reliant on the synthetic fertilizer to get the nutrients it needs, further shutting off the nutrient-energy exchange sites between the plant roots and soil biology.
Many Australian gardeners and farmers are all too familiar with spending their time and money trying to “band-aid” symptoms (low productivity and presence of pests, weeds and diseases) rather than looking at the root cause of the problem, and viewing these symptoms as indicators of the REAL issue - unbalanced soil biology.
Once they enter one of these “downward spirals”, with each synthetic treatment their soil biology loses a little more integrity, productive potential and becomes little more vulnerable to future pests, weeds and diseases - which then take more time, money and unnatural chemicals to treat.
We hope by now you’re beginning to understand the importance of the Soil Food Web and how it becomes unbalanced and causes problems.
If you’re still a little confused, I’d recommend you continue watching Dr Inghams videos on her Youtube channel. You can check it out by clicking here.
What Are The Best Ways To Cultivate A Healthy Soil Food Web?
Hopefully by now you understand the importance of cultivating a healthy Soil Food Web, and know what NOT to do to avoid unnecessary damage to your soil biology…
It makes sense to look at what the best ways to build up and strengthen your soil biology so you can experience the healthiest, most productive garden you’ve ever had 100% naturally.
And on the next page, we’ll reveal what we’ve discovered to be the easiest and most effective way to cultivate your soils biological ecosystem and reap the benefits of a healthy Soil Food Web.
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© Microstart Gardening 2020