Healthy Plants Begin with Healthy Soil
If you were trapped with insufficient food and water, would you thrive? How about if there was little light, dusty stale air and not enough room to grow? It’s not exactly a recipe for optimum health.
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Plants are rooted to the soil, so they have only what is available to them in that one spot. Therefore, it is up to you to help them thrive by giving them what they need.
It may surprise many growers that the most common reason plants fail to thrive is poor soil. Soil is depleted of humus and microbes due to the use of synthetic fertilizers and misuse of synthetic pesticides. It gets compacted from people walking on it and driving mowers and wheelbarrows over it. Just adding more fertilizer from the big box store will not fix this.
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Examine your soil and you will see a wide variety of animal and plant life, mostly beneficial. Scoop soil from your garden and you will probably find insects, millipedes, mites, earthworms, nematodes, slugs, snails and spiders. Get out the microscope and you will find soil organisms include algae, bacteria and fungi. These organisms act both chemically and physically to change your garden. They decompose stems, leaves and other landscape residues by digesting plant residues and other organic matter enzymatically. These organisms then move those residues from one place to another, mixing it with the soil.
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Using natural and organic products helps restore your soil to health and improves the performance of your plants. The following products are recommended for boosting soil vigor.
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Spray-N-Grow Micronutrients – Not only does Spray-N-Grow supply micronutrients directly to plants for absorption through the leaves, this complex increases beneficial microbial life in your soil. Larger microbial populations result in greater enzymatic activity and the digested soil nutrients become readily available to your plants.
Bill’s Perfect Fertilizer – Containing natural and organic nutrients, this cold-cooked blend supports both your soil and your plants. While feeding your plants, this fertilizer creates conditions for increased microbial and enzymatic activity in the soil. (Most fertilizers, including the big-name ones, do just the opposite.) Bill’s Perfect Fertilizer is the highest quality, most complete natural fertilizer on the market.
Gro-Bric – These easy to store, stack and carry coconut coir bricks increase your soil’s water and oxygen capacity to stimulate root growth. Gro-Brics deliver benefits similar to those of peat moss without impacting soil pH and with no harmful effects on the peat bogs that help serve as nature’s water filtering systems.
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Espoma Greensand – This easy to work in granular supplement reconditions your soil by providing iron and other minerals.
For your best garden, it’s best to start at the bottom. Get a little dirty, and you get better plants.
