Ps… I got quite excited recording this episode and there’s a lot of ‘you knows’ and ‘ums’ and ‘sooo’ please do your best to ignore those,🙏

It's the 5th Dec so that means ‘ Happy World Soil Day!! Today is the day you get a pass to totally nerd out on your friends and talk all day about soil. Fun facts to share around with your non gardening friends.

There is more living organisms in a tablespoon of healthy soil that there are humans on earth.

The largest living organisms isn't a whale it’s a fungus that is found in Oregon USA and it’s the size of 1665 football fields, is estimated to be between 200-800 years old and is mostly made of carbon.

Another fact is that is not so fun is that it is estimated that the world topsoil will be depleted within the next 60 years and some even say it's as little as 30 years. That shit is scary.

So this week I was planning to do a super short episode because I spend the weekend doing a plant based bush survival course where for 2 whole days we learnt about edible wild plant, bush medicine, survival tactics, tracking, natural fibre rope making, fire starting and lots more. My body is battered and bruised but I am feeling a hugely renewed sense of connection to the earth. But because it’s World Soil Day I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share a few things that can help you improve your soil.

I am by no means a soil expert. I am learning from others and am still making a bunch of mistakes and learning from these as I go. I can share though that early next year we will have a really cool guest on to share her knowledge about soil and compost. This lady knows her shit… especially in compost. So make sure your episode notifications are on or you check in every few weeks so you don’t miss it.

But for today you and I are going to chat about 5 ways you can support the soil web in your own patch by looking at 5 ways guaranteed to help you improve your solid health. Even if you just did one of these things you will see improvements.


First one is Increase organic matter. Organic matter is anything that was once upon a time living or has come from a living thing. Another way to say it is anything that contains carbon compounds that were formed by living organisms.

Parts of or whole plants, grass clippings, manures, dead bodies.. I’m not suggesting to bury someone in your backyard but the beloved pet you buried under the tree added to the organic matter. Feathers, wool, fur, hair, bones, kelp, paper, algae, fungi, all of these break down and add to the organic matter.

Compost is a great way to decompose these so that the nutrients can become plant available and the compost adds overall structure to the soil allowing for moisture retention and oxygen to reach roots. It also helps maintain a stable PH level.
Chop and drop is a great way to add organic matter right at the source. When you plants are spent don’t pull them out, instead chop them off at or slightly below ground level and chop them up into smaller bits and leave them to break down. You can also add mulch, leaves and aged manures to your garden directly. Depending on what manure you use you may need to go easy on it to keep a good balance.


Second way is to stop using pesticides and herbicides. Yep. STOP. I know it’s disheartening when your hard work is getting eaten by bugs or it seems like you are forever battling weeds but I 1000% promise you if you are using pesticides and herbicides you are doing way more harm than good.

Keep the bugs at bay through companion planting. Plant things that attract beneficial insects that eat the buggers that are attacking your plants. Plant other things that will either attract the pest and use these as sacrificial plants or plant deterrents. To give you an example, if you struggle with aphids (who doesn’t from time to time) then plant things that attract bugs that love to snack on aphids or plant things that aphids love to each away from your prized patch. Nasturtium and a range of other plants can act as an attractant drawing them away. This year my dandelions were covered in aphids and ladybugs were loving it. Yet there were zero on any other plants even the ones growing only 30 cms away. The episode on companion planting will give you a few more ideas too.

You can also remove bugs by hand. Laborious but better than chemicals. Blasting them with water can be quite satisfying too.

Remove weeds by hand. Grab a weeding tool that is suitable for your garden and weed types that will cause the least amount of disturbance. Or chop them off and use them for compost or weed tea. I would only chop and drop weeds without seeds otherwise you have just effectively planted the weed you are trying to remove. I learnt this the hard way.

Another great way to suppress weeds is to plant green manure crops during garden downtime. This has loads of benefits like minimising erosion of bare soil from wind or rain, adding nutrients back into the soil through nitrogen fixing and chopping and dropping before seeds form. Some green manure crops can act as a bio-fumigant to manage soil borne nasties. planting mustard greens after or before tomatoes can help control nematodes and white mould in lettuce and other plants.

Third thing you can do to improve your soil health is to minimise soil disturbance. You have no doubt heard me talk about no dig gardening which is great but the fact of intensive backyard gardening is that we inevitably are going to disturb the soil.

Minimal disturbance is just that. Minimal. We want to have the least amount of negative impact on the soilweb. Everything under our feet is connected by billions of living superhighways. When these are interrupted, that is when plants struggle to uptake nutrients, the soil can’t maintain a good balance of moisture retention and oxygen flow. This is a stupidly simplistic explanation but you get my drift.

If you have to dig a hole to plant a tree or bury something then do so with the least amount of damage. When dealing with hard compacted earth use a fork to open and loosen it without turning the earth over. This will still do some damage but it won’t annihilate it completely and on the plus side you are then getting air and water down there and can start to get some green manure in the ground to start the improving process.

While we are talking about compaction keep a rule of ‘no toes on the rows’ Don’t walk on the active growing parts of your gardens. This significantly helps to reduce compaction. If you do need to walk on them, using stepping stones or planks of timber can help to spread the load.

Fourth is to minimise synthetic fertilisers. I am not an anti-synthetic fertiliser campaigner but I feel that there is little education for the average backyard gardener about the impact of dumping synthetic fertiliser on your garden over and over and over again.

I would caution that synthetic fertilisers should not be relied upon nor used systematically. Quick explanation of the difference. Synthetic or inorganic means synthesised or made using chemicals and either man made or naturally occuring minerals. Organic as we mentioned before is anything that is made from a once living thing and has loads more benefits than just fertiliser. Check out episode 25 for the what and when of fertilisers.

Synthetic fertilisers can kill soil micro organisms which the plants rely upon to help with nutrient uptake. Just a bit of an irony.

It can also cause reactions within the soil that cause significant depletion of naturally occurring nutrients and it disrupts the plants ability to adequately regulate the nutrient cycling process.

I have used synthetic fertilisers in the past but haven’t done for quite some time. It’s worth doing your own garden experiments looking at the short term and long term responses to synthetic vs organic fertilisers to see for yourself. Another great place to go and learn more about this is soilfoodweb.com. Dr Elaine Ingham has loads of information for free that is simple to understand for any gardener.

And the fifth way to love your soil is to ensure plant diversity and lots of it. Not all plants are created equal and many help each other under the soil just as much as above. Just like humans we need diversity in our communities to enrich our minds and challenge us to grow stronger and your plants are the same. Deep rooted plants access a different set of nutrients and can distribute these through a number of ways. I did a whole episode just on Comfery for this very reason. Nothing grows in isolation or monocrops in nature.

Forests grow very well all crammed in together, dropping leaves everywhere, falling over and rotting into the ground and bringing in animals to spread seeds, poop and die all adding to the life of soil. I have mentioned dying a bit this episode but it’s a part of life. Everything that is living will die one day. My wish is to be composted but I don’t think that option has been permitted in Australia yet. Hopefully it will be by that time.

The more I learn about soil the more I realise I don’t know. It’s an endless subject that is utterly fascinating for so many reasons and it’s the number 1 thing that will give you big, bumper crops that are highly nutritious if you look after it. Pests, challenging weather and other factors will come and go but soil health is a long game and is key to ensuring our great grand kids have access to nutritious food and a healthy planet.

I will be back for one last episode for 2022 on the 19th Dec.