How to Improve the Quality of Your Soil?

You might think, what has the soil in common with my health? Very much, if our food doesn’t grow in healthy soil, we will be depleted of essential minerals and lose our health.

I will show you how to improve the quality of your soil. It is not that difficult, but it is a vital step towards your health and the environment’s health.  Nowadays, the soils are depleted because of monoculture, pesticides, and herbicides, which intoxicate the ground where our vegetables are growing. Farming is polluting our soil in all countries, and as a result, our water supply. It is time to stop using poisons in our food supplies. Farming or the food industry is greedy for money, but we support them,  sawing the bridge we are sitting on.

It is the stupidity and greediness of the human being who is given an own will. However, the customer is King and can force the industry to change the way. Most people are not busy with the wrong things happening in this world, but with their comfort.

Soil Quality

The soil quality has to be healthy; otherwise, we will not consume enough minerals. If you know what compost is, then you might understand what quality soil is. We have many different forms of grounds, such as a muddy one where rainwater is staying on the surface, not being able to penetrate the ground where water stands like a pool.

We also have sandy and dry ground where water is running away and not penetrating the floor. Plants suffer thirst in this ground. These two are very difficult to work with and need adjustment to improve. Also, you find more acidic soils in the forest under trees and in swampy ground, where you find many plants that love this kind of soil, like azaleas and rhododendrons, but vegetables and fruit trees need loose but nutrient-rich soil, like compost. It is the only soil where vegetables can thrive, which is why the soil has to be enriched with compost every time you sow the seeds or plant little plants.

You will harvest healthy vegetables using healthy soil, showing you will profit from mineral-rich soil very much. In farming the most soil is useless due to pesticides and monoculture. Still, they use a lot of artificial fertilizer, which is not healthy for the environment and us. Getting rid of these toxins is asking for lots of minerals, same in your body, which uses minerals to get rid of the toxins detoxing, leaving us with a deficiency of minerals that generally help develop chronic diseases.

Essential is silicon and organic sulfur for the body and environment; magnesium, selenium, and other trace minerals have become deficient in the soil resulting in a deficiency in the body. Cows do not receive the minerals anymore because they are fed the wrong food, soya and corn, but we consume their meat. Even you are eating pastured animals in the fields; it is not a guarantee that you will eat healthy beef. The fields are mostly not having the mixtures of grass and wildflowers like they did decades back. Soil is only beneficial if natural wildflowers, what people call a weed, are growing on this field, attracting bees, butterflies, and other insects, making soil oxygen and mineral-rich.

Making your compost

I have compost in my little garden. It takes some time to be able to use the compost. Every garden waste I throw into the pile, my vegetable and fruit waste, mixed with some healthy soil, I leave it some weeks and then turn it over; thus, I produce my compost. You can use a compost accelerator that helps the worms and beetles get into the developing compost, which speeds up the progress. When the soil is ready, I use it for my garden. However, it is not enough. Producing compost from organic waste takes time, so I decided to create another pile making my compost.

Healthy soil has a rich life of micro-organism and insects that are living in the organic waste. They are producing quality soil. Without our little friends, you will not have healthy soil; you can compare it with our gut microbiome, where beneficial bacteria create a healthy environment in our body. The same happens in healthy soil. Plants growing in this soil become stable, healthy plants full of minerals, antioxidants, vitamins, and phytonutrients, and enzymes. They are needed for a healthy body, but also a healthy environment.

If you have a spare corner in your garden, you could easily make your compost. It is very worth producing it for your plants which will be stronger and look healthy. A suitable method is to plant vegetables between flowers. Your garden will become an oasis for insects, birds, and small mammals which eat the snails, like hedgehogs.

What are the materials to use in compost?

You can use the waste of organic fruits like apples, pears, peaches( not stones), organic vegetables, Eggshells( most time the birds are eating them, I crush them very small), coffee grounds are perfect, Grass and plants clippings, dry leaves. I put in finely shredded wood and branches, but they need to be small. I don’t use onions and cooked rests in the compost because you might draw mice and rats into your garden and maybe house.

Lemon and oranges peels are also not suitable for composting. The microbes can’t break them down very quickly, so better don’t use them.

Producing compost can take three months to two years, depending on the size of your compost pile. Mine is minimal, so it takes me about three months, but I already leave it during wintertime, and so it usually needs several months to get a healthy compost.

The Benefits of Clover in My Garden

Using so-called weed plants is very beneficial for your soil. Plants like clover bring oxygen to your earth and environment and use nitrogen. They are natural fertilizer which enriches your soil very much. Bees, bumblebees, and butterflies love the clover, but there are more beneficial plants like lupines and alfalfa. I sow them as a seed between my plants and flowers. They grow very fast, and you always have a guarantee that they will come during the summer months, enriches the life of insects and the soil. You can get clover in white or red colors, and I think they look pretty in the garden. Your soil will become healthier and more loose which let rain penetrate the ground very well.

Before winter comes, you spit the clover under your soil and leave it there, producing your compost, an oxygen-rich soil, the best soil you could have. Clover is a soil- improver, so are lupine and alfalfa.  Many wildflowers you have found on the fields in former times are improving the ground naturally. It is a pity that they have disappeared and we only see grass on the fields nowadays.

Do you still remember the sound of the bees and bumblebees while walking or sitting in the fields? I do; in my childhood, the fields have been full of life, but you don’t have insects flying in the grass in these times. Human beings have destroyed the earth at such a speed and still do. We have to stop being greedy! Global life has only helped some people to make a huge amount of money, the most people pay the price, living in an environment that we can’t call healthy anymore.

How can we stay healthy? 

How to Improve The Quality Of Your Soil?

We could extend here the question and ask how to improve the environment and our health? I have already written posts about our air and water condition on my other website, www.glass-light.com. The pollution has intoxicated the air, the water, and the soil.

Improving the quality of our soil is not difficult. We need to plant the right plants, like clover and lupines, wildflowers that improve the soil and stop using pesticides and herbicides, giving the insects rest to increase their population. Stopping exploiting the earth and our environment is the only solution. The soil needs to recover, as the oceans and the air. As long as we overlook the facts around the dependence on our health and environment, we will not recover and heal.

Our soil is essential to our health. No way around it, and improving the fields where the cows are standing and the soil where our vegetables are growing will help the population of bees and bumblebees, and butterflies pollinate our crops and vegetables. How can we be healthy in a world where the soil is depleted of minerals and people are fed with many medications threatening our life and the planet?

Producing compost is very easy, and the results are phenomenal for our environmental and physical health. When I walk over the fields or along a grass field, I miss the wildflowers, like clover very much. They are essential to oxygenating our fields. Our lives depend on healthy soil, so why do we not come together and give nature a hand?

Final Thought

Soil is life or death! Healthy soil means a beneficial micro-organism that helps us to stay healthy. It heals the environment, and it allows us to heal our bodies. When people would create a healthy garden, it would help already the environment and finally us. Former times have still had a richdom of insects due to the wildflowers growing in the fields. Nowadays, the insects have disappeared about 75 %, which is very worrying. It is lifesaving for us to help the insects increasing their population.

If you do something for healthy soil and have some advice, I would love to hear from you. Please, tell us what you think and do for your health and environment.

To Your Health,

Sylvia