How to Build a Soil
Build A Soil Building healthy gardens, pastures, and food forests that self-fertilize requires creating fertile soil. Although building it takes time and effort, its rewards are immeasurable.
At the core of any good soil lies carbon-rich organic humus. Composed from decomposing plant and animal organic material, humus helps strengthen and enrich soil with its essential humus component.
1. Mulching
Mulching is one of the best ways to improve soil. It helps conserve moisture levels, build soil structures and suppress weeds while also reducing evaporation rates and slowing the movement of water through your soil, allowing it to soak in gradually.
Organic matter such as grass clippings, hay, leaves, straw, composted kitchen waste, shredded paper, and hair all serve to form an organic mulch layer that breaks down slowly into nutrients for the soil over time.
It serves both carbon and nitrogen sources while feeding beneficial fungi that keep soil particles together to reduce erosion.
Regular mulching can quickly make soil healthier and more productive in a short amount of time. Mulching will help the soil warm up in spring, retain moisture throughout the summertime.
Suppress weeds, and encourage earthworms and other organisms into it – improving structure, aeration and fertility – as well as provide moisture for fruit trees and bushes to flourish and resist disease.
2. Compost
Compost not only adds organic matter to soils, but it also contains beneficial microorganisms that quickly turn them into rich and fertile beds. A well-kept compost pile offers all of the nutrient components essential for creating vibrant gardens.
Compost piles can use all plant material – from kitchen scraps and kitchen waste, grass clippings, non-seeding weeds and corrugated cardboard, to kitchen waste from restaurants. Layer moist and dry materials together – food scraps, tea bags and seaweed should be moist while dry items such as leaves, straw, sawdust pellets and wood ashes should remain dry. Once completed, turn and resift finished compost to remove twigs, pits or eggshells (and produce stickers/plastic as required), keeping its appearance and scent.
If your compost pile isn’t decomposing as expected, try resifting and adding more carbon-rich material such as leaves or young weeds as “activators.” A thick layer of comfrey leaves, young weeds or well-rotted manure is another effective activator that will speed up decomposition. If it smells unpleasant though, try covering recent additions with dried grass clippings or mulch to reduce odors while discouraging fly larvae from entering.
3. Cover Crops
Cover crops are fast-growing plants planted between harvests or after a vegetable bed is cleared in order to improve soil health. Commonly known as green manures, cover crops can reduce weed pressure while simultaneously addressing issues related to erosion and low fertility in sandy or compacted soils while building organic matter in these environments.
These plants help break up heavy clay or compacted soil by aerating and loosening it for easier cultivation, with deep-penetrating roots penetrating deep down to reduce surface runoff and evaporation of moisture from the soil surface. Furthermore, their presence helps retain moisture during periods of drought by creating an ecosystem-friendly biomass which stores rainwater to be gradually released back into the root zone.
Decide the problem you want your cover crop to address before selecting any species for planting. For instance, to build organic matter quickly and increase soil nutrients through decomposition, choose mustard or buckwheat varieties with thin stems that decompose easily, while for erosion reduction long-rooted varieties like forage radishes and daikon can provide the solution, not only reducing wind and water erosion but also adding nitrogen back into the soil as nitrogen fixers.
4. Green Manures
Green manures are used to protect and enrich soil in between plantings, keeping out opportunistic weeds while fixing nitrogen to generate lush biomass growth. When decomposed, this organic matter and nutrients return back to the soil as organic matter and nutrients.
Green manure crops typically consist of legumes such as alfalfa, clover and hairy vetch that fix nitrogen into the soil; as well as fast-growing grasses like buckwheat and winter rye that quickly grow to maturity; they should ideally be planted during fall to take advantage of frost/defrost action and speed decomposition processes.
Green manure adds several benefits to your vegetable or forest garden by improving soil structure, increasing organic matter, improving drainage and water retention, providing habitat for beneficial insects that help control pests, and decreasing soil erosion and runoff by protecting against wind and rain crushing the soil and increasing pore space. Almagro et al (2016) conducted a Mediterranean agroecosystem study and discovered that using an equal mix of legume and cereal green manures (1:3) along with reduced-tillage resulted in three times less soil erosion/runoff than control plots while increasing carbon sequestration as compared with control plots as well as carbon sequestration by three fold!
5. Fertilizers
Build A Soil Fertilizers are essential in increasing crop yields so there is enough food for everyone in the world. Fertilizers may be organic or synthetic. Nature provides natural solutions, like large herds of herbivores grazing on grasses and plants; for the food forest, nitrogen-fixing plants such as comfrey can raise nutrients from subsoil layers; composts and green manures further boost fertility.
Fertilizers are compose of various elements that combine to supply nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium (N-P-K), the three key plant nutrients for healthy plant growth. A bag with the number “13-13-13” would contain equal proportions of these essential elements.
Hemp World Academy Synthetic fertilizers, also known as manufactured fertilizers, are created in laboratories from both natural and synthetic materials, often using high concentrations of one or more primary nutrients like gypsum to decrease water infiltration on salt-laden soils and increase crops’ ability to take in moisture. Unfortunately, synthetic or manufactured fertilizers can be harmful both ecologically and to humans who consume foods grown there.
General Characteristics of the best soil for cannabis
Even though not all cannabis needs the same type of soil for healthy growth, there are some general characteristics that are common in all cannabis soils so that even if you decide to cultivate your own soil, you’re still within these parameters:
- Soil Texture: Popular soil textures include sandy, silty, and clay. The best-balanced soil for the growth of cannabis is loamy soil which is a mixture of sand, silt, and clay with added organic compounds. It’s light and loose soil, has great water drainage and retention and it’s filled with nutrients and rich in oxygen.
- Soil Nutrients and Amendments: A well-balanced soil should contain minerals, rich organic elements, and beneficial microorganisms. Common ones are things such as Bat Guano, Perlite, Peat Moss, Worm Castings, Kelp, Coco Coir, Mycorrhizae, and more. These are things that help feed your cannabis plants and improve soil quality. Most pre-mixe soils come with varying portions of these organic substances but they only last 3-4 weeks and more will need to be manually add later.
- Soil pH: Cannabis plants require a slightly acidic pH to survive. Somewhere in the range of 5.5 to 6.5. An optimum pH helps to increase growth and the uptake of necessary nutrients.
