The fifth principle of soil health
The fifth principle of soil health is livestock.
There are five principles that work together to create healthy soil. When soil is healthy, it means our plants are healthy. Healthy plants are less likely to be infected by plant diseases or infested by insects. Healthy plants also mean increased yields in vegetable plants so prairie gardeners can reduce how much they grow to reap the same amount of harvest.
The five principles are: soil armour, minimize soil disturbance, plant diversity, continual live root/plant and livestock.
Click the additional articles below to learn more about the other four pillars.
Compost can fix unhealthy soil.
The final principle of soil health is livestock. Instead of harvesting the grasses from a pasture, farmers are encouraged to allow the animals to eat the grasses in the field. As the animal’s graze, they turn the nutrient rich grass into waste/organic matter that is returned back to the plants to use. Modern agriculture instead harvests the grass and hauls it to the animals to feed to them which means the organic material is not returned to the fields. While this principle is a major factor in managing agricultural soils, it is not applicable to prairie gardeners.
We can however begin a similar practice by harvesting our plant material, composting it and then returning it to the soil as compost. Compost in prairie gardens plays a vital role in ensuring enough organic material is present in the soil to build good aggregate structure and feed the soil food web so that the microorganisms responsible for decomposing organic material have a steady food source.
As soil health improves, it’s not necessary to continuously add compost to our soils as our cultural practices will already protect the organic material in the soil. If you are gardening in an area of poor soil, adding compost and mulching thickly can help to improve soil health.
Whether your soil is heavy clay, sandy or silty, all of it can grow food and all of it can benefit from good soil stewardship simply by incorporating the practices of the five pillars of soil health.