Healthy soil keeps plants well nourished and healthy

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Q Mainly because of the weather, we are late planting our vegetable seeds and transplants this year. How necessary is it to add composts or other materials to the soil before planting?

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A. In my opinion, nothing is more crucial for successful gardening than a fertile, humus-rich soil.

It’s like a bank account. It won’t work to continue making withdrawals without keeping the account replenished with deposits. That’s what is happening to soils throughout the world in the many places where “deposits” made to soils are inadequate, or consist mainly of chemically processed inputs. The result is continuing depletion of the world’s soil bank account.

Soil care begins late in the fall, when I gather small leaves to cover the soil in emptied plots. Over the leaves I place a thin layer of chopped straw, which is pulled aside in the spring as it’s time to plant. Most of the leaves and straw go into compost heaps or are set aside for summer mulching to protect plantings against heat. Small scraps of straw and leaves can be dug into the soil.

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In my vegetable plots, even though I need to dig out some roots from neighboring forest trees before planting, the soil I uncover is lush — plump-textured and friable, loaded with fat worms and probably teeming with beneficial organisms.

As soon as the roots are out, the soil is fed with my own compost and a scattering of slow-release, natural-source fertilizer that I make with seed meals, lime, rock phosphate and kelp meal. Such fertilizer blends can also be purchased at some garden centers and farm supply stores.

Plump, healthy soils have power. Life depends on them. They foster food security and sequester carbon. Treated as a living thing that needs feeding and care, the soil can keep plants well nourished and optimally healthy. Such a soil will also produce food rich in the minerals and vitamins that keep us amply nourished too.