Modern Landscaping Culture is a Rigged Game
In modern landscaping, especially in the city, the cuttings, clippings and garden debris is removed from the garden, preventing the natural course of plant material from one season’s stalks, leaves and flowers to break down and recycle into next year’s growth and blooms. A forest is a closed system but our gardens are not, so we use mulch to mimic the process.
The commercially developed mulches sold at the box stores and garden centers of New England are most commonly used in gardens to prevent weeds, add color to bare earth, and perhaps for the retention of soil moisture levels. The microbial population has only recently become something to consider in the realm of gardening.
As ignorant as we have been as a species about the populations of microbes within our bodies and their intrinsic role in the healthy and vitality of our own human bodies, we as a culture are barely skimming the surface when it comes to their role in our gardens. The soil is the gut, the digestive system for your plant. Here is where large plant and animal matter breaks down into the macro and micro elements that build life.
NPK, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium are the Miracle Grow Kool Aide of plant nutrients. These elements are easily dissolved in water, in their salt forms, and are passively taken up through the root system. Micronutrients such as iron, essential to Rose health and vitality, require microbes to break down the rock that contains iron and then transform it into a molecule that can be taken up through the roots. Or more often, these microbes that feed the micronutrients to the plants, build a symbiotic relationship with the root system and are able to direct deposit the processed molecule into the cellular system of the roots, for easier transport to the part of the plant where such building blocks are needed. Our digestive system works the same way, if our microbiome, the bacteria, fungi and yeast that live in our gut are not the right species or of the right population size, we do not absorb the necessary nutrients when the acidity of the stomach has burned everything down. Similarly, heavy chemical use on soil, will kill healthy populations opening real-estate up to parasitic species that create sickness for the plant and prevent nutrient uptake. Our bodies can also become the host of an unhealthy population of microbes. Plants and Humans have immune systems that are only built and at optimal function when our microbial populations are flourishing and helping us absorb the nutrients needed to build the arsenal for the next attack.
Organic farming, which once only meant “No Pesticides”, is beginning to acknowledge the importance of the soil microbiome for crop productivity and yield, but BIG AG is still drunk on manufactured chemicals for the assurance of their harvest. This is heavily tied into the federal funding awarded to farmers to help sustain their livelihoods, and the lobbyist associated with agricultural chemical production.
There are more products on the shelves at the Box Stores and Garden Centers that include probiotic inoculants for your garden, but without building the right ecosystem for them, they do not become the essential populations of microbes the packages promote.