Soil is an essential player in life on our planet. Healthy soil is critical to the sustainable growth of health plants, and invertebrates, which are the foundation of our eco system. At a time when Earth continues to heat up, we need not only to put less carbon into the atmosphere but also to take out and sequester what is already there.
Soil is a major resource for carbon sequestration, and the healthier the soil, the more it can help our planet. Among its other beneficial characteristics, a healthy soil:
- promotes water retention
- helps support a balance between beneficial microorganisms and potential pests, diseases and weeds, reducing or eliminating the need for pesticides
- may mitigate the effect of some heavy metals
- promotes healthy plants = healthier food
Title: The Soil Story
Organization: Kiss the Ground
Description: Four-minute video that explains how building healthy soil and other regenerative agriculture practices are among Earth’s best hopes for reducing carbon in the atmosphere by storing it in the ground.
Title: The Importance of Soil: Environmental Soil Essentials
Organization: Hot Mess, a PBS video series on climate change
Description: A 12-minute engaging video about the composition of soil, including details about its mineral and organic components and the nitrogen cycle.
Title: Bionutrient Rich Food & Health – Westchester chapter
Organization:Bionutrient Food Association
Description: Among many informative pages on the website of this organization devoted to increasing the quality of our foods, this page stresses an "underlying nutrient deficiency in our food supply", and includes information on local workshops and events. For more information on soil and nutrition, visit their national chapter.
A healthy soil is a complex mix of dead organic matter and living organisms. Nature continually creates healthy soil, as is easily seen on forest floors. Too often, however, modern garden and agriculture practices do the opposite. Synthetic pesticides and other harsh methods strip soil of its most important elements.
Title: Is It Dirt or Soil?
Organization: North Carolina Cooperative Extension
Description: This resource clarifies the difference between soil and dirt, which it defines as “dead soil [that has] lost the characteristics to support life.” It describes the living organisms within healthy soil that promote plant growth and protect plants from disease and delineates the important role soil plays in an ecosystem.
Title: What Is Soil Health?
Organization: Ecological Landscape Alliance
Description: A short article defining soil health and soil quality, listing soil’s important functions, and describing nine characteristics of a healthy soil, including tilth (its physical character), depth, water storage and drainage abilities, nutrients, role of pathogens and pests, and range of beneficial organisms.
Title: Soil Fertility Principles
Organization: Bionutrient Food Association
Description: From the website of an organization devoted to increasing the nutrients in our food through soil enhancement, this page explains how “all plants in nature and in healthy environments have well established multi-speciated symbiotic relationships with soil and leaf life” and describes, among other things, the symbiosis between plants and the bacteria and fungi found in the soil.
Title: Basic Protocols
Organization: Bionutrient Food Association
Description: Among many informative pages on the website of this organization devoted to increasing the quality of our foods, this page details how minerals, soil life, carbon, air and water are essential components in a healthful growing environment.
Title: Gabe Brown: Keys to Building a Healthy Soil
Organization: Kiss the Ground Transcend Productions. Filmed at the Idaho Center for Sustainable Agriculture.
Description: Hour-long video of regenerative agriculture guru Gabe Brown, author of "Dirt to Soil, One Family’s Journey into Regenerative Agriculture," presenting his five principles for building a healthy soil, from caring for your soil to promoting biodiversity. The goal is to support plants and all the living things that share that soil by adding life to your soil.
Watch the movie trailer to "Kiss the Ground."
Once your soil has been tested, it is important to be able to understand the results, and what it means for the type of vegetation you can safely grow. You may need to add compost or other amendments to grow a healthy soil. [Link “compost and amendments” to section 4.1; link “grow a healthy soil to section 4]. You may want to address any risks of contamination, by focusing on healthy gardening practices instead, that can be found in this section.
Title: Healthy Soils, Healthy Communities: Soil Testing
Organization: Cornell University
Description: Key resources include useful 6-page "Guide to Soil Testing and Interpreting Results."
Title: Healthy Gardening
Organization: Cornell University
Description: Page of multiple resources to help you understand your soil test results and steps to take if your soil is contaminated;
Title: Guide to Soil Testing and Interpreting Results
Organization: Cornell Waste Management Institute
Description: Complete guide to know when soil testing is helpful, how to take soil samples, and how to interpret the results. Lists the levels of heavy metals, including lead and arsenates.
Title: Soil Contaminants and Best Practices for Healthy Gardens
Organization: Cornell Waste Management Institute
Description: Offers useful information on the importance of understanding soil contaminants, including how plants can become contaminated and best practices to growing and maintaining healthy gardens.
For specific recommended actions on lead contaminated soils, you can also visit:
Title: Interpreting the Results of Soil Tests for Heavy Metals
Organization: University of Vermont Extension
Description: Offers specific recommended actions on lead contaminated soils. Lists the levels of heavy metals, including lead, in soil for which the EPA mandates cleanup and discusses best management practices for soils contaminated with heavy metals.
Please note: Lowest levels of heavy metals established by the NY Department of Environmental Conservation (NYS DEC) in the tables, correspond to "unrestricted use", which includes agricultural use.
A testing facility should be able to help you decide which tests you will need and give guidance interpreting the results. Since soils vary greatly--even within one backyard--you will probably want to take a range of samples in order to get a better understanding of what might be in your soil. Check with the laboratory you will be sending your samples to find out how to prepare your samples and other requirements. Recommendations on how to improve your soil may be specific to what you intend to use the soil for (flower garden, vegetable garden, etc.).
Title: Urban Soils Lab at Brooklyn College
Organization: NYC Urban Soils Institute
Description: This affordable soil testing service is available to gardeners throughout the country. The Basic Soil Quality Test will report on pH; salt content; soil class; NPK (nitrogen/phosphorus/potassium) levels; lead, arsenic, copper, and zinc; and organic content.
Title: Soil Nutrient Testing
Organization: Cornell Cooperative Extension of Westchester County, Elmsford, NY
Description: Our local cooperative extension performs pH tests on submitted soil samples for $18. Scroll down to section B for soil pH test pdf form, which includes instructions for taking and submitting samples. Results are mailed within two weeks. Scroll further for information on additional soil sampling for nutrients.
Title: Cornell Nutrient Analysis Laboratory
Organization: Cornell University
Description: They offer a range of soil fertility analysis packages, as well as total elemental analysis (heavy metal screening), which suggested for home gardeners.
Title: Individual Soil Analyses
Organization: Cornell College of Agriculture & Life Sciences
Description: This lab offers a range of soil tests for nutrients and composition (not contaminants).
Title: How to Take a Soil Sample with Doug DeCandia
Organization: Bionutrient Food Association/Westchester Chapter
Description: A five-minute video showing how to take soil samples for testing.
A home garden is not an island but affects the environment around it, both on adjacent property and even further if the property is near a water resource. Wise water use and appropriate soil amendments can help.
Title: Using Water Wisely
Organization: New York Botanical Garden
Description: Healthy soil is inevitably and inherently connected to water. Plants need water as much as soil does in order to be alive and maintain its physical properties. This one-page information sheet highlights how excess water in soil leaches nutrients and how, especially with lawn management, it is especially important to be conscious of our water usage to protect the plants in our garden and downstream from us, too!
Title: The Myth of Soil Amendments
Organization: Washington State University
Description: More is not necessarily better. The author, a professor at WSU, says that when transplanting trees and shrubs, soil amendments should not be added. The effect on these woody plants is detrimental due to nutrient and water handling differences between the amended backfill and the surrounding native soil. The author’s webpage includes other informative and thought-provoking articles on gardening myths.
Title: A Guide to Native Plant Gardening
Organization: Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
Description: This site outlines the steps for soil preparation and weed elimination when planting a native garden. Usually, if native plants are well selected for a site, no soil amendments should not be needed; in fact, a healthy soil helps mitigate or eliminate the effect of toxins and harmful chemicals, already existing in the soil. But for sites where the original topsoil has been stripped, the site explains how what types of soil amendments can help. [share with NATIVE PLANTS]
Title: Why We're Not Fans of Amending Soil
Organization: Monarch Gardens LLC
Description: An award-winning gardener explains his four principles of amendment-free gardening:
- The perfect or ideal soil is the soil you have right now.
- Matching plants to site often means less maintenance and less plant death over time.
- Matching plants to one another.
- Planting tightly means more soil building and less work long term.