Are you worried about the soil on your patch? These articles and Grow Vital Soil are here to help. And today we’re diving into how to deal with compacted soil.
So, what is compacted soil?
Compacted soil occurs when soil particles are pressed together, reducing the pore space between them. This means oxygen and other things have a harder time getting through.
What do I do if I have compacted soil?
You will notice you have compacted soil because it will be waterlogged and it could be a little bit smelly. As a consequence of compacted soil, what happens is that the water can’t infiltrate and oxygen can’t infiltrate, and the microbial activity that it tends to encourage are the more negative ones, the ones that happen in an anaerobic environment.
What we want in our vital soil is aerobic activity. We want all those oxygen-breathing and breeding type entities to be very active. The bacteria, the fungi and all the flow on effect of the food web that comes after those.
So what can you do when you’ve got compacted soil? You can simply plant a hole, range of different species, representative of different root types.
Plant plants that have got a big long taproot that break through, that compacted profile. You might plant species that’ve got fibrous roots that then die off and then they renew and regrow each season as a consequence, leaving some aggregation in the soil which enables that infiltration of both oxygen and water.
Planting a diversity of root system types will alleviate your compaction problems and consequently help you to grow vital soil on your patch.
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