How to Protect Your Soil, your Trees, Your Garden - Talks with The Invisible Gardener

With all the fires, damaging winds, chemicals from city water, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides, the soil is under a lot of stress. In turn, all the trees, flowers, lawns, and gardens are also stressed out. This will cause many problems for them. It will lead to more diseases and pests attacking them. Maybe even kill your trees, etc a lot sooner than if they were healthy.

So, what should you be doing to help keep the soil and your trees and garden healthy?

Let's go through it step by step:

First is water control. It is best to keep your water below ground. You lose 75% of overhead watering through evaporation. Keeping the water below ground will help you to conserve water but also will allow your soil and, in turn, trees or gardens to stay healthy. Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: City water. City water has a variety of chemicals in it from those that are added on purpose to those chemicals that find their way into the water system like forever chemicals. All of which will kill the soil biology. I would get a whole property water filter. Ask the company what it will filter out. Ask them if it filters out forever chemicals.

Do not overwater, as that will also destroy the soil's microbial life. They are not very good swimmers. That is what you are protecting. It is much better to deep water once or twice a week than to water a little bit every day or every other day. You want the roots to go down for water, not up. Also, right before a fire or wind event, give everything a proper deep watering. If you use a two-gallon per hour drip head, I would water for 45 minutes. Again, right after the event.

Remember, the key to keeping everything healthy is soil biology. It’s all about soil biology. To do that, you will need to continually replenish the soil microbial life with as well as trace minerals. This usually happens in nature. Animals, birds, insects, etc., all eat and poop and die. All of which keep the soil alive. Only use organic ORMI-certified Organic Fertilizers whenever you can. These have been certified as environmentally safe and will not damage the soil. Just know that organic fertilizers need soil biology to work. So just adding organic fertilizer will not work without live soil.

To help keep your vegetable garden healthy and keep your food healthy, I would replace the soil if you have a raised bed. If you garden in the ground, I would take a significant amount of the top and place that around the trees and instead better to buy some local live compost and an acid mulch to replace it. This is because the soil may become toxic from all the toxins in the air. This is especially true if any homes are burnt. There are toxins never seen in nature in many homes. I would get organic fertilizer and rock dust (for minerals). I would also get various microbial sources and mix them. You can buy it mixed—just Google Microbial sources for the soil. Try Amazon for Soil Microbes. Try Amazon for Rock Dust, or get it from the internet. You should look to local sources of soil biology. I am finding many folks locally that make excellent live compost that you can use to inoculate the soil you have as well as make a compost tea. I will be talking next week about making your compost tea.

There are many different sources of rock dust like there are many various sources of microbes. You don't have to be insane like me and buy 14 different rock dust or get 25 different microbial sources (but I do). The blend is as essential to me as it is to the soil. This is because of many reasons. The rock dust would be evident because of trace minerals. Different sources are rich in one or several minerals and lacking in some others. For microbes, it is more of getting the suitable soil microbial for that specific plant or tree. Just remember that the tree evolved within a particular location on the planet and, until recently, was not found elsewhere and indeed not in Malibu. So, they evolved with certain types of microbes. You can say they developed together. Only these microbes can provide the nutritional requirements for that specific tree, say a coconut tree or a Stone pine or Hibiscus or whatever.

So, by making a blend of these, the right ones will help that tree. It is essential also to understand that these microbes also need a specific type of soil. That's why I always say make sure you use animal manure in your compost or one that does. It is also important that your soil be acidic. 6.5 to 6.8 pH is the best pH level for all significant bacterial life.

To keep your trees happy and healthy, you must pay attention to the health of the soil. Water only with a below-ground drip system, or if using one above-ground, make sure it is mulched over. It is always best to keep water below ground and not on top.

Trees, especially, should not be overwatered. The majority of damage done to trees is that they get over-watered. However, they do need water, and if Mother Nature doesn't give it to them, then you should. It is best to only deep water once or twice a month during hot, dry times and not at all during the rainy season. The timing depends on whether or not you have any soil. More soil the better. Try Peach Tree Hill. If it doesn't rain, a proper deep watering once a month should be enough. Also, it is imperative not to use chemical, conventional fertilizers on your trees or anywhere on the property. The fertilizer will kill off all of the beneficial microbes. The Romans, when they conquered any country, would add salt to their conquered enemies’ farms. This would destroy the soil and prevent them from growing. Well, guess what? All chemical fertilizers are salts. Even those salts that are natural can only be applied in conjunction with a precise process like you can add to the compost production and let the microbes eat it. This must be done in minimal amounts, or it will kill the microbes. The same goes for rock dust. One person did a study and added 50 lbs of rock dust to its soil in one bed. Nothing grew. So he concludes that it was the rock dust that killed it. Yep. He should have used only a cup! So be careful when using rock dust, as too much is terrible. It is always better to apply small amounts rather than large amounts of any soil additive. Organic fertilizers work best if the soil is alive, so always add compost and rock dust with your organic fertilizer. Be Careful out there, and wear your mask!

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See you next week.

Any questions? Email andylopez@invisiblegardener.com