How to Protect your Soil, your Trees, your Garden from the Damages of Wind and Fire

With all the current fires and damaging winds, the soil is under a lot of stress. In turn, all the trees, flowers, lawns 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 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. 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, you're trees or garden to stay healthy. Also, city water kills the soil biology so get a whole property filter system. Do not overwater as that will destroy the soil’s microbial life faster. 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 45 minutes. Again right after the event.

Remember, the key to keeping everything healthy is the soil. To do that, you will need to continually be replenishing the soil microbial life 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.

To help keep your vegetable garden healthy and your food healthy, replace the soil if you have a raised bed with good living soil. If you garden in the ground, I would take a significant amount off the top and place that around the trees. Instead, I would buy some compost and acid mulch to replace. This is because the soil will 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 or Sea90 (for minerals). I would also get various microbial sources and mix them. You can buy it already mixed. Just Google Microbial sources for the soil. Google Rock Dust.

There are many different sources of rock dust like there are many various sources of microbes/soil biology. 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 important to me as it is to the soil. This is because of many reasons. The rock dust would be obvious because of trace minerals. Different sources are rich in one or several minerals and lacking in some others. For microbes, it is not in getting the right soil microbial for that specific plant or tree., but rather a blend of different soil biology. 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 soil biology. You can say they developed together. Only the blend of soil biologies 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 soil 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 pH is the best pH level for all significant bacterial life.

Try to water only with a below-ground drip system, or if using one above-ground, make sure it is mulched over. 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. Best to only water once or twice a month during hot, dry times and not watered at all during the rainy season. Best to give it deep water once or twice a month then a lot a short watering. If it doesn’t rain, then 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, especially never pesticides. The fertilizer, and pesticide, will kill off all of the beneficial microbes. The Romans, when they conquered any country, would add salt to their 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 because rock dust is very dusty and not good to breathe!

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Any questions? Email andylopez@invisiblegardener.com
Andy Lopez Invisible Gardener