Armour the Soil

I love biking through neighbourhoods in my community. My wife is always telling me to stop staring at neighbouring yards, but I can’t help myself. I’m willing to risk crashing into a fence or a car if it means I can find out what everyone is doing in their garden.

At this time of year, four types of gardens are noticeable. Allow me to rank them from poor health to great health.

The first gardens are completely vacant. It looks as if the gardener has rooted out everything late in the fall and now it’s a barren wasteland. Compaction is written on the hard surface of the plot. Life is absent.

The second garden has a cover crop of winter peas. It’s lush and green. Not a weed can be found. It’s better than the first, but not the best. There is not enough biodiversity.

The third garden is full of weeds. Chickweed is especially prevalent. But the annual grasses won’t be outdone. Groundsel flourishes and even flowers and dandelions with deep taproots are growing strong. A leftover spinach plant and the forgotten celery seem quite happy in between the weeds. But it also has some bare patches that are exposed to the elements. It’s a gardener’s nightmare, but in terms of garden health, it ranks higher than the first two gardens.

The fourth garden still has some vegetables ripe for the picking. In the rest of the garden, unoccupied by food crops, a mixed species cover crop of kale, oats, hairy vetch, clover, chicory, phacelia, borage, and fava beans thrive. It’s an absolute picture of health. This garden is full of biodiversity and the ground isn’t even visible.

This year, armour the soil in your garden with as many different plant species as possible and choose plants from different families too.

Armouring helps create disease suppressive soils with strong aggregation and massive populations of many different species of microbes. Strengthening a robust community of life below our feet is the best way to grow healthy plants with strong immunity, great flavour, and excellent storability.