A beginner's guide to feeding your soil

The biggest mistake new gardeners make is feeding the plant. The plants that grow easily and resist disease are the ones whose gardeners feed the soil instead.

This guide explains what that actually means. Read it once and you will understand why some patches of ground produce year after year without much fuss, and why other patches go backwards no matter how much fertiliser you throw at them.

What is soil biology?

Healthy soil is alive. One teaspoon of healthy garden soil contains billions of bacteria, kilometres of fungal threads, thousands of protozoa, hundreds of nematodes and a handful of small arthropods. Together this is called the soil food web.

These organisms do most of the heavy lifting in your garden. They break down organic matter into food your plants can use. They unlock nutrients that are locked up in rock minerals. They build the crumb structure that lets roots breathe and rain soak in. They protect plant roots from disease.

When the soil food web is healthy, plants need less help. When it is damaged, plants become dependent on whatever the gardener can buy in a bag.

What damages soil biology?

Three things, mostly: tillage, chemical fertilisers used heavily over time, and bare soil.

Tillage breaks the fungal threads that hold soil together. A spaded bed has very different biology to a no-dig bed three months later. Heavy chemical fertilisers, particularly high-nitrogen ones, can kill off the bacteria and fungi that would otherwise feed your plants for free. Bare soil exposed to sun and rain loses its top layer and its biology with it.

You do not have to stop doing any of these completely. You do have to balance them with practices that build biology back.

How do you feed soil biology?

Three habits, in order of impact.

1. Keep the soil covered. Mulch, compost, cover crops, even a thin layer of straw. Bare soil is a soil losing biology. Covered soil is a soil building it.
2. Add living material. Compost is good. Worm castings are better. Biological inputs that supply specific microbes and microbial food are better still, particularly when starting out with tired soil.
3. Disturb the soil less. Switch from spading to broad-forking. Plant into existing mulch where you can. Leave roots in the ground after harvest so the network of fungal threads stays intact.

Where biological products fit

Biological products give you a head start. They supply concentrated microbes, microbial food, kelp extracts and biostimulants that wake up and grow the soil food web faster than compost alone.

The Beyond Soil Life range is designed for exactly this. Beyond PSP supplies the soil microbes and organic matter at planting. SeaBrix™ feeds the leaf microbes through foliar spraying. AminoK™ helps plants recover from heat or transplant stress. Each product is matched to a stage of the season.

You can start small. A 1 kg bag of Beyond PSP applied at the right rate is enough for a 20 m² home garden. The Patch Pack bundles the two products most home gardeners need, with a one-page guide.

What to do next

1. Pick one bed in your garden. Top it up with compost or a thin layer of biological starter.
2. Plant into it without spading first. If you must dig, dig as little as you can.
3. Mulch around the plants. Even grass clippings will do.
4. Watch what happens over the next 90 days. Compare it to a bed you grew on the same way last season.

Better soil is a slow win. By the second season you will see it. By the third season you will not want to grow any other way.

Start with the Patch Pack: three products, one guide, designed for home gardens up to 20 m². Shop the Patch Pack →