Quotessence
Home / Topics / Soil Health Quotes

Soil Health Quotes

Browse 11 quotes about Soil Health.

Soil Health Quotes

“Without this [Soil Food Web system of bacteria, fungi etc], most important nutrients would drain from soil. Instead, they are retained in the bodies of soil life. Here is the gardener's truth: when you apply a chemical fertilizer, a tiny bit hits the rhizosphere, where it is absorbed, but most of it continues to drain through soil until it hits the water table. Not so with the nutrients locked up inside soil organisms, a state known as immobilization; these nutrients are eventually released as wastes, or mineralized.”

GardeningFarmingOrganic FarmingMicrobiologyOrganic GardeningSoil HealthAllotmentSoil For GrowthNo Dig Gardening
Book:Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web
Create image

“Bacteria are so small they need to stick to things or they will wash away; to attach themselves, they produce a slime, the secondary result of which is that individual soil particles are bound together. [...] Fungal hyphae, too, travel through soil, sticking to them and binding them together, thread-like, into aggregates. [...] The soil food web, then, in addition to providing nutrients to roots in the rhizosphere, also helps create soil structure: the activities of its members bind soil particles together even as they provide for the passage of air and water through the soil. [...] The nets or webs fungi form around roots act as physical barriers to invasion and protect plants from pathogenic fungi and bacteria. Bacteria coat surfaces so thoroughly, there is no room for others to attach themselves. If something impacts these fungi or bacteria and their numbers drop or they disappear, the plant can easily be attacked.”

GardeningPlantsBacteriaFungiOrganic FarmingPlant LifeMicrobiologyOrganic GardeningSoil HealthAllotment
Book:Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web
Create image

“Without the herbivore, grass is without value. Without the valuable cover of grass, the soil is without life. Without life, the terrestrial world becomes valueless and simply unhappy. The uniform diversity of the meadowland demonstrates that value co-creates the valuable via the tool of time. Time and value. Seeing and being. Grass is nothing at all. The community of grass is all.”

FarmingRegenerationRewildingSustainable AgricultureSoil HealthFarming QuotesWildingRegenerative Agriculture
Book:Dark Cloud Country: The 4 Relationships of Regeneration
Create image

“Few realize that a great deal of the energy that results from photosyntheisis in the leaves is actually used by plants to produce chemicals they secrete through their roots. These secretions are known as exudates. [...] Root exudates are in the form of carbohydrates (including sugars) and proteins. Amazingly, their presence wakes up, attracts and grows specific beneficial bacteria and fungi living in the soil that subsist on these exudates and the cellular material sloughed off as the plant's root tips grow. [...] During different times of the growing season, populations of rhizosphere bacteria and fungi wax and wane, depending on the nutrient needs of the plant and the exudates it produces. [...] Plants produce exudates that attract fungi and bacteria (and, ultimately, nematodes and protozoa); their survival depends on the interplay between these microbes. It is a completely natural system, the very same one that has fueled plants since they evolved. Soil life produces the nutrients needed for plant life, and plants initiate and fuel the cycle by producing exudates.”

BiologyPlantsOrganic FarmingMicrobiologyOrganic GardeningSoil HealthOrganic Garden
Book:Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web
Create image