Biota Soil Health

08/15/2023

It’s all connected 🙂🌿

07/29/2023

Interested in having your soil biology assessed? It’s never too late to check your soil biology for your summer crops and it’s also a great time to see what beneficial microbes might be missing from your garden or lawn since fall is a great time to make any additions and/or amendments to prepare for next year 🌿

06/28/2023

06/28/2023

We used to cut back a majority of everything that wasn’t grass, but have recently started letting some ‘weeds’ take over - especially on the outskirts near our property borders and the amount of wildflowers or other flowering plants we have is amazing. They are there for a reason 🌱

06/22/2023

I’ve talked to a lot of people who have dry soil/gardens and want to know how they can fix the problem. Of course the best answer is building your soil structure by getting those good microorganisms in there, but that takes time. To help for the short-term - add grass clippings! You can always use mulch too, but why not use something that is available to you already? 🌱

06/16/2023

Do you ever see little mushrooms pop up in different areas of your lawn? If so, that’s normally a good sign that you have rich, organic matter present! Mushrooms are fungi and they feed off of the decaying matter and help break it down to make even richer soil. Those fungi also live in a beneficial relationship with your plant by growing nice and long shoots to grab the specific nutrients your plant needs and acts as a carrier to get them to their roots. So be happy when you see them 🍄

06/04/2023

My peonies haven’t even bloomed yet and we got such heavy thunderstorms a couple of days ago (I neglected getting cages on them 😬), so needless to say.. a bunch were on the ground. Can’t wait for these pretties to bloom and sit on my counter 💐

05/31/2023

It took 2 years for my irises to bloom, but they were worth the wait ☺️

05/25/2023

My family and I are at Disney for the week and my husband booked me a “Behind the Seeds” greenhouse tour at Epcot for Mother’s Day. They don’t use soil - all hydroponics, but I guess that’s why they have to have a constant supply of nutrients feeding the plants 😉 Very cool and interesting to say the least and I highly recommend if you ever get the chance!

05/16/2023

What does a sample report look like? After I analyze your soil, this is what you’ll receive from me. What this report does is generate a fungal to bacterial ratio and places it in a stage of succession. So, different types of plants need different levels of bacteria and fungi to extract what they need from the soil. Grasses and vegetables need less fungi than say shrubs or old growth forests for example. Once we get a ratio, there are steps that can be taken to try and amend your soil for the specific crops you want to grow 🌱 The F:B ratio for this customer and their vegetable bed was too high at ~2. Based on this, we can recommend a good quality compost or some other nitrogen food sources (party food for the bacteria to reproduce rapidly), to reduce the F:B ratio to get it where it needs to be for happy vegetables 🥕 🍅🌶

05/12/2023

Building good, healthy soil is a lot like anything else in life.. what you put into it is what you’ll get back out and, like many other things, it takes time and patience and lots of love. 2 years ago we added raised beds and put a whole lot of dirt and sand with not much in it. We didn’t grow much at all and had very unhappy plants. Fast forward only 2 years and it’s still a work in process, but we’ve added compost and leaves every year in the fall and we leave the roots in at the end of the season, so that it can decompose and build structure in the soil, and that has made a huge difference. We had so many tomatoes and zucchini last year that we didn’t know what to do with it all - and that’s without adding any fertilizer either. My point is, starting a garden doesn’t have to be a ton of work and overwhelming. Invest time and good materials into your soil and it’ll give you a lot in return and, if you’d like to be a couple years ahead of where I started 2 years ago, I’d love to help you with that! This community is a wonderful one to be apart of and once you start, you won’t want to stop 🥰🌱👩🏻‍🌾

05/11/2023

It was a whole family affair getting this new bed in for my client. A big thanks to my husband who built and installed the bed and for the worm castings. There are going to be some happy vegetable plants in there soon!🌶🍅