Soil Biology

Soil is a fundamental key in establishing and maintaining any kind of plant, and nature has spent millions of years perfecting it. This natural system is created in a balance between the physical, chemical & biological aspects within it. Nature and evolution have already created the processes and pathway for all three, allowing them to interact at a level far beyond our current understanding.

In simple terms, what we do know is that the physical decomposition of carbon produces aggregated structure allowing for nutrient holding, along with air and water movement. This creates habitat for chemical processes to cycle nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus & sulphur amongst others.

Those processes are interacted with, and by, the biological activity in the soil. It is the microfauna within soil that, when working correctly, form the 3rd cog in this natural system and, if any of them are not functioning correctly, it creates the problems, which allows for disease, pests, unbalanced water infiltration and reduction in bioavailable nutrition.

Turf management over the last few decades has focussed almost entirely on the physical & chemical aspects and this has, unfortunately, nearly always been to the detriment of soil biology. It is now being realised that, to get the best out of our soil, we need to work with the environment to support all three elements of the network, try to be more selective in our use of chemical-based inputs, or at least, understand how they are affecting the other foundations of the system and make attempts to mitigate any consequential damage that might occur.