An organic garden is nothing without organic soil. Slugs, snails, earthworms and beetles are a common sight in organic gardens around the world. They're fascinating to watch and, believe it or not, help your garden much more than they hurt it. Incredibly, these very visible soil creatures are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to life in your garden's soil. Most soil life is difficult, if not impossible, to see without the help of a magnifying glass or microscope.
Scientists are working hard to learn more about the amazing and intricate biology of our soils. They have already made some wonderful discoveries: penicillin is made by a common soil fungus and streptomycin, another antibiotic, is made by an actinomycete, which is a type of soil bacteria. Beyond valuable medicines, soil creatures help provide us with another very crucial thing: our food. Without them, organic matter wouldn't decompose, nutrients wouldn't cycle, our soil's structure would collapse and, accordingly, plants simply would not grow very well.
What creatures are featured?
Gastropods: Slugs and snails. Did you know that they spend about 90% of their lives underground? I always thought that they spent all of their time eating my lettuce and tomatoes.
Earthworms: Worms help to aerate the soil and distribute organic matter, which helps plants find food more easily.
Fungi: Soil fungi work hard to decompose organic matter, helping to unlock nutrients and make them available to plants.
Bacteria: These beneficial germs also help to decompose organic matter. They also help soil form a strong structure, which allows water and air to move freely through the soil, a necessity for healthy plants. Soil bacteria are mostly good guys that don't have the ability to make humans or animals sick. In fact, a healthy population of beneficial soil bacteria can help keep harmful bacteria, such as some strains of E. coli, from making their home in your soil.
Nematodes: These tiny, nonsegmented worms can sometimes just barely be seen with the naked eye. They feed on organic matter including plant tissue and insects. Nematodes have been known to feed on the larvae of gnats, termites and other insect pests.
Arthropods: Spiders, ants, mites and beetles are just a few members of this group. These creatures speed organic matter decomposition and keep the populations of certain fungus and insect species in check.
Protozoa: Once junior high school biology class is done, most of us never give these creatures another thought. Luckily, they don't hold it against us and they remain hard at work, keeping bacteria and fungi from overrunning us. A single protozoan can eat thousands of bacteria a day.
Good garden soil is full of life
One teaspoon of good garden soil can contain up to one billion bacteria, several yards of fungal hyphae (fungal feeder roots), thousands of protozoa and dozens of nematodes and arthropods.
If you're interested in finding out what's living in your organic garden's soil, just look beneath your feet. You're bound to be able to see some signs of life, if you look carefully. If that doesn't satisfy your curiosity, it is easy to trap and observe many different kinds of soil creatures. Many of them, large protozoa, nematodes and arthropods, for instance, can be seen with just a simple magnifying glass.
You can trap them with a pitfall trap made by burying a clean, empty margarine or yogurt container so that its lip is level with your soil's surface. A funnel trap is another good way to capture some soil critters: just put some wire mesh in a funnel, put the soil on the wire mesh and place the funnel over a jar with some alcohol in the bottom to preserve your catch. Put the whole contraption under a light bulb to flush the critters out, wait 3-7 days and then prepare to be amazed at the variety of creatures that you have captured.
Just thinking about the multitudes of soil creatures that make their homes in our garden can be exciting, overwhelming, inspirational or even unsettling. Just keep in mind that we benefit greatly from their activities. While we're off leading our busy lives, they're busy living theirs too, and keeping our gardens and our world healthy in the process.
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