What is living soil? The short answer
Living soil is a growing medium that contains active soil life – bacteria, fungi and other organisms – which break down organic matter and make nutrients available to the plant over time.
In a classic mineral setup, you dissolve nutrients in water and feed the plant directly. In living soil, much of that work is done by the biology in the soil. You mainly water, and the soil life does the rest.
How the soil food web works
Na stránkách soil food web is the network of organisms that live in soil and feed on each other and on organic material. In simple terms:
- Organická hmota (such as worm castings and plant material) is the food source.
- Bacteria and fungi break this material down.
- Larger soil organisms feed on bacteria and fungi and release nutrients in forms that roots can take up.
- Roots release sugars and other compounds that feed microbes around the root zone, which keeps the cycle going.
So, what is living soil in practice? A soil where biology does the feeding. This is why living soil growers talk about “feeding the soil, not the plant”.
