On-going Process

• A healthy garden soil needs food to live. This process is ongoing. As plants grow, they use certain nutrients from the soil. Amendments bring new nutrients into the area and provide a natural and balanced form of food for the soil microbes. Sprinkling a powder over the soil will not feed the microbes, just the roots of the plants. Over time, the lack of food will deplete the number of microbes and the soil will struggle to sustain plants. Feed the soil before you set new plants into the garden and during times of fast growth to sustain the microbial activity.
  
  

Particle Size

• The size of the particles matters when you add amendments to increase the fertility of your garden soil. Unlike humans, in which fiber simply acts as filler, fiber in the life of soil is the main food source for bacteria and fungi. Natural products like composted yard trimmings, straw, hay, leaves and grass clippings are ideal food for the soil. Manures are very rich in that they contain salts with the fiber that might burn tender plants, and need to have a few months to break down in the soil. Fine particles found in blood meal, bone meal and other organic and natural amendments tend to be fast in their rate of deterioration and need repeated applications.
  
  

Wood Products

• Wood products are excellent sources of food for the soil microbial activity but they tie up available nitrogen in the soil that most plants need immediately. Use products like wood chips, sawdust or bark only after they have had a chance to compost separately for a year so they are ready for plant life. Keep sawdust from construction lumber that might be treated or painted out of the garden soil as they contain substances toxic at high levels to humans. Besides, the chemicals used to keep them free from decay will also work against the soil microbes so important in the natural decaying process.
  
  

Tilling

• Good fertile soil means that you have worked the addition of natural products throughout the growing area and not just piled them on the surface of the soil. There are times when after the constant application of mulch, the growing area raises up higher with the layers of mulch. However, you release the nutrients present deeper in the soil, often in the small molecules of clay, when you mix the the new organic matter with the old soil. Incorporate any soil additions into the top 6 to 8 inches of soil to increase the tilth, which is the particle size of the soil, and the fertility of the soil.