Improving Your Soil: How Sitting Back & Admiring Ground Cover Can Help

If you love your lawn and garden, then you might want to start from the ground up…. You might want to focus on your soil.

This does not necessarily mean taking action. Instead, one of the best ways to focus on improving your soil just may be to… cover it up (think: Ground Cover) and leave it alone. 

I used to admire those who toiled and tilled, using machinery, garden forks, and shovels as they prepared their lawns and planting beds by cutting into and fluffing up the soil. These gardeners seemed to be the “worker bees”, and I assumed they would have the best success with their plants. 

But that is not necessarily the case. It turns out that tactics quite opposite those just mentioned can actually be better for the soil, and thus, its ability to grow healthy plants. 

What Helps in Building Good Soil

Is your soil a rich color? Is it alive with worms and other creatures? When rains hit it, is there excessive run-off, or does it retain moisture well?

Soils that are uncovered—no Ground Cover plants, no natural mulch—require lots of active work on the part of the gardener to keep them adequately moist. Their top layers dry in the baking sun, and water drains from them almost immediately. But with a layer of natural protection in the form of Ground Cover, soil is protected in the same manner it is protected in the forest. 

Ground Cover plants can be some of the most beautiful plants in the garden. But the work of these plants does not stop at being beautiful. These Ground Cover plants provide protection for the soil, and then a healthy soil, in turn, is a key ingredient in growing countless other plants beautifully. Moss and grasses are wonderful top layers, very helpful in keeping carbon well held below ground. This soil organic carbon is essential to having a great growing medium. 

We know that an overabundance of carbon-emitting practices negatively impacts climate. But carbon taken down into and used by the soil is another story—very beneficial, in that it helps with soil aeration, or oxygenation, it improves the soil’s stability so that erosion is less likely to impact it and so that nutrients will not leach out of it. Trees, woody shrubs, and Ground Cover such as moss and grasses are important first steps toward creating a “carbon sink”, or an area that takes in and holds tight to more carbon than it emits carbon (think: forest… a prime carbon sink). 

What Activity is Needed to Build Good Soil?

When you think of activity needed to build good soil, think, again, of the forest. Tilling, mechanically aerating… these are not activities of the forest. The closest things to these activities are done by animals that pass through to dig and munch a Ground Cover and disturb the turf just a little. But these animals move on, and the disturbance is minimal. The creatures above ground do little to disturb the below-the-surface work of creatures that live within the soil. This work of worms and microorganisms keeps the forest soil rich, able to retain moisture, full of nutrients, and healthy. Worms become powerhouse aerators and fertilizing machines, and microorganisms naturally feed the soil to make it richer and better. Chemicals and machines are not applied. The soil stays undisturbed to a great extent. And with this lack of above-ground disturbance, thanks to strong and protective Ground Cover plants that minimize it, the below-ground workers and the root systems of the plants themselves make everything “right”.

Out of the forest and back in the world of the residential garden, soils that are dug and turned and disturbed time and again lose some of the beneficial creatures that should be living and working within them. Soils that have to maintain themselves without the help of Ground Cover plants and mulches dry out so easily, more beneficial creatures are lost, or are driven so much deeper that they cannot be very helpful to surface plants.

So, action: Really there is no need to take action to build better soil, save for perhaps planting some Ground Cover to protect the soil. What may be most important in building better soil is leaving things alone… disturbing the ground as little as possible. Sure, you do need to loosen it up a little; sure, you will dig in new plants each year. But take it easy on your soil. Slice in some seeds. Dig judiciously. As with many things, less can be more.

Try this less-is-more approach in at least one garden bed. Disturb the soil as little as possible and see if over time, perhaps two years, your soil gets markedly better. You will know when you compare the care requirements of that garden bed to those of others. Is that bed more self-sufficient? Does it grow healthier plants, and do they have a better yield of fruits, veg, and flowers? I suspect the answer will be “yes”. Amazing, the self-sustaining and reparative nature of Nature!