Plants need the right nutrients in order to thrive. And with probiotics you can ensure that your plants get what they need.
Probiotics – beneficial bacteria and microbes – is a topic that is hotly researched at the moment. While it has long been known that probiotics can be beneficial for our gut health, science is starting to discover that beneficial bacteria can be used for so much more.
And it’s not just when it comes to our health either where probiotics can be useful. Probiotic cleaners will keep your home free from germs by outcompeting them. Probiotic deodorants keep body odour at bay by bad bacteria being outcompeted by good ones.
So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that probiotics for the garden is a thing that you should try if you want a sustainable garden. Let’s delve deeper into how beneficial bacteria and microbes could help your plants to thrive.
The Plant Microbiome
Like we have a community of microbes in our bodies that help us with different functions, such as digestion, so plants also benefit from bacteria and other microbes to support their lives. It’s estimated that one gram of soil contains anywhere between 4,000 and 50,000 microbes.
The microorganisms contained in the microbiome are very diverse and include bacteria, fungi, viruses, archaea, and protists. Many others are probably still unknown. (Wentworth et Stevenson, 2019)
This microbiome can support plant growth, the health of the plant and resilience to stress. (Compant et al., 2019)
This means that if we ensure that our plants have the right microbiome, they will grow stronger and healthier, be more resilient to climate stresses, as well as diseases and pests, and have a greater yield.
Some of these beneficial microorganisms are in the plant tissue, some are in the soil and interact with the plant via their roots, and some are in the air and interact with the foliage. (Pandey et al., 2022)
It’s difficult to change the microbes that are in a plant’s tissue unless we inject the seeds with the right bacteria. Although, science is looking at doing just that. But we, as non-scientists, can still make sure that our plants have the right microbes supporting them by ensuring that they grow in healthy soil.
There are also products that provide beneficial bacteria to the leaves of plants so that the plant’s foliage can interact with them.
So how can these microbes help the plants? In order to grow, a plant needs nutrients. One such important nutrient is phosphorus. Although it’s fairly abundant in most soils, most of it isn’t in soluble form. This means that it can’t be absorbed by plants. (Stockdale et Atkinson)
Chemical fertilisers containing soluble phosphorus are one option, but they are costly and high demand is leading to depletion of rock phosphorous sources. However, there are bacteria that can make the phosphorous soluble, and therefore accessible to plants. (Khan et al., 2017)
But scientists have also found that the right microbes in the soil can mitigate the effects of climate change and stop various plant species from going extinct. (Allsup et al., 2023)
How The Soil Microbiome Can Get Degraded
There are several ways the microorganisms in our soil can get disturbed and the microbiome changed. The key for optimal soil health, defined through the microbiome, is the variety of different microbes that live in the soil.
Agriculture is one of the reasons soils degrade, with continuous cropping, ploughing, and the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Urbanisation is another reason why the soil microbiome might degrade, because of the building of roads, car parks and buildings, which close off the soil.
Climate change is also contributing to a change in the soil’s microbiome. (Wentworth et Stevenson, 2019)
Obviously, these are reasons based on the country as a whole, but they can be translated to our domestic gardens. Although on a smaller scale, many gardeners mimic agricultural practices.
Whether you grow flowers or vegetables, you will grow plants in the same beds year after year. While we don’t plough our beds, many gardeners dig over the soil after the annual plants have been removed, often to dig in organic matter.
And many gardeners will use chemical fertilisers to provide their plants with the food they need to grow. Equally, pesticides are in common use in many domestic gardens.
Urbanisation doesn’t happen in our garden, but we put in patios, paths, and sheds or summerhouses. All of which will close off the soil.
Finally, climate change affects our gardens, like everything else in our environment. Droughts, flooding, and heatwaves all happen in gardens across the UK.
So how can we ensure that the soil in our garden is healthy and has a diverse microbiome? Read on to find out…
Ways To Keep The Soil In Our Gardens Healthy
Armed with all the knowledge we have learned above, we can look at how we can enhance the diversity in our garden soil’s microbiome and keep the soil healthy.
Following these steps will not only help you keep your soil’s microbes happy but will also help you become an eco-friendly gardener.
1. Use Probiotics For The Garden
What? Yes, you read right. There are probiotics that you can use in your garden. It works just the same as with our gut. You add them to your soil, or spray them on your plants.
By regularly adding probiotics to your soil, you can build up the diversity of your soil’s microbiome and keep it in a healthy and varied state.
We Recommend Microbz Probiotics For Your Garden
Microbz is a small UK-based company we discovered through their probiotic cleaners. What we love most about them is that they brew their probiotics right here in the UK from soil.
So they take the beneficial bacteria from the soil to make their probiotic products, rather than making them in a lab.
We use their probiotic cleaners and also their gut probiotics, so of course, we also wanted to try their garden products for our vegetables. It will take some time to know how well it worked, as we are starting with the soil conditioner.
Once all our veggie plants are finished, we have to cut them down, and weed the beds. The probiotic soil conditioner is then diluted (at a ratio of 1:10) and applied to the bare soil.
We will do the same again twice in winter. Then again, in early spring, before anything is planted, but follow it up with a layer of our homemade compost. The organic matter is the perfect food for the microbes. And like in your gut, you want to feed the soil microorganisms so that they thrive.
When we get to plant out our veggies, the soil should be full of beneficial microbes that will help our plants grow strong and healthy.
What I love most about probiotics is that by using them you work with nature rather than against it, and that’s the key for sustainable gardening.
Read about our first impressions with these garden probiotics in our Mircobz probiotics for the garden review.
2. Adopt The No-Dig Gardening Method
When you read guides about gardening, most will tell you to dig in organic matter into your beds to replenish the soil with nutrients. But like ploughing in agriculture, this disturbs the soil ecosystem and can lead to reduced diversity of the soil’s microbiome.
To avoid this, you can adopt the no-dig gardening method. Rather than digging in the organic matter, you just layer it on top of the bed. Homemade compost, decomposed leaves, or wood chips all work great for this.
This method also means that you don’t pull out any annual plants. Instead, you cut them just above the ground and then layer your chosen organic matter on top. The roots will decompose and add some nutrients.
With this way of gardening, you basically mimic nature. Because fallen leaves and dead plant material would just lie on the ground and decompose there. The nutrients would then be transferred into the soil beneath.
We have been using this method for some years now and it works great. It’s also less work, because there is no digging in. Win-win!
3. Make Your Own Nutrient-Rich Compost To Feed The Microbes
The best organic matter to feed your soil’s microbiome is homemade compost. But it gets even better, because making your own compost reduces your waste, too. And it’s very easy to do, so if you don’t have a compost bin yet, what are you waiting for? Here is what you need to do:
- Get a compost bin or make your own
- Add green and brown matter – green matter includes raw kitchen scraps like peels, end bits of fruits, etc., grass clippings, and leaves – brown matter includes torn-up cardboard, dead stems, and straw
- Keep your compost moist in warm weather
- Turn your compost regularly
The Royal Horticultural Society has a great guide about how to make your own compost, if you want more detailed instructions.
It takes quite a while to get compost, at least 6 months, but once the process has started, and you keep adding green and brown material regularly, you should have a good supply every year.
Of course, if you have many beds like we do, one compost heap might not be enough.
4. Don’t Use Chemical Fertilisers And Pesticides
Chemical fertilisers and pesticides might be an easy option, but they aren’t good for your soil’s microbiome or the environment. So not using them is definitely the best option.
But how do you feed your plants without them? Well, if you use your own compost to add as mulch to your beds, the need for liquid feed will reduce. And if you feel your plants could still do with some more help, use natural fertilisers.
You can make them yourself very easily using weeds or grass clippings. Add them to a bucket until it’s half full, then add water until the bucket is full, ideally rainwater. Cover with a lid and leave to soak.
After about four to six weeks, strain the liquid into bottles, and you have a natural liquid fertiliser full of nutrients.
Dilute your liquid feed with water to feed your plants. You want the colour of weak tea.
Pests are part and parcel of gardening, whether you grow ornamental plants or vegetables. Again, pesticides are the easy option, but not the sustainable one.
A healthy microbiome will ensure that your plants are more pest and disease resistant. But to further reduce the risk of common garden pests ruining your plants, there are things you can do that don’t include pesticides:
- Tolerate them as much as possible, as they are part of your garden’s ecosystem
- Attract beneficial insects that will prey on garden pests
- Use physical barriers such as netting or insect mesh
- Use companion planting to protect your plants from pests
I’m using all of these eco-friendly pest control methods in my garden and don’t have issues with pests. While they are in our garden and might nibble at our plants, they don’t cause any problems.
5. Practice Crop Rotation
You might already be familiar with this, but if not, it means that you don’t grow the same plant or plant family in the same spot every year. There are many good reasons for this practice, including preventing the buildup of pests and diseases in the soil, but also to keep the soil healthier.
As you want a variety of microbes in the soil, you also want a diversity of plants grown in the soil. Growing different plants increases the diversity of the microbiome and, by doing so, increases soil functions. (Yang et al., 2023)
Starting a crop rotation is fairly simple, as long as you keep track of what you planted where. I make a plan each year, so I know exactly which plants I grew in which bed and with which companion plants.
Then you need to know which family the plants belong to. For example, tomatoes, potatoes, aubergines, and chillies are all part of the Nightshades. Ornamental plants will also belong to various plant families.
After that, it’s simple: when you plan where to plant your annuals next year, you just make sure that you don’t plant the same plants or plants of the same family in the bed you grew them last year.
For perennials, this isn’t possible, as you won’t want to dig them out and move them every year. Instead, you can make sure that your beds are planted with a good mix of plants. The greater the variety, the better.
If you now got inspired to become an eco-friendly gardener and improve your soil the natural way, get yourself probiotics for the garden and watch your plants thrive.
