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Marshall Brooks's avatar

Wonderful, thanks! I've also added numerous layers of leaf mold and wood chips over the past several years in an attempt to restore some of the biomatter stripped away. Seems to be helping.

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Andie Marsh's avatar

Nice! Sounds like good instincts to me. It's encouraging to hear your efforts, thanks for sharing!

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Marshall Brooks's avatar

Thanks for this. For suburban gardeners looking to resuscitate their small ecosystem, are good stewardship practices (native plantings, no chemicals, leaving leaf litter, etc) enough to restore healthy soil, including all the microorganisms you teach about?

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Andie Marsh's avatar

I love this Q. It's definitely a GOOD approach and should bring about change, but you could level up your efforts and significantly increase the rate of change by adding biology-based amendments such as a verified compost or compost tea, humic and fulvic acids (fungal foods), and in many cases even mineral-based amendments can be helpful. (For example of mineral amendment: see the "remineralizer" product at Nature's Way Resources https://www.natureswayresources.com/products.html#A6 )

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