Soil Health 101: A Home Gardener’s Guide to Thriving Plants and a Living Garden
Just Good Soil

Soil Health 101: A Home Gardener’s Guide to Thriving Plants and a Living Garden

on  Jul 22, 2025  by  Chris Cerveny
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When describing a garden and what needs to thrive, most people think about sunlight, water, maybe some mulch, and nice weather. A lot of people will also mention fertilizer, compost, and some form of protection from animals, insects, and/or children. But, what is often overlooked, is below ground, where the roots live. Underneath all that beauty we see above ground is the true foundation for a successful garden - good quality soil. Whether you’re growing salad on your patio, tending tomatoes in a raised bed, or a lover of flower and pollinator gardens, investing in soil health is one of the smartest decisions you can make to ensure your garden’s success.

What is Soil Health?

Technically, a soil is defined by the ratio of its physical components - sand, silt, and clay in the ground (or in your garden). The balance of those components, coupled with the amount of organic material and humus in your soil profile, determines things like how easy it is for the soil to hold water and if there’s enough air space for roots to thrive. But there’s more than just physical components - good soil is alive with all kinds of microscopic critters that enable it to function as an underground ecosystem.

The USDA defines soil health as the “continued capacity of soil to function as a living ecosystem that sustains plants, animals, and humans”. So it’s less about the physical properties of the soil and more about how we approach the ecosystem within it, and how that relates to the larger garden and the habitat you’re cultivating. Healthy soil does more than anchor roots — it stores water, cycles nutrients, helps suppress diseases, and hosts an incredible web of microbial life, which are the foundation to an interconnected food chain and directly contribute to a healthier planet. It’s an integration of good physical soil structure and proper care to act as host to the underground life support system necessary for functional  harmony, as nature intended. 

 USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service

Key Components of Soil Health

  • Organic matter (compost, leaves, roots, etc.)
  • Microbial and invertebrate activity  (bacteria, fungi, nematodes, worms, insects, spiders)
  • Soil structure and porosity (sand, silt, clay)
  • Nutrient availability and cycling (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, etc.)
  • pH balance and mineral composition 

Why Soil Health Matters for Home Gardeners

Poor soil health is often the hidden cause of stunted growth, yellowing leaves, pests, and dead plants. Because soil is “out of sight, out of mind” there is a tendency to forget about root systems and their soil environment (the rhizosphere). But when you think about it, doesn’t it make sense that in order for a plant to thrive above ground, it needs healthy soil surrounding its roots? 

Healthy soils support:
  • Resilient plants that can better defend themselves from pests and diseases through natural plant defenses
  • Improved flavor and nutrition in fruits and vegetables
  • Enhanced biodiversity to encourage predators and prey to exist in natural harmony, letting nature work out its checks and balances
  • Better water retention to reduce irrigation frequency
  • Reduced run off and soil erosion
  • Lower fertilizer and pesticide use
  • Absorption and storage of atmospheric carbon

A long-term study by Cornell University found that building organic matter in soil significantly improved vegetable yields while reducing inputs like nitrogen fertilizer and water.

Cornell Soil Health Laboratory

What Can We Do?

Getting started is the hardest part. Learning and applying all the principles can also feel overwhelming. At Just Good Soil, we want to ease that strain and make it easier to nurture your soil health. We want to encourage Regenerative Gardening at home by making it feel approachable and fun. 

Our goal is to help you be successful, one garden bed at a time. And trust us, once you see your plants loving their new underground soil environment, you’ll be hooked just like we were when we discovered how to put regenerative gardening practices to work. 

The Power of Organic Matter

Adding organic matter is the cornerstone of building soil health and is the one thing most gardeners already do to help protect roots and rebuild soil structure. Organic matter can be any/all of these: compost, decomposed leaves, aged manure, coffee grounds, nut shells, and cover crops. These and more contribute to rich, fertile soil that feeds plants and soil microbes alike.

Benefits of Organic Matter
  • Improves soil structure and aeration by creating air pockets for oxygen and water
  • Enhances water-holding capacity by turning soils into a sponge that holds water and nutrients longer
  • Feeds beneficial soil organisms and provides them shelter
  • Buffers and stabilizes pH, and stores nutrients for plants to absorb

According to a Michigan State University Agriculture and Natural Resources publication, increasing soil organic matter by just 1% can increase water holding by about 1.5 quarts per cubic foot. That’s like a Big Gulp worth of water per milk-crate-sized pile of soil… quite a lot! 

Compost Can Increase Water Holding Capacity of Droughty Soils

Feed the Soil, Not Just the Plant

If you’re into eating well and taking care of your body, then you already know that the quality of your diet plays a big role in your health. You may also be aware of the link between the health of our gut microbiome and our immune systems, recovery times, and overall health. When we care for our guts, we feel better and perform better in life. This same principle applies to soil and highlights the need for feeding soil life and cultivating the soil microbiome instead of just feeding the plants.

Think of fertilizer for example, traditional chemical fertilizers are so concentrated that they’re like sugary treats that give a boost of energy but is not a healthy source of nutrition. While synthetics can provide fuel for rapid plant growth, organic inputs and compost are like complex carbohydrates that digest slowly and provide sustained nutrition over time. We want to take a long-term approach to soil health and feed it properly to build its health over time, just like we do with our bodies. No gimmicks or tricks, just the good stuff.  

If you’re a gardener, you probably have a few favorite plants; I definitely do! When we garden, we tend to think about those beauties a lot more than the medium in which they grow, but that is our whole point… the life underground is its own crop. It needs proper nutrition and care, and when you treat it like one of your most prized possessions, it will make your gardening experience significantly better. It’s the secret expert gardeners have known for a long time, and now you do too.  

When you feed the soil, it boosts the soil microbiome, which then boosts plant immunity so they can defend themselves naturally. That biology also promotes healthier roots with vigorous branching to better absorb water and nutrients as a direct response from a thriving soil environment. The plants return the favor to their microbial partners by providing cellular exudates (plant juices) back to the soil life, which then causes microbiomes to grow again, and the cycle continues. While this is all happening, those billions of microbes underground are also converting decomposing matter into carbon that stays stored underground (aka carbon sequestration). This has numerous benefits to the soil but can also help with changing weather patters that affect our daily lives.

Synthetic fertilizers can offer quick visual results like more leaves, more flowers, and more fruit by pushing the plant to grow in response to the specific nutrient. But synthetic fertilizers don’t nourish the soil in the same way that organic inputs nourish soil life. When fertilizers and agrochemicals like pesticides and weed killers are used in excess, season after season, that often leads to diminished soil microbes, soil nutrient deficiencies, compaction due to loss of soil structure, and erosion as water floods away, rather than penetrating the soil.  In other words, it’s not a good idea to keep dumping chemicals on your garden if you’re trying to build soil health. 

The Soil First Approach:

  • Use compost and organic mulches regularly
  • Apply slow-release organic fertilizers that feed microbes and plants over time
  • Rotate where you grow the same thing year after year and increase plant diversity 
  • Grow cover crops like clover or vetch to naturally pull atmospheric Nitrogen underground where roots and soil life can use it
  • Add microbial inoculants and worm castings to boost biological diversity

The Rodale Institute, pioneers of organic agriculture, emphasize that a biologically active soil food web reduces the need for chemical inputs and increases plant immunity. 

Rodale Institute Soil Health Resources

  1. Start composting – Even a small pile can transform your kitchen scraps into black gold.
  2. Mulch your beds – Use leaves, straw, or grass clippings to buffer soil from temperature extremes and suppress weeds. This also helps keep soil from drying out too much.
  3. Avoid tilling – Disturbing soil structure harms fungi and beneficial microbes. Leave them be.
  4. Test your soil – A basic soil test tells you what your soil needs (and what it doesn’t). Don’t guess. This is what every agriculture university recommends.
  5. Feed the life in your soil – Use organic products designed to support microbes, not kill them. Treat those microbes like they are a crop that prefers healthy food from natural sources. 

Final Thoughts

Healthy soil is alive! It breathes, it digests, it protects…  It sustains life above and below ground. When you care for your soil, your soil takes care of your plants.

Remember - as a gardener, you’re not just growing plants — you’re cultivating an ecosystem.

Want to dive deeper? Here are more resources: