soil types and bacteria

so the kind of soil you have will change lots
if you have decomposed granite it is likely going to drain water before the roots of the plant can absorb the water,

if you have clay soil it will hold water nearly forever and it might be easy to rot the roots our from your plants, or not absorb water fast, you might have to soak things for an hour to get any water into it.

if you have hardpan, not much of anything will grow

it is compacted with no organic matter at all,

most of my dirt looks like this

I added wood chips and leaves trying to fix it, and it is fixed to a large degree,

here are radishes that I just planted growing out of it

but remember that soil science is kind of old now, and sadly most of the info seems to be unused anymore,
so lets find out the why of it all, 
the biggest part of it is the soil bacteria,
first question is usually "why do I need soil bacteria ?"
and the answer is that cell walls and membranes leak.
so the roots of the plants can absorb things from the bacteria,
but for this to happen you need a good place for the bacteria to grow,
so compacted dirt with no food (organic matter), or air, or water is not a good place
the best example of the symbiotic bacteria is with orchids,
they don't have the fine hairs on the roots and will die with out the bacteria that collects things for them.

so soil bacteria are very critical,
and you can make them grow in any soil type if you know how,
and here is likely how
http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010120albrecht.usdayrbk/lsom.html
from 1938, and unlike modern studies, it has tests and data to show what is going on.


feeding time