Organic living soil is a sustainable, regenerative grow practice which focuses on dynamic and diverse soil, resulting in healthier plants. The goal of organic living soil is to feed the soil microbiology so that it in turn feeds the plants. Whereas conventional soil methodology is to feed the plant directly. Plants grown in conventional soil will often require additional nutrient supplementation to thrive. These additional inputs used in conventional growing could be made with organic matter or synthetic rock salts. With organic living soil, microbes living within the soil are constantly eating and digesting organic matter, providing readily available nutrients for the plants to flourish. A great way to think of this is like the human digestive system; where good gut bacteria and microbiome help us to thrive, healthy microbial activity in the soil helps plants to thrive. The soil is the “gut” of the plant.

What’s In Organic Living Soil?

At Flower of Life, we custom blend our own organic living soil. Combined with integrated pest management, it is the reason we are able to grow without the use of synthetic inputs such as pesticides, fungicides and herbicides. We’ve sourced approximately fifteen different amendments including; black owl bio char, mineral rich rock dusts, worm castings and Maine lobster compost. We use a commercial soil mixer to blend all of the amendments and one wheel barrow at a time, we load each of our fabric beds with the mixture. We allow the soil to “cook” for several weeks, watering it as needed to maintain the perfect moisture level. This cooking period promotes the growth of healthy bacteria and fungus, resulting in the “life” of the soil.

White clover flower

In addition to the soil, we use a cover crop mix from Build A Soil. Cover crops are beneficial to the soil by helping with

soil fertility, water availability, and increasing biodiversity to name a few. One of my favorite things about the cover crop is the beautiful flowers that pop up!

After each harvest, we don’t till up and throw out the soil or cover crop, rather, we plant the next round of crops in the same soil and that cycle continues on and on indefinitely. The soil is always reused and we adjust amendments accordingly based on our soil lab results or visual inspection of the plants.

Our primary focus is to grow truly clean, healthy plants without synthetic inputs or pesticides. We’ve created a small ecosystem where we could leave the plants unattended for days at a time and they’d be fine. Of course, we have no intentions of doing that!