African Wildlife and Environment Issue 68

FAUNA, FLORA & WILDLIFE

FAUNA, FLORA & WILDLIFE

Gardening for wildlife: THE ROLE OF HEALTHY SOIL

The key to a successful wildlife garden is to enable as many interactions between organisms and their environment as possible. Those interactions are not limited to above the ground, but include a vast number of interactions that take place between organisms that either live permanently in soil, or carry out part of their lives below the soil’s surface.

Linda Da Luca

Life below the soil

Organic matter in the soil Organic matter (both living and non-living) in the soil has many important functions. It retains moisture, and provides food for creatures that feed on it. In the wildlife garden, it is this component that we focus on to increase the health and well-being of our garden and the creatures that inhabit it. When organic material is added to soil, or left to nature to add, it becomes an entire ecosystem on its own. It is at the soil level that the nutrient cycle is completed, with living material breaking down into minerals that are absorbed by the plants again and thus, are made available to a number of organisms that eat the plants and are, in turn, eaten themselves. The presence of organic material in the soil also helps to trap carbon in the soil. If you are starting the wildlife garden from scratch, add plenty of compost, as well as a good layer of organic mulch (about 5 cm) over the top of the soil that has been exposed through digging.

In the last article in African Wildlife & Environment 67, titled Gardening for Wildlife – Non-living Elements , it was stressed that healthy soil forms the foundation of a truly healthy and thriving wildlife garden. In proportion to the whole of planet Earth, soil forms only a thin, fragile skin, and yet healthy soil is a highly complex system of living and non-living components. Soil is hugely diverse in its make-up, with the nature of parent rock lending the soil its particular character, as it makes up about 45 percent the soil. The remaining components are gases, water, dead and decaying material that was once alive, and living organisms that inhabit the soil for some or all of their life span. Whether soil is loamy, clay or sandy, all soil will to some extent determine the kind of creatures that one would find in the soil. This in turn influences the type of larger creatures that one might find frequenting the garden. Lizards, for example, favour sandy soil to lay their eggs in, while earthworms require moist soil that is full of humus.

A compost find

The lifecycle of the Rhino beetle

24 |

25 | African Wildlife & Environment | 68 (2018)