
Deep, Down and Dirty: The Science of Soil
- Year:
- 2014
- 51 min
- 168 Views
(3.00 / 2 votes)'Every spring,
our planet is transformed.'
A riot of new life
bursting from the ground.
'And it's all made possible by one
rather misunderstood material.'
From early childhood
we're told that this stuff, dirt,
is best avoided.
But as someone with a lifelong
passion for soil and
everything that grows in it, it's a
rule I've always enjoyed breaking.
'I'm Chris Beardshaw. I spend my
life designing and planting gardens.
'Everything I do depends on soil.
'And I'm going to try and convince
you that it's an unrecognised
'wonder of the natural world.'
For billions of years
our land must've looked
pretty much like this.
Bare rock. A barren place.
Apparently devoid of life.
But something transformed it
into a vibrant, living planet.
'And that something was soil.'
But what fascinates me
is where did the soil come from?
What is it composed of
and why is it so essential to life?
So I'm going to get down
and dirty with soil.
I want to investigate its secrets.
And reveal it as you've never seen
it before. An intricate
microscopic landscape...
..teeming with
strange and wonderful life forms.
more complex
and fragile than anything that
exists above ground.
A substance so remarkable,
you'll never walk on the grass
in the same way again.
'As a gardener, I spend my life
among plants.
'I see them emerge from the soil.
the chance to discover what gives
'soil its amazing, life-giving
force.
'So now I want to find out.
'And I'm starting by doing
what comes naturally.
'I'm going out to dig.'
Ask any gardener and they'll tell
you that the soil
provides their plants with the
nutrients that are needed for life.
And if you grow anything
intensively,
on farms or gardens,
you have to apply fertiliser
to replace and replenish those
nutrients in the soil.
In a natural landscape like this,
supported by the nutrients that
are just inherently in the ground.
But we shouldn't take these
nutrients for granted.
Like our fertilisers,
they also need to be replenished.
And how that happens is the first
great mystery of soil.
Even at the end of winter
there's plenty of evidence of life
on the woodland floor, or at least
last season's life.
Leaf litter,
coming from the canopy above.
But this is of no use at all
to the surrounding plants
in its current state.
That's because most plants simply
can't feed on dead leaves and twigs.
They're too tough to break down
and digest.
And this creates a problem.
Any nutrients
they hold are locked in
so the plants can't get at them.
'But hidden beneath the surface
of the soil
'is a very different picture.'
This modified-looking spade is
actually a scientific instrument.
the perfect cross section through
the layers of the topsoil.
At the top we can see here this
unrotted layer of leaf litter.
It's last season's leaves just
sitting on the surface.
But below that is a much darker
layer where the
particles are much more broken down,
much smaller and quite compact.
Beneath that is what
we would recognise as topsoil.
These are described by soil
scientists as different horizons.
'Collectively, the horizons
are known as a soil profile.'
And the deeper down the profile
we go, the smaller
the pieces of leaf and twig become
until they just disappear.
So somehow the tough plant matter
is eventually broken down,
releasing its trapped
nutrients into the soil.
This is one of the most vital
processes in nature.
'And it's begun by a rather
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