It’s easy to go wild for worms, especially when you know what amazing engineers they are! Below our feet, worms are working hard by creating networks and mixing the earth up, which helps oxygen and water to flow through the soil. Worms break down fallen leaves and plants, which releases nutrients back into the soil to help the millions of soil microorganisms and fungi to thrive.

Healthy soil is the basis of healthy food, which is the basis of people with healthy tummies, strong plants and a better world! Our friends at Bristol Good Food asked us ‘What does good food mean to you’? This great question generates a lot of thought and inspiration about how important it is to have good food systems in place. Healthy soil effects our health, wellbeing, our tastebuds and happiness, the ecosystem around us, nature, biodiversity and the planet.

Laura, Land Management Officer at Grow Wilder, has a lot of knowledge and experience with organic growing principles, the importance of working with nature to increase biodiversity, and growing healthy plants in a sustainable way. She says “Healthy soil involves feeding the soil rather than feeding the plants growing in it”.  This is a great perspective to have for a successful food growing ecosystem!

Every action has a consequence. So if you add those blue slug pellets (pesticides) to protect your flowers or crops, yes it will control the slugs, but it will also negatively affect the soil health, kill the worms and poison other wildlife nearby. Pesticides also have a negative effect on growing food and therefore your tummies – the whole interconnection of the ecosystem is thrown out of balance.

So what actions can we take to get healthy soil in our gardens, community spaces, allotments and market-scale food production?

A huge action we can take, which is also an important political statement, is to not do something… to not use chemicals. This includes pesticides, herbicides, fertilisers and fungicides. The continued application of these additives leaves soil life baron of the fundamental organic components that bind it together, enabling the ecosystem to take in carbon, absorb and retain water. Without water and organic matter, the soil struggles to nourish plant growth. No chemicals means healthier soil.

Here are some tried and tested suggestions to go chemical free:

Compost tea

Get comfrey and have a cuppa! Grow Wilder volunteers make and use comfrey and nettle tea to help new plant growth, building stronger walls on developing plants and increase resilience to pests.

Make your own compost

By recycling your plant cuttings and food waste, you’re feeding them back into a growing substrate to save money and build healthy soil. The community of minibeasts who live among the waste help the decaying process, and in turn, these beasts are a delicious food source for hedgehogs and other animals.

Companion planting

Companion planting is all about creating areas of plants that provide benefits to each other. In practice, this means that plants that complement each other are placed together, such as basil and tomatoes, which also complement each other taste wise! Laura from Grow Wilder also suggests growing dill with fennel or dill with cucumber, which will also attract hoverflies that will eat aphids.

You can see more local examples of chemical free gardening, learn more about organic growing principles and advice about working with nature to grow stronger plants, healthier humans and encourage wonderful wiggly worms - all over on our Team Wilder resource page:

Go chemical-free with Team Wilder