Hello, welcome back to the podcast guys and girls. It is Kevin from effort gardening.com and today we're going to talk about

So a question that you get a lot is

Why does soil need to be aerated? How do I aerate my soil? What is it that I need to know about soil aeration? Which is a

great question. It's kind of a fundamental piece of knowledge when it comes to growing plants so let's go ahead and talk about it.

So we all know plants need water, plants need light, plants need nutrients.

But something that people don't consider that much is, are my plants getting enough oxygen?

And so coming from a hydroponic background, it is pretty clear to me that that plants need

oxygen because when you're growing them in a solution of nutrients and water, they will die if you don't oxygenate that soil and, or sorry, that water in some way.

And the way that we do that in hydroponics is with an airstone, similar to a bubbler in an aquarium,

just to make sure that there's enough oxygen in the water.

Because if you grow in soil and you have waterlogged roots, they will typically die,

partially because of root rot, but partially because there's no oxygen in that environment.

So when you grow hydroponically, you have to supply that oxygen somehow.

Now, when it comes to aeration in a soil environment, we all kind of know that we need to aerate our lawn

that's why people buy lawn aerators and run those over their lawns.

And part of the reason why is because a lawn is very susceptible to soil compaction, because lawns are used by us in our families. We run around, we play on them, we jump,

we sit, we put gear on them, and so that pushes down the soil and that can really cause some very compact

soil that makes it hard for roots to both grow and get the water and nutrition and oxygen that they need.

But this same principle applies to vegetable gardening,

herb gardening, ornamental gardening as well.

So when you have well aerated soil, you have rich fertile,

properly draining soil, and the roots are very healthy.

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