At Star Nurseries, we begin by thoroughly assessing your property—considering everything from buildings, people, animals, drainage, and existing plants, to soil and water requirements. Our approach ensures that form follows function, creating a lasting, flourishing environment for everyone who interacts with your space.

 

When assessing properties, we often find that the soil is heavily compacted and typically void of most life and nutrients. During the construction or remodeling phase, companies bring in heavy machinery to the site. This heavy machinery creates compaction issues beneath the surface, within the soil structure. Recycled concrete is often laid down on top of the soil to provide temporary or permanent parking. Excess building materials such as old walkway and driveway materials, trash, and other debris are piled up on the site until they can be hauled away. As these materials are loaded onto the vehicles, they are unintentionally dropped and mixed into the soil profile. The equipment and trucks place a tremendous amount of pressure on the soils leading to further compaction. Once construction is complete and the site is cleared, a new layer of topsoil added to planting areas. Even if this layer is significant, 4 inches or more, the debris and compaction remain underneath. Sometimes compost or other amendments are added to the topsoil and rototilled in. The problem is that rototillers rarely reach deeper than 8 inches, which doesn’t reach the compacted soil beneath.

 

Compaction prevents the plants from properly rooting and in turn aerating the soil. It also creates issues for the microbes and bacteria that are beneficial for soil and the environment. These play a critical role in the success of plants and some animals and insects. “Even relatively small changes in soil structure can have an important impact on soil microbial communities. For example, bacteria introduced into farmland soil to enhance crop growth may require certain conditions in order to function. This is because soil, far from being a continuous solid, consists of a multitude of tiny particles called aggregates. These aggregates are separated by gaps, known as pores, which allow nutrients, water and other essential chemicals to be distributed within the soil so that they are available for microbes, plants and animals to use. One important factor that can affect soil structure is the use of agricultural machinery. As heavy objects such as tractors move over the soil, they compact it, increasing its ‘bulk density’ and destroying its pores. This can hamper the distribution of gases and chemicals and the flow of water through soil, which has been shown in several studies to have a negative impact on plant. But what about the growth of soil microbes? The number of bacteria present in the soil was shown to be smaller with each increase in bulk density. More compressed soils also compromised the ability of the microbes to spread through the substrate, suggesting the destruction of soil pores restricts the movement of essential nutrients and chemicals, as well as that of the bacteria themselves.”

 

Soil is meant to be a living environment, made up of many living organisms and air space for them to breathe. There are a lot of programs and discussion that promote the planting of trees to eliminate carbon dioxide, and while we are fully in support of this effort, if we don’t provide the trees with the proper foundation, much like a house or building, they will fail. If the newly planted trees don't produce and live, as they are meant to, do they still reduce carbon efficiently? Most of transpiration process (when Co2 is taken in and Oxygen is released) can only happen efficiently when the roots adequately absorb water, where it is drawn up, through the trunk up, to the leaves. “Plants take in carbon dioxide and water and then use light to turn these into the nutrients they need to grow. This process also emits oxygen, which humans and other animals then breathe. That's the basic summary of photosynthesis. But how exactly does it work? The process becomes a bit clearer on the microscopic level. On the underside of leaves and elsewhere, depending on the plant, are tiny openings called stomata — thousands of them per leaf with variations by plant species. Like little castle gates, pairs of cells on the sides of the stomatal pore — known as guard cells — open their central pore to take in the carbon dioxide. However, when stomata are open, the inside of the plant is exposed to the elements and water from the plant is lost into the surrounding air, which can dry out the plant. Plants, therefore, must balance the intake of carbon dioxide with water vapor loss by controlling how long the stomata remain open.” If they don’t get enough water, they cannot perform the gas exchange and release adequate oxygen into the environment because the stomata stay closed. These are all factors that play a major role in the long term health of the environment surrounding us. How can we change it?