Essential Elements: Soil, Water and Sunshine.

Seeds will grow into plants providing feed, food and fiber for our lives, but only if the essential elements for plants to grow are present. Let’s have a look at each and see what they provide that is so essential.

Soil provides a medium for life-giving micro-organisms to live in. These organisms generate all the nutrition, pH balance, mineral uptake, and water holding capacity that plants need in order to grow healthy, and thus providing their fruits and seeds that we use for food. Without top-soil, there would be no forests, grasslands or any other vegetation. Topsoil is self-perpetuating in that if it already exists (even a little bit) it will provide the opportunity for a seed to sprout and grow into plants and trees. That plant or tree will, at the end of it’s lifecycle, turn into decaying material that the soil organisms will break down into more top-soil.

Water provides plants with the essential element of H2O. Even with plenty of top-soil, nothing can live without water. Water provides micro-organisms with moisture to live and multiply. This bio-activity makes the soil loose, porous and able to hold water after a rain, or from irrigation, thus providing water to the plants roots. Without water we would not have micro-organisms in soil, and plants would not be able to grow.

Light or sunshine provides heat and photosynthesis. Heat increases the speed of the activity of the soil organisms. Light is an essential component of the way a plant turns energy into living matter through photosynthesis. Without light plants cannot grow. Without light, there is no life.