the smell of soil
Soil health - human health - planet health
Welcome to 'the smell of soil', sharing knowledge and inspiration about how to grow food, nourish soil and nurture your gut health
Hello
My name is Jane Gleeson and I am a horticulturalist and food grower and I am passionate about how the way in which we grow food and tend soil is vital for our physical, emotional and spiritual health. One of my favourite childhood memories is of playing in the shelter of large evergreen shrubs in my local park. I loved the smell of summer soil after rainfall - especially warm summer rain. Its sweetness comforted me and gave a sense of safety and completeness that I still get whenever I catch this smell . Only much later did I discover that this has been named by science as Petrichor - the combination of volatile oil in plants and geosmin given off by bacteria in the soil. We have developed to recognise and delight in the smell of healthy soil
Microbial foundations of health
We depend on microbes for health - they are everywhere
Microbes in the soil affect plant health and so your health.
Discover the astonishing world of these hidden
foundational communities
soil life
plant health foundation
Good soil is teeming with life. This ensures plants are healthy and full of beneficial compounds
plant nutrients
gut life
What is in your food? ... we know less than 1%
of the molecules in our food.
This is nutrition's dark matter
What is in food depends on what is in the soil
gut health
whole health
Food is what feeds your gut life - and how well
your body keeps running depends on the
number and types of microbes in your gut.
