The natural world we all live in is truly awesome. We should better appreciate what our role is in it — and what is lost when we don’t nurture it.

For about 20 years, I was a beekeeper. An average colony has a peak population of about 60,000 in midsummer. When you open a colony and look inside, it is a truly amazing thing to see this huge population working towards a single goal — doing what is best for the colony.

Some workers are building the combs that store honey and pollen, and which the young bees are raised in. There are bees tending the young in the hive, others guarding and protecting the hive from predators. Thousands are out collecting nectar and pollen. Others are tending to, feeding, and receiving signals from the queen which are communicated throughout the colony.

Standing behind a beehive in summer is like being at a busy airport with multiple flights taking off and coming in, nonstop, all day.

These little bees, making millions of trips to flowering plants, produce an amazing amount of honey for themselves, and of course, the beekeepers. They also pollinate many of the food crops that provide our sustenance. It is an extraordinarily efficient natural system.

It is also a remarkable thing to experience.

There are about 3 million hives in the US. So if you do the math there are an incredible number of bees in this country — hundreds of billions.

However, that is lower than the number of soil microbes that a single vegetable plant has supporting it — if the soil is biologically superior and the plant is healthy. Every one of these microbes is performing a task that is important to the plant. In return, the plant feeds all of them with the sugars it produces during photosynthesis — up to 30% of all of the energy produced can go to feeding soil microbes. In nature, there are no free rides — these creatures must earn their food from the plant. The benefits to the plant have to help the plant at least as much as the microbes are benefited.

This is the “natural” way of growing things — and like a bee hive it is another extraordinarily efficient system that has been evolving and improving for over 400 million years.

In a natural soil ecosystem, plants have all of their needs attended to. Some microbes digest organic nutrients in the soil to feed the plant (like the microbes in our stomachs) — and some digest mineral nutrients. Some protect it from predation by soil predators like grubs. Others protect the roots from disease organisms, or produce antibiotics that protect the foliage from disease attacks. Plant growth hormones are produced by some microbes. There are even more benefits that we still do not understand. These microbes all have one common goal — protect and nourish the plant that feeds them.

These microbes are equally important to our health — yet we have been waging a war on them with our agricultural practices of tilling, fallow winter fields, and chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Today, researchers worldwide are trying to find ways to rebuild soil biology on farmlands — now understanding their critical role in plant health and food quality.

One of our Canterbury Creek Gardens vegetable or flower transplants brings with it more of these workers than there are people on the entire planet.

Most transplants sold today are growing in sterile, soilless mixes.

Which plant do you think is better equipped to thrive and be productive in your garden — to require less care from you — and to produce more nutritious food, or more beautiful flowers?

Years ago, when we were selling pond supplies, we had a marine biologist from Chicago visit and spend a Sunday afternoon with us, thanks the Cleveland Aquarium Society. I overheard him suggesting to a customer that she offer me $20 for a small piece of our biological filter matting, which contained the microbes that detoxify fish waste. He said that even a small piece of our filter mat was more valuable than an entire bottle of the bacteria we sold that colonized the netting — because the filter matting was an already working colony and it would take time for the bacteria from a bottle to get established.

This is the same as buying a transplant already colonized with a working system vs. trying to establish this system in your garden. The roots and the soil biology are always growing faster in an established symbiotic relationship with the soil biology outpacing the roots — preparing the way for them — looking for nutrients that can be traded for sugar..

Every year, more people comment on how much better our plants perform in their garden. A plant grown in sterile soil can take weeks to establish this system in the best garden soil. That means weeks of lost growth. In marginal soils, it may never happen. Our plants are born with it — and bring an already working ecosystem to your garden.

They are born and are growing in our biologically rich, compost based potting soils. This is a big advantage for them.