(1/30) There is a connection here: Animals need to eat plants to get mineral nutrients in their diet, and plants take up minerals necessary for their own growth from the soil. Thus, our healthy bodies are connected to healthy soil. Even if you are interested in growing beautiful flowers or luxuriant shade trees, you still want healthy soil to provide minerals for healthy plant growth.

Plants and their cells differ quite a bit from animals and their cells, yet an animal digests plant material to get all the nutrients it needs. Even strict carnivores get the plant nutrients they need by consuming an animal that consumed plants. Since plants can’t wander to get their food, they depend on roots to obtain everything they need from the soil (except the carbon they get from the air). What are those mineral nutrients? Think about what your own body needs.

Nitrogen, designated by the chemical symbol N, is a very important nutrient. Nitrogen is a major component of amino acids from which proteins are made. It is also found in DNA and several other molecules needed for cell structure and cell metabolism. In addition, plants need nitrogen for chlorophyll, the light gathering molecule that enables photosynthesis. Nitrogen deficiency in plants is usually first noticed when old growth begins to die. Since plants move nitrogen around easily, it is moved from old leaves to new leaves and flowering tissues.

Another important mineral is phosphorous, taken up by plants in the form of phosphate. Phosphorous, chemical symbol P, is an important piece of the structure of DNA. It is important in the photosynthesis process and general energy use by the plant, as well as moving the sugar products around inside the plant. Most gardeners know that phosphorous is important for flower production. It is necessary for stimulating bud development, blooming, and seed production. Root development is enhanced by ample phosphorous. Adequate supplies of soil phosphate result in healthy growth, but its deficiency is usually only signaled by slow growth, sometimes by reddish or purplish leaves, and most reliably by a soil test.

Potassium, chemical symbol K, is water soluble and moves through plants to carry out a variety of functions, including assisting enzymes and enabling leaf pores to open to allow CO2 to enter for photosynthesis. When potassium is lacking, the plant is more prone to disease, drought stress, heat damage or frost.

Sulfur is not a nutrient we generally hear about; it is rarely deficient in our soils. Like nitrogen, it is necessary for building proteins, but it is also necessary for the photosynthesis process. Legumes, members of the bean family, require sulfur to work with Rhizobium, their soil bacteria partners, to turn nitrogen from the air into nitrogen that the plants can use to make proteins.

Calcium helps build strong bones in people, but plant cells don’t have bones. Smaller, non-woody plants rely on strong cell walls to stand straight, and they need calcium to build strong cell walls. Besides its structural role, calcium is also necessary for several cell processes including the movement of other plant nutrients and the action of several enzymes. Once calcium is situated in a plant, it doesn’t move, so calcium cannot move to new plant parts when needed. That means a deficiency is first noticed in the new plant growth, where the leaves tend to curl or wrinkle on the edges, sometimes yellowing or turning black. The most widely recognized calcium deficiency is blossom end rot in tomatoes.

Magnesium is a mineral nutrient we don’t hear much about, but it is the centerpiece of the all-important chlorophyll molecule. Chlorophyll is a big green molecule that can catch light energy and send it into the photosynthesis machinery of the cell. A plant doesn’t need a lot of magnesium, not like nitrogen or phosphorous, but it is most important. Woody plants will even hoard magnesium when the growing season is over, taking it out of the leaves and storing it in the woody tissue until spring. The vibrant fall colors we see come from other leaf pigments that were there all summer but hidden by the chlorophyll. I’m sure you guessed that a deficiency of magnesium is evident by leaves that aren’t green.

Earlier I used the designations N, P, and K to refer to nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium respectively. The fertilizers we buy and use in our gardens contain these three nutrients, and sometimes a few of the others I mentioned. The amount of each is designated by the numbers on the package we refer to as N-P-K numbers. A package of fertilizer displays a label with three hyphenated numbers — 5-10-5, 10-10-10, or 6-5-3, for instance — telling you the composition of three nutrients. Thus, 5-10-5 means the mixture in the bag contains 5% nitrogen, 10% phosphate and 5% potassium.

Many gardeners use compost and other organic-based soil amendments to enhance fertility. These have the advantage of increasing organic matter, which helps the soil microorganisms gather nutrients. These microorganisms, especially fungi, exchange the nutrients for carbohydrates produced by the plants. Organic soil amendments do not have a high content of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, but composted organic matter holds nutrients in place longer, decreasing the chance they will leach away with too much rain or watering. The disadvantage is that you don’t have a product analysis telling you what nutrient components are present and in what quantities.

How do you know if your soil is deficient in the major nutrients? How do you know if the pH is within range to make nutrients accessible to plants? A soil test can help. If you get a soil test from Penn State, the results will give you suggestions for proper fertilizer applications, as well as information about soil pH and suggestions to adjust it if necessary. The soil test kits are available from the Penn State Extension Office on 670 Old Harrisburg Road, Gettysburg for $9.00.

Gardeners should not only be concerned with the connection of soil and plant, but plant and insect, soil and insect, insect and insect. The relationships within the entire ecosystem impacts everything we do as gardeners.

One of the last things a gardener might want to find near her garden is a congregation of aphids. Worse, Watching the ants practicing their version of animal husbandry, increasing the aphid herd size and encouraging feeding, so they can collect the sweet secretions, called honey dew, excreted by the aphids is no what a gardener wants to see. But if we look closer, we may also see a lady bug evaluating this as a potential meal, or a potential spot to lay her eggs. Ladybug larvae hatch from the eggs with a voracious appetite; we sometimes call the larvae aphid lions. And the spider? That was another hungry predator.

There was once a day when I thought that the precious time I did have for gardening would be better spent on plants I use for food. As I got older and slowed down a bit, I found watching insects was a good excuse for a few minutes rest. That garden was near a protected woodland, so we had lots of native plants nearby to harbor native insect life. It was then I began to realize that flowers, especially insect-feeding flowers, were good companions for vegetables. And after moving to Adams County I began to see how native plants in the landscape could make lovely - and useful - additions to my landscape.

Walking through the woods or viewing the roadsides, we view the garden that nature and chance throw together. It looks messy and is often loaded with invasive plants we don't want within miles of our yards. But how about deliberately building an 'ecosystem' in your yard? Let's start by understanding that an ecosystem is a situation in which a plant and animal community interacts with its physical environment.

The physical environment is something we have little control over. We can amend the soil by adjusting pH and adding organic matter and we supplement the rain with a garden hose, but we have to work within the constraints of climate and soil type when choosing our plants to build our community. And here we can have the freedom to be creative in color, shape, texture . . .

The plant community which will be the most resilient and most attractive to the animals - pollinators, pest predators, etc. - will include native plants with a variety of flower shapes and sizes. Choose some flowers in the mint family (examples, bee balm & mountain mint) and the daisy family (example, Echinacea & Coreopsis). Include others, too, like butterfly weed and greater lobelia. Be sure that blooms span the season from early spring to late fall. Golden Alexanders and Green-and-Gold start the gardening season, with New England Asters and Goldenrods bringing it to a close.

Don't neglect shrubs! Some interesting flowers are found at the end of woody stems. The viburnums are a large group of flowering shrubs with berries that help the birds fuel up for migration and provide food for the ones that stay all winter. Others include elderberry, service berry and chokecherry.

Perhaps you aren't sure how some of these native plants will fit into the landscape of your own yard and neighborhood. It's never a bad idea to see how these plants actually look in a garden setting and imagine how they can fit your situation. One place to observe a variety of native plants is in Gettysburg at the Agricultural and Natural Resources Building on Harrisburg Road. The foundation plantings around the building are natives chosen to give the public a variety of native plants to think about, but there are so many good plants we couldn't possibly fit them all! Come and visit as part of the Garden Chat tour this summer, or at your convenience.

. . . And if you come by when the dedicated crew of volunteers is working, by all means stop and say hello.

Read other articles on ecological gardening & native plants