3. Encouraging biodiversity | 15 mins

Varying your planting, whether vegetables, fruit or flowers, in a crop rotation, will help prevent the build-up of soil diseases and also create a variety of food sources and shelter for birds and insects. Encouraging this wildlife into your garden will help control many pests. Birds and insects will eat aphids for example; frogs and ground beetles will eat the slugs.

Supporting soil life by adding well-rotted organic matter, such as homemade compost, will also feed the tiny soil microbes and other life forms, such as worms. These soil creatures help create a better soil structure, as well as digesting waste matter and secreting valuable nutrients.

The soil food web as illustrated below demonstrates this interdependency of wildlife, showing how each species is important in maintaining a balanced system. Click on the image to make it bigger.

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