As you probably guessed, the term topsoil refers to the top layer of earth's surface. Now that is an ingenious way of naming it right? Well, being at the top layer is not the only defining characteristic of topsoil. More importantly, it is the layer which holds the most nutrients essential to the development and growth of plants and trees but more particularly farm yields.
Needless to say, topsoil is very important to farmers - this first few inches of soil surface is the life and breathe of crops and vegetables. But do not make the mistake of thinking that all bare earth surfaces can be correctly referred to as topsoil. In essence, topsoil must be filled with nutrition essential to plant growth. Of course, not all soil surfaces will pass this characteristic.
This is especially true in very humid and hot places. For instance, many parts of Africa, particularly the savannahs, do not have a very fertile soil surface. There are also places that used to have a fertile soil but lost it.
Among the reasons why topsoil might be lost is erosion. Heavy flood can strip the soil of its nutrition-rich surface. Even wind can slowly take inches away from topsoil especially if the surface is dry enough causing the grains of soil to have a weaker hold on the ground.
Because of the absence of topsoil in some places, topsoil has been commercialized by the farming industry. Nowadays, topsoil can be bought. Commercial topsoil consists of soil mixtures and sometimes some chemical additives to make it fertile and nutrition-rich. By standard, commercial topsoil is applied at two inches layer.
But to avoid excessive expense, especially that topsoil prices can be quite costly, farmers have devised ways on how to preserve topsoil. If they did decide to purchase commercial topsoil, they would still want to preserve it because it can still be lost through erosion.
One effective way of preserving topsoil is keeping the soil planted. Leaving the soil with nothing planted on it is detrimental to topsoil. Why? It is because the roots of plants can help hold topsoil to the ground. Without these plants, topsoil would be vulnerable to erosion.
Keeping the soil moist is also a good strategy. Not only will this provide the farm yields with water supply, but keeping the topsoil moist will make it less prone to wind related erosion. However, you must be careful about applying to much water. If you do, you could potentially water down the nutrition content of topsoil and thus, it will lose its value.
Crop rotation is another classic and yet effective way of preserving topsoil. Not only does it keep topsoil from erosion, but it also protects that nutritive value of topsoil. This is because planting different crops in strategic order will prevent the topsoil from losing all of its nutritive content at once.
However, there are a still a lot of uncontrollable factors that can pose danger to the integrity of topsoil. In which case, you can always purchase commercial topsoil to replace the lost one.
You can learn more about gardening and also get information on the best topsoil for your plants on the web today.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joanna_Stevens
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