Skip to main content

Building a Secret Garden using Soil Secrets and Trees That Please


Soil Secrets LLC was created from our nursery business Trees That Please back in the 1990's.  It's purpose was to continue the R & D of products that could be effective in restoring the natural balance of soil concerning what defines a healthy soil.  The other objective was to use these same products for growing our hundreds of thousands of trees at Trees That Please, growing trees with the natural processes of Nature flourishing on the roots of our product.  While fertilizers grow drug addicts addicted to the constant feed of the fertilizer, our Soil Secrets process will grow plants that are ready for the rigors of Nature.   For a long time nursery people used balanced N-P-K fertilizers with names that implied they would improve the texture of soil, or they sold bulk amounts of compost, mushroom compost, peat moss and products called Soil Builder, in the attempt to change the Soil Organic Matter and bulk density characteristics of a soil, somehow mimicking the rich dark top soil of nature.   However that has proven to not work as the chemistry of soil will consume the organic matter added faster than you can add it, resulting in a failed attempt to accumulate carbon to the point where you can say you are sustainable and contributing to "Soil Carbon Sequestration."    The other problem is that  by adding bulk volumes of organic matter from compost like products without knowledge of what the chemical characteristics are of the organic matter (salts, salinity, pH, etc.) can easily cause an accumulation of stuff in the soil that can damage the soils structure or ability to grow a healthy crop or landscape.   

I grow trees at my Trees That Please Nursery in Los Lunas because I love trees, however my Life's work has been soil and what's needed to make it healthy, because without healthy soil we cannot grow a healthy tree, lawn, crop or ecosystem.   In 1985 we purchased vacant land in Valencia County about 20 miles south of downtown Albuquerque, hoping to build a home we could raise our family in.   My vision was a large yard, a secret garden trees, hiding places and a big lawn that my kids to roll in, climb the trees and find adventure.  I soon discovered a major problem with the site in that the soil had been ruined by the decades of farming practices that had made the clay hard,  full of sodium and salts and extremely alkaline.  The surface would turn white during the winter revealing the White Death that would make it hard to succeed.   A professor of soil science from New Mexico State University told me it was impossible to fix the site and that I should put a for sale sign on it and move away.   
The following images are of the arboretum site as it is today which also has our Trees That Please production nursery on the grounds.     As you can see the professor was wrong and the site is now a healthy sustainable ecosystem of carbon rich soils, with a collection of trees from all over the world.  We succeeded because  Soil Secrets has developed the molecular biology and products that can restore Nature's natural balance of what defines a healthy soil and our Arboretum and our nursery production system at Trees That Please proves this point.  

Michael Melendrez
Director, Trees That Please Nursery
Director, Soil Secrets LLC








Popular posts from this blog

Fertilizers formulated for alkaline soils of the Southwest

Recently I was in an Albuquerque retail nursery where a fertilizer was being sold that stated it was formulated for alkaline soils of the Southwest.  It contained high levels of iron and sulfur, plus the N, P and K major nutrients.  Do any of the readers care to comment on this type of product?    Pros, Cons, etc.  I have my take on it, but I'll entertain what you want to say about it.  Michael Martin Meléndrez

Growing Pecan Trees in Western Alkaline Soil

It's common to see nutrient and water inhibition compromise the production of pecans in the arid western states, particularly where the soils are high pH, which can tie up nutrients such as zinc, iron, phosphorus and more. Keeping soils moist is also a problem because the regions were we grow pecan are not wet bottomland soils where pecan is native, but are high and dry desert soils where irrigation is essential. If the irrigation water is high in dissolved solids, the problem is made worse. There are many good things Soil Secrets can offer pecan growers that can overcome these obstacles, by improving the moisture management of the soil, improving nutrient solutioning and availability of both the native minerals as well as the purchased minerals, and improving the porosity of the soil so that water and oxygen can penetrate meters deep without the need to subsoil with machinery. How's this done? By using the power of Nature's own bio-chemical called the Carbon Matrix. Starti

How does nitrogen work in the soil and where does it come from when we don't have a bag of fertilizer to supplement it?

I've spoken many times on this subject at conferences and it was the main theme of my talk when I represented North America at the World's 1st Humus Experts Meeting in Vienna Austria back in 2013.   Most of the Nitrogen used by the vast tropical rain forests, or the fastest growing biomass place on Earth, the Coastal Redwood Forests of California, comes from the production of protein by the Free-Living Nitrogen Fixing bacteria in soil and the massive biomass structure of the mycorrhizal fungi.    The proteins as it breaks down in the soil into amino acids are the building blocks of life and the explanation of the Soil Food Web.  However, in order for those amino acids to enter a plant and be part of the nitrogen budget of the plant they must have the assistance of the mycorrhizal fungi.  It's much more efficient for a plant to uptake amino acids whose molecules include nitrogen needed to build tissues than to uptake just nitrogen minus the amino acid.   The problem with dep