I understand what water and air are composed of and I more or less understand how fire works. But what is soil? If you put your hands in your garden, you will take out very heterogenous stuff, you will get some twigs and bugs which of course are organic matter, but what’s the general brown stuff? Is it organic? Were does it come from and how is it produced? Also collateral question, if earth is organic matter, when the first living organisms came out of the ocean, which were plants, how did they find nutrients?
In: Planetary Science
Dead things and poop, mostly.
The exact mix will depend on your location, but a lot of it will be plant matter. Those twigs you found used to have leaves on them. The leaves were eaten by bugs or fungus, and the bugs and fungus pooped out soil. Worm poop (“casings”) is especially good for growing things. And then the bugs, worms and fungus die and other things eat those. Circle of life.
There will likely be some sand or clay mixed in. But all of the nutrients that make plants grow are generally dead things and poop.
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