Garden with Insight v1.0 Help: fresh

We use the word fresh to describe the nitrogen or phosphorus found in dead plant matter that has just begun to decompose (what we call flat residue) and N or P bound up in the microbes that are feeding on the dead plant matter. The soil microbes take up the N and P compounds in the dead plant matter, then die, releasing inorganic, labile N and P into the soil solution (this is called mineralization).

When a soil patch is created, fresh organic N and P are given amounts based on a constant proportion of the total amount of flat residue (in each soil layer and in the mulch layer), and the amounts change over time with the addition of new plant material and mineralization.

How it works:
nutrient cycling