Garden with Insight v1.0 Help: weathering

To understand what weathering is, think about how young mountains are sharp and old mountains are rounded. The same processes that grind down mountains (rain, snow, freezing and thawing, wind) weather the rocks in the soil, breaking them down into smaller and smaller particles. This weathering of soil rocks releases nutrients into the soil solution where they can be taken up by plants, adsorbed to clay and organic matter, or leached out of the soil.

Soils in areas that get a lot of precipitation are highly weathered, so their rocks are broken down quickly and they may be low in some minerals plants need. Soils in arid regions, on the other hand, are weathered very little so they are rich in minerals, but water is usually a problem.