Healthy soil is the hidden ingredient

I'm a gardening and landscaping enjoyer, but I am constantly confused about the bordering magical thinking surrounding dirt, among other aspects of growing things.

If you look at hydroponics/aeroponics, plants basically need water, light, and fertilizer (N (nitrogen) P (phosphorous) K (potassium), and a few trace minerals). It can be the most synthetic process you've ever seen, and the plants will grow amazingly well.

The other elements regarding soil health, etc, would be much better framed in another way, rather than as directly necessary for plant health. The benefits of maintaining a nice living soil is that it makes the environment self-sustaining. You could just dump synthetic fertilizer on the plant, with some soil additives to help retain the right amount of drainage/retention, and it would do completely fine. But without constant optimal inputs, the plants would die.

If you cultivate a nice soil, such that the plants own/surrounding detritus can be broken down effectively, such that the nutrients in the natural processes can be broken down and made available to the plant, and the otherwise nonoptimal soil texture characteristics could be brought to some positive characteristics by those same processes, then you can theoretically arrive at a point that requires very few additional inputs.

Your comment makes me think of those people who say "plants need light and water". It's expanded, sure: "plants need light, water and NPK" ... but no, that's also extremely naive. The point is, until very recently, western science knew almost nothing about botanical systems. We are only reaching the level of many traditional societies now. (If you are skeptical, check any horticultural reference for the difference in tree height observed in nature vs. "in cultivation"... often 50% height!) The reality is actually obvious: plants actually need an entire ecosystem.

Frankly, western botany used to sustain the outdated view that planting a tree in a field with full sun was "the best way" because it was "not competing".

It now turns out plants grow better with diverse friends and an ecosystem.

Aspects of this include but are not limited to insect life, fungal networks, resource exchange, and subsoil life such as earthworms as well as soil protection, wind protection, sun protection (most many recent seedlings cannot withstand full sun and deeply appreciate increased humidity).

Just adding NPK doesn't bring in insects, doesn't bring in soil protection, doesn't bring in fungi. In fact, it may very well poison these elements within an emergent ecosystem.

> difference in tree height observed in nature vs. "in cultivation"... often 50% height!

Trees in nature are usually in forests, where they grow tall in competition for light. Terra in cultivation tend to be grown surrounded by grass, growing wider and shorter to collect sunshine.

Exactly that sort of false reductionism is missing the point.

While reduced sunlight can have a role in early stage height differences, this occurs both in cultivation and in nature and therefore is not a sole causative factor.

The sort of factors being indicated that were previously ignored by western horticulture are interaction based. Cultivated trees often face simplified fungal communities, limiting nutrient diversity compared to natural forests’ complex networks. Furthermore, natural forests exhibit interconnected fungal systems that facilitate nutrient redistribution between trees and improved community pathogen resistance.

The average person is unaware or thinks this is fantasy. They are ignorant. Don't be ignorant.

It’s not ignorant to point out the main reason that trees in cultivation are shorter, which is that there is no need for them to grow tall. They’re also a lot greater in trunk diameter, fwiw.