It’s a general rule. Plants don’t eat. They survive entirely off of photosynthesis.

Except that’s not actually true. Plants also, as any gardener knows, draw nutrients from the soil. Their root systems are even more complicated than most gardeners know. Rather than passively absorbing, plants work with fungi and bacteria, make complex chemical signals, and work with the soil…both drawing from it and creating it.

As any gardeners know, plants have soil preferences.

And plants can’t grow without soil nutrients.

Until they can.