I've been doing small backyard-scale experiments with soil-building the last few years and I've come around to the viewpoint that soil should be thought of as a kind of distributed organism. (Someone once called this the "Gaia hypothesis writ small".) The soil organism is made up of myriad species of fungi, bacteria, insects, etc., but it seems to work as a whole (cf. Michael Levin's work, like "What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System - NeurIPS 2018" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg )
In any event, what I've found is that the health of the crops is most easily influenced by looking after the health of the soil (duh?) and that, if you get the soil right, the plants seem like they can't help but grow vigorously.
In any event, what I've found is that the health of the crops is most easily influenced by looking after the health of the soil (duh?) and that, if you get the soil right, the plants seem like they can't help but grow vigorously.