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Plants supply us with food, clothing, medicines, fuels, and other necessities of life.  For their growth, plants need essential minerals from the soil. These nutrients can be provided by fertilizers, but over-fertilization can damage the environment. Is there another way? Many of the nutrients plants need to grow already exist in soil, but they are locked up within soil minerals and inaccessible to plants. However, there is a world of microbes within the soil that are capable of  ‘mining’ critical nutrients from soil minerals to provide nutrients for themselves and can also transfer these nutrients to plants. Studying the interactions between soil minerals, microbes and plant roots is difficult because soil is complex, messy, and opaque. But now it is possible, using X-rays, to observe the processes by which soil microbes extract, absorb, and transfer nutrients. In this lecture, I will describe our studies of fungal networks extracting nutrients from soil and bacteria that assist plant growth, preventing the build-up of harmful chemicals. This research is providing fresh insights into nourishing the growth of plants.