Lesson 1: Preparing The Soil
This lesson covers all aspects of building great garden soil, from understanding pH, to learning about different soil types, to amending, composting and side dressing. This is the true key to having a great garden.
Taking the time to analyze and understand your soil composition will give you valuable tools for building an ideal garden. If you are a new home owner, facing a bare lot, this becomes especially crucial. Think of the lot as an empty palette, just waiting to be filled with bright color and texture. The background of this palette is your soil.
Before doing anything else, remove all debris and rake smooth. Any weeding should be done before any soil adjusting gets started. Using a level, look for low spots in the garden. These need to be filled in to avoid swampy, boggy areas. Use only sterile topsoil for this purpose. You don’t want to introduce soil borne disease or pests into the new garden. Once the leveling is done, and necessary drainage created, you can then begin to work your soil.
A rototiller is a gardener's best friend. Even a small yard will benefit from the aerating and loosening these machines provide. The Troy Built or Mantis tillers are compact, easy to use and can help avoid back strain by doing the heavy work for you.
Use the tiller in stages. The first week, make several passes through the soil to begin the loosening process. You will feel the soil resistance begin to lessen as you go through the garden over and over again.
The following week, add your chosen amendments and till in again, making several passes.
The third week, remove any large clods, stones and debris. Run the tiller through again. Stoop down and feel the soil. If it has reached a good, earthy texture, you are ready to begin planting. If it is still not right, go through the soil with the tiller again a few times. Rake the area smooth, water lightly to dampen, and you are ready to go.
Different Soil Textures
Ideally, your soil should be slightly crumbly, hold together lightly when gently squeezed and release easily. This is the good earth we all dream of and work so hard to achieve. Simply tossing bags of premixed soils on top of the underlying soil isn’t the solution.
What type of soil is in your own garden? Is it adobe? Too sandy? How can you tell? Pick a handful of soil up in your hand and squeeze it lightly together. Feel the texture as you're doing this. Is it heavy and cold? Does it feel gritty or sandy? Now open your hand and release the soil. Does it fall apart completely? Does it remain in a hard cold clump? Answering these questions will tell you what type of soil you are dealing with.
Heavy clay soil is the bane of a gardener’s existence. With its tough, seemingly impenetrable nature, and its tendency to compact and choke off roots, it can cause real problems in the garden. There are several degrees of clay, from the adobe-like concrete that is next to impossible to work with, to a lighter clay, which benefits from amending. If you have a true concrete type clay that softens very little, even with watering, raised beds are the perfect solution.
Lighter clay soils benefit from products like GreenSand or gypsum that work to break up the soil. Using a rototiller and working this type of soil over and over again, and adding amendments like peat, compost and garden sand will help bring it close to ideal. You can rent tillers from local equipment centers.
Here is a link to Planet Natural. They have Greensand and other great amendments.
Acid or Alkaline?
We expect a lot out of our gardens, including beautiful, prolific blooms and bountiful harvests. Yet, how many of us really stop to consider our garden soil? Do you know anything about your own garden dirt? Is it acid or alkaline? Peaty, sandy or clay? Why are these questions important? Because every living thing you place in your garden depends on the health of your soil.
How do you get this type of information? You can buy home soil testing kits. These are very reasonably priced, starting at under $20.00. Once you have one in your hot little hands, you need to take random samples from different areas of your property. Here is a quick overview of how you go about this:
Soil samples - Remove any loose organic matter in the top one-inch of the soil, With a spade or hand trowel, take samples 6-7 inches deep. Do this in six locations for every 1000 to 2000 sq. ft. of area. Mix these samples in a bucket and use about 1-2 cups for testing.
These kits generally consist of a test tube, some testing solution and a color chart. You put a sample of your soil in the tube, add a few drops of test solution, shake it up and leave it for an hour or so to settle. The solution in the tube changes color according to the pH of your soil. Compare the color of the sample with the color chart that came with the kit. Matching colors will tell you the pH range of your sample. The better kits will also include advisory booklets about how to interpret your results.
Now that you have a fairly good idea of what the pH is in your garden, you can begin to amend the soil to suit your particular planting needs. If your soil’s acidity is too high, adding dolomite or lime will bring it back into a more alkaline state.
To acidify alkaline soil will require adding garden sulfur to sour the soil. Plants that thrive in an acidic environment: gardenias, azaleas, rhododendrons, pines, raspberries and many tropicals, also benefit by feedings with an acidifier like Miracid, at least once a month.
Understanding your soil pH will help you become a much more confident and successful gardener.
Assignment: Learn about your own gardens soil and pH. Figure out what it will take to make it work for your plants. This is a great price for a soil kit plus a PDF tutorial to help you:
http://www.biconet.com/testing/nowait.ht...
Sandy Soils
Sand is great for beaches and deserts, but in our gardens it can spell real trouble to plants. Soil that is too loose drains so fast that water never reaches the roots. As a result, the plants die off very quickly. So, unless you are a big fan of desert plantings, some adjusting needs to be done to correct this problem.
One way to tell if your soil is too sandy is by feel. It will have a gritty texture that is very different from the loamy, earthy feel of ordinary garden soil. It will not hold together after compacting, but immediately fall apart.
In order to provide a firm anchor for plants and create a moisture retentive environment, certain elements will need to be added to firm up the earth. This recipe will give you a firm healthy soil, that will continue to improve over the next 2-3 years:
For every 100 sq. feet of garden add:
20 cubic feet of organic compost
2 lbs. of bat or seabird guano
2 lbs of rock or Super Phosphate
10 lbs of gypsum or lime
2 lbs of Green Sand
2lbs of kelp meal
This should be spread over the garden or planting areas and tilled in 6"-8". Once this is done, the garden is ready to plant. In about two to three months, add 3 lbs. of alfalfa meal to the garden, digging it in to the first 6” of topsoil. You should begin to notice earthworms tunneling through the dirt. If not, buy them and release them to work their magic. You should see an improvement in your soil within the first year. By the third year, you will have the garden soil you want. The soil will be rich in texture, dark in color and will hold moisture very well.
