Improve Your Garden Soil

If you are totally unfamiliar with the fertility levels of your soil, fall is a good time for testing. Testing labs are less rushed, and there will be plenty of time to purchase needed materials and make additions before planting season. For proper testing, about a pint of soil is needed. The sample should be a composite of soil taken from several spots in the garden. A test gives a reading of the soil acidity, and the amounts of some important elements present. Recommendations for addition of lime to adjust acidity or fertilizers necessary to bring the soil to a more suitable condition are made as needed.

Garden soil tests are not necessary every year, and seldom need repeating more than every five years. However, even without a soil test, there are a number of practices that may be carried out in the fall to help get the soil into better condition. The average soil test gives little information on improving the physical property of a soil. However, you can easily evaluate your own soil. Soil is highly complex material, that has resulted from centuries of activity by wind, water, glaciers, microorganisms, and other natural-influences on native rock. Basically, soils are sandy, clay, or loam. Their classification depends on the amount of sand or clay they contain. Those with 35 or more percent sand are considered sandy, those with 30 or more percent clay are considered clay, and loam soils are composed of fairly equal parts of sand, silt, and clay.

Many more classifications and subdivisions of these groups are made in relation to other factors. Sandy soils are loose, well-drained and contain large air spaces. Their natural fertility is often low. Clay soils are made up of extremely fine particles which make them "heavy" with little air space and poor internal drainage. Their natural fertility may be good. Loam, a mixture of the two with adequate organic matter and Silt, make it the best soil for gardening.

Whatever soil type you begin with, its physical properties can be altered in addition to nutritional changes and acidity changes to make it a better gardening soil. A very sandy soil can be improved in its ability to hold water and nutrients by having about an inch of clay soil added to its surface and worked in. A very tight clay soil can be improved by working one to two inches of coarse sand into the existing soil if there is not a hard pan beneath that prevents water movement downward.

Not all gardeners have access to the large amounts of clay or sandy soil to accomplish such soil alteration. Where these are not available, liberal additions of organic matter can greatly improve the properties of any basic, soil. This should be done along with the additions of limestone and fertilizer as suggested from a soil test. Compost, manure, and peat moss are a few of the organic materials that may be dug under or plowed down in the fall.

In spring only well decomposed manure may be used, but in fall, fresher manure and compost may be plowed under without damaging young seedlings because decomposition will continue to occur until the soil freezes. In mild winters, it may even occur slowly throughout the winter. Methods for improving soils in flower gardens are basically the same as those for the vegetable garden.

Improving Your Garden Soil, by Barbara Perry Lawton.