Read more: How to Start a Vegetable Garden at Home
Tips for Improving Garden Soil
The good garden soil condition should be adequate for sustaining plant needs. The best garden soil should have a good balance of macro and micro-nutrients, have a balance of carbon to offset the nitrogen and should drain freely.
Compact or hard garden soils are actually great for starting a lawn but keep in mind to add a little sandy topsoil if you start planting from seed. However, plants like vegetables and fruits need loose and nutrient rich soil with plenty of compost or organic amendments added every year.
So here are some tips for improving garden soil you can follow whether your garden soil is compacted, heavy clay, nutrient deficient or any other issue.
Tips for Improving Garden Soil: Dig Up and Loosen the Poor and Compacted Soil
Hard and compact soil may be the result of construction. In order to improve garden soil, you need to know the depth of compaction. So if you have very deep and hard areas, may be you need to rent special equipment to dig it up and loosen the soil.
How deep the soil should be loosen is depending on plant types to be planted. For most plants, you need to dig up the soil until a depth of at least 12 inches and up to 2 feet for trees and larger plants. In most cases, garden soil preparation by manually shoveling is enough. In order to keep the garden soil loose and workable, don’t forget to add several inches of compost or fine bark once the soil is loose.
Tips for Improving Garden Soil: Add Organic Amendment to Nutrient Deficient Soil
Organic material such as compost, leaf litter, seedless weeds, clean straw or hay, crop residue, peat moss, sphagnum moss, grass clipping, pine needles, wood shavings, dust and aged manures, is the best soil amendment to improve garden soil condition. This soil amendment breaks down naturally to release nutrients for plant uptake.
Garden soil preparation with these soil amendment items works best if they are dug into the soil to a depth between 6 until 12 inches. You can even use your kitchen scraps into compost pile to work into soil, but remember to always avoid meat, fat and bones. Cover crops provide green manure to work into soil in spring to increase soil percolation, fix the nitrogen and prevent weeds.
Read more: Tips on Starting a Compost Pile at Home
Tips for Improving Garden Soil: Treat the pH Problem
Most of plants can grow and thrive in neutral garden soil. You need to test the pH of your soil garden to know whether you soil is acid or more alkaline. You may get the pH soil test kits from most garden centers. Garden soil preparation for this pH problem is adding sulfur or lime into soil based on the test result. Improving garden soil with sulfur can be done to increase the acidity of your soil while improving garden soil with lime to get the soil is more alkaline. Improving garden soil with wood ash and oyster shells can be the option since they naturally make acidic soil more neutral.
Knowing your garden soil condition is important before you choose one of above 3 tips for improving garden soil and before you do some garden soil preparation.