If you’re getting ready to go on a new garden venture, you need
to prepare your soil to ideally house your plants. The best
thing you can do in the soil preparation process is to reach the
perfect mixture of sand, silt, and clay. Preferably there would
be 40 percent sand, 40 percent silt, and 20 percent clay. There
are several tests used by experienced gardeners to tell whether
the soil has a good composition. First you can compress it in
your hand. If it doesn’t hold its shape and crumbles without any
outside force, your sand ratio is probably a little high. If you
poke the compressed ball with your finger and it doesn’t fall
apart easily, your soil contains too much clay.
If you’re still not sure about the content of your soil, you can
separate each ingredient by using this simple method. Put a cup
or two of dirt into a jar of water. Shake the water up until the
soil is suspended, then let it set until you see it separate
into 3 separate layers. The top layer is clay, the next is silt,
and on the bottom is sand. You should be able to judge the
presence of each component within your dirt, and act
accordingly.
After you’ve analyzed the content of your soil, if you decide
that it is low on a certain ingredient then you should
definitely do something to fix it. If dealing with too much silt
or sand, it’s best to add some peat moss or compost. If you’ve
got too much clay, add a mixture of peat moss and sand. The peat
moss, when moistens, helps for the new ingredient to infiltrate
the mixture better. If you can’t seem to manage to attain a
proper mixture, just head down to your local gardening store.
You should be able to find some kind of product to aid you.
The water content of the soil is another important thing to
consider when preparing for your garden. If your garden is at
the bottom of an incline, it is most likely going to absorb too
much water and drown out the plants.
If this is the case, you should probably elevate your garden a
few inches (4 or 5) over the rest of the ground. This will allow
for more drainage and less saturation.
Adding nutrients to your soil is also a vital part of the
process, as most urban soils have little to no nutrients already
in them naturally. One to two weeks prior to planting, you
should add a good amount of fertilizer to
your garden. Mix it in really well and let it sit for a while.
Once you have done this, your soil will be completely ready for
whatever seeds you may plant in it.
Once your seeds are planted, you still want to pay attention to
the soil. The first few weeks, the seeds are desperately using
up all the nutrients around them to sprout into a real plant. If
they run out of food, how are
they supposed to grow? About a week after planting, you should
add the same amount of fertilizer that you added before. After
this you should continue to use fertilizer, but not as often. If
you add a tiny bit every couple of weeks, that should be plenty
to keep your garden thriving.
Basically, the entire process of soil care can be compressed
into just several steps… ensure the makeup of the soil is
satisfactory, make sure you have proper drainage in your garden,
add fertilizer before and after planting, then add fertilizer
regularly after that. Follow these simple steps, and you’ll have
a plethora of healthy plants in no time. And if you need any
more details on an individual step, just go to your local
nursery and enquire there. Most of the employees will be more
than happy to give you advice.
