Preparing Healthy Soil
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
separat 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.
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