Know Your Garden Soil

It’s Not Dirt… Learn Your garden soil!

It is said that plants are just as good as the garden soil they are growing in. If that be true, soil in the garden or landscape should be our first consideration, when starting to build a garden.

Analyze your soil first with a soil test. Is it clay, loam, sand or caliche (hardened deposit of calcium carbonate)?

Observe Your Garden Soils Color

Soils that are light in color are, as a rule – low in nutrients, and will need to have plant food added. Darker soils are richer, but they are usually heavy in texture.

Consider The Soils Physical Condition

Are the soil particles fine or coarse? Will a small bit, when squeezed into a ball, remain tight when shaken, or does it disintegrate quickly. A good test for humus is the squeezed ball. If there is plenty of humus, the ball falls apart with the slightest touch. Plants require that much humus. Observe the difference in the root system of a plant growing in plenty of humus and one growing in tight clay.

Clay soils will remain in a tight ball until pressed hard. Pure sand will not make a ball unless very wet.

In considering soil, plant roots should be studied also. Plants have a way of adjusting themselves to a lot of conditions, if some effort is made to please them.

Fibrous-rooted plants like our evergreens, need a loose humusy soil. The tender fibre roots cannot push through a tight soil. Lilacs, forsythias and some others can live in clay soils, because they have a lateral root system, and the wiry roots can go where they please.

The tap root family will grow according to the soil they are in. Given good soil, they respond by growing rapidly. Given poor soil, they grow stunted and gnarled. The pecan, mesquite and snapdragon are examples of the tap root family. Study your plant encyclopedia, or ask your nurseryman about the type roots a plant has. Then, provide the right soil.

Soil Full Or Micro-Organisms

Soil is composed of teeming masses of micro-organisms. These microscopic bits of life need organic matter to survive. In devouring the organic matter, they give off chemical compounds that are essential to vegetation needs.

A perfect soil is the right balance of organic, animal and mineral matter. In the process of building the top fertile eight to 12 inches of soil, plants died and decomposed on the surface, micro-organisms slowly devoured the organic material of the plants, making manure and dying themselves, thus furnishing the animal matter. Slow decay of rocks by winds, erosion and water furnished the mineral matter.

There is constant movement in the soil. Rains carry solutions down through the porous spaces. During drought the movement is reversed, and the moisture rises, bringing minerals up from the subsoil. That is why, in arid and setni-arid areas, we have the mineral deposits on the surface, such as lime and salt.

It is also the reason that we have caliche soils. More moisture rises from the ground than enters it. If a balance of moisture going down and coming up can be maintained, caliche soils can be made productive by the addition of sand and humus.

It is within the power of man to increase or decrease the productive power of a soil. Intelligent study and observation will show how to maintain the original fertility of our heritage. It is only common sense to know that everything taken out of the soil must be put back to maintain fertility and keep plants growing.

Man by nature is wasteful. He wants fields and home grounds to look neat, so he rakes the leaves and gets rid of them. He throws all the household trash in the trash cans to be hauled away, and mows the lawn and piles the clippings on the vacant lot to rot. All of these things can be conserved in a compost pile, to later be added to the soil when decomposed.

Part 2 on Garden Soil Mix… Tips on Building Garden Soil

Related Articles Of Interest:

• Organic Soil and Analysis
• Soil Testing – What’s Your Soil Flavor?
• Tips on Building Garden Soil
• Soil pH Makes the Difference