Improving and Preparing Vegetable Garden Soil
- ” I know Dulcie, who wants to see a picture of DIRT!!”
It takes time and effort to properly prepare you soil. I don’t personally do more than blood and bone in my sandy soil. If you want to go to the effort to get the maximum out of your vegetable garden here are a few tips.
The problems if you have bad soil
“�Compaction: stops root growth working
“�Wet soil: damages/compacts soil
“�For ever digging: breaks down organic matter walking on the soil: compacts and forces more digging
“�No life in the soil: a sad dead soil poor drainage:
“�Wet, poor rooting, rotting loss of soil quality/ structure:
“�Collapse, compaction wrong particle size: too fine may cap, too coarse = no germination loose soil:
“�Dries out, poor rooting, plants fall over.
How do you know you’ve got it wrong?
“�seeds and seedlings don’t take
“�poor crops
“�small harvest
“�soil is wet and solid
“�forked/ horizontal roots
“�no worms
How to fix it?
Remove compaction and avoid walking on the soil dig/ cultivate only when it is dry/ moist (never if wet) regularly add organic material especially compost to build the number of garden worms that help your vegetable garden soil preparation dig/ cultivate only what/ when you need to keep the good fine soil on the top and the sub-soil at the bottom always firm the soil with the back of a rake or fork Success is shown by retaining more organic matter thus a darker more crumbly, water retentive, workable and productive soil.
Happy gardening!
Aw cheers! We’ll take “top quality content” when the content involves golden syrup dumplings any day Hope you give them…