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!