As many of you know, I have a new garden which has very poor soil. The soil is mostly sandy and I want to take steps to make sure that the soil is fertile in spring. I had kept compost piles and I am planning to buy compost from stores too. How do I apply these in the garden? Is there anything else I also need to do to make sure that the soil is in better shape next spring? Any and all suggestions are very appreciated! Thanks Tina.
This is a long process, Tina. Just keep adding to the garden as you have materials available to you. Compost, manure, grass clippings, worm castings ( which having a worm farm is very easy to do)coffee grounds tea bags, anything you can get your hands on. Fall is a great time to snagbags of leaves from the curbs and dump themon your garden or let them set in the bags and decompose to use later.
soil has 3 components sand, humus/bio-matter/ and clay if I remember correctly. Depending on what you want to plant in your garden will depend on what you want in the soil. Some plants like a sandy soil, some like loam, and some even like a clay soil. always consider the plant you want in that location before amending or even making the soil. I have to add sulphur to my blueberry beds spring and fall because it has a naturally balanced pH in that area.
Perhaps this article may be helpful to you: http://www.volkstuindersvereniginghoorn ... age18.html The advice given above is all helpful, but I think that one of the most important comments was that how you change to your soil depends upon what you want to do with that soil. Having said that, if your soil is primarily sandy that means to me that it will drain too easily. Soil needs to be able to hold some degree of moisture unless you are planning on having a "coastal" or "desert" plot. In order for this to happen, you will need some "structure" in your soil...components that will attract and hold water. The members above have alluded to this. Carolyn pointed out that it is a long process and you just have to add what you have when you have it, work it in and keep on doing this until you attain the texture and pH to which you aspire. The suggestions above combined with some kind of understanding of the nature of soil will help you get to where you want to be with your new soil. Good luck, meid.
I have had to deal with poor soil for about 12 years now, I have had to learn some tricks. My last farm was burned out from over farming and I was trying my dangdest to get a good garden going by the house and just could not get it to grow much of anything. I wanted a pretty good sized garden so hauling in enough material to remediate the soil was not realistic. One trick I learned, was I took my post hole digger and dug six diameter holes down 36 inches deep and I put remediated soil in the holes and then planted in them. This way a truck load of good material covered the entire garden rather than needing 15 truck loads. This worked well for several years and eventually it added up enough that I could just till and plant as I normally would. Another thing that can be done, it is done commonly by farmers to save on fertilizer costs, is to plant oats into your garden in the fall and let them sprout to about 6 inches tall in the spring and then till them under. This helps to add nitrogen fixing bacteria to your soil and greatly increases the available nitrogen. Old rotting hay is a good admixture as well, it is something I always have a lot of, I generally create about 3 to 4 tons of it a year. I put in a pile and let it set for 1 1/2 years and then I start breaking apart a bit each day and let the chickens go after all the grubs in it. They break the hay into little bitty pieces in their scratching, when they have worked through the pile I add that to my gardens, it helps to keep the soil fluffier and hold water a bit better. You could try the hole idea, get good top soil and mix it with mulch and whatnot and fill holes for each plant in your garden area, you would probably not need to go so deep as I did. If you are having water retention problems, cover the soil with old hay, this will help hold in moisture and will kill off most any weeds that try and grow.
