Your Soil – The Secret of Garden Health. 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 resolve if the soil has an acceptable composition.
Take some soil and squeeze 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
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If you’re still unsure concerning your soil content, you can determine 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 sit undisturbed until you can see 3 separate layers.
The primary layer is clay, the next is silt, and on the bottom is sand. You should be able to look for each component within the soil, and determine what best action to take.
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. Wetting your peat will help your new ingredient to allow the mixture to be infiltrated better. If you can’t seem to manage to attain a acceptable mix, just take a short trip to your local gardening center. You should be able to find a product to solve your problem.
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The water content of the soil is another important thing to consider when preparing for your growing area. If your growing area is at the bottom of an incline, it is most likely to become way too absorbent and over-water your 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.
Enriching your soil with nutrients is also a cornerstone of the process, in that 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 all together and allow it sit for a time. Once you have done this, your soil will be completely ready for whatever seeds you want to plant.
Attention to the soil is till an issue even after your seeds have been planted. At first, your seeds are very nutrient hungry around them to sprout into a real plant. If they run out of food, how are they supposed to grow?
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About a week after planting, you should add the same amount of fertilizer that you added before. After this you should maintain your fertilization, but not as frequently. If you add a tiny bit every couple of weeks, that should be plenty to keep your growing area 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 sowing area, add fertilizer before and after planting, then keep your fertilizer on a strict schedule.
Follow these simple steps, and you’ll have a plethora of healthy plants in no time. And if you still confused about any particular details, just go to your local garden center and enquire there. Most of the employees will be more than happy to give you advice.
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