How to Improve Your Soil

There are various cultivation techniques that you can employ to improve your particular soil; these are discussed in the previous posts. All soil types will benefit from the addition of bulky organic matter in the form of compost or manure or some other soil conditioner.

This is the key to soil fertility, and a healthy, fertile soil is the basis of the organic approach to gardening. In fact it is the basis of good gardening, whether you are committed to organic principles or not. Organic matter will improve the drainage or increase the water-holding capacity of your soil. It will also, over a period of time, increase the depth of usable topsoil.

I have a perfect example of the value of organic matter in my own garden. My soil is a rich, dark brown color, fibrous and full of worms, a reliable indicator of the presence of healthy numbers of other less obvious life. Everything I plant seems to thrive, and the soil is a pleasure to work.

This is because it gets the benefit of hefty doses of manure and compost every year. Yet I need to walk only a few feet to the cornfield next door, which never sees any organic matter from one year to the next, to find a soil that is hard, compacted, and airless. It’s difficult to force a fork through the top layer of soil and, when you do, there’s not a worm to be seen.

Granted, there are monoculture farmers like my neighbor who still grow very good crops of wheat, year after year, without the soil ever seeing a forkful of manure. With no cattle on their farms it would be difficult to supply the manure and, in the interests of convenience and economy, they even burn the straw after the harvest. However, they do so at the cost of enormous inputs of chemicals and of a steadily deteriorating soil.

What Should You Use to Improve Your Soil?

There is no doubt at all that, if you put on sufficient well-rotted manure every year, your soil will remain fertile and your plants will prosper. But where is all the manure to come from, particularly if you live in a city? The days are long gone when you could follow the horse and cart with a shovel and bucket. And, if you live in the country, particularly if it is a corn-growing area, the farmer’s children don’t even know what cows look like.

So the gardener’s alternative is compost. But is that being realistic? Certainly it looks good during the early summer when you start to fill your compost container with grass cuttings. After a couple of mowings, it fills up to overflowing and you have to start another. Yet by the time it has rotted down completely, it has shrunk to no more than a few bucketfuls.

Using Store-Bought Material

In fact a normal-sized garden with a productive vegetable plot will simply not produce enough compost. You will have to buy some form of organic matter, and be constantly on the lookout for suitable composting material.

Naturally, the more you can gather, the better, because you will have to buy less. Even if you live in a city there are ways and means of doing this. Unfortunately it is almost impossible to garden totally organically, because virtually everything that you might use is polluted with some chemical or other.

Straw has been sprayed with weedkiller, fungicide, and insecticide; the cows have been force-fed with growth-promoting hormones; even the leaves swept from the pavements are polluted with lead from gasoline. So, if you are a purist— and I am—you may feel safer if you compost all imported material for at least a year in the hope that the toxins will be leached out.

Feeding the Soil

Plants need certain nutrients in specific proportions to be present in the soil. These nutrients will be supplied by the addition of sufficient compost or manure, but you may have to use organic fertilizers as well to achieve the required balance.

The techniques of feeding and the type of fertilizer you use to feed the soil will vary depending on your soil type, where you are, and how much organic matter is available to you. In addition, the degree of acidity or alkalinity, or pH, of your soil will affect the availability of some of these nutrients.

So, you may find that, having established the pH level and taken measures to adjust it if necessary, you release more nutrients, therefore increasing the fertility of your soil.

Handling Chalk Soils

There are two big disadvantages with chalk soils. Firstly, they are thin, dry, and "hungry". This is because the particles are very large, like those in sandy soil, so water drains through rapidly, taking plant nutrients with it. Plant nutrients, in the form of organic fertilizers, will therefore need to be added to the soil. Secondly, perhaps even worse, chalk is a very alkaline soil, and so unsuitable for many plants.

Digging

Generally there is no need to worry too much about the timing of cultivations. Like sand, chalk soils are normally dry enough to work, even in the depths of winter. It is not necessary to leave a chalky soil rough during the winter months for the frost and rain to break down. Instead dig it in the spring a few weeks before sowing. Because the topsoil is usually not very deep, digging should be kept shallow and, if the area is fairly small, it could be worthwhile adding a layer of topsoil to the surface.

Drainage

Generally, drainage on chalk soil is too good and the need is to retain water and nutrients. This can be done by adding bulky organic matter that will also help to acidify the soil.

Organic Matter

On chalk, more than any other type of soil, it is important to try and keep the soil surface covered. Grow a crop of green manure during the winter and dig it in during the spring. During the growing season, it is even worth sowing a fastgrowing green-manure crop between vegetables, just to keep the soil covered.

Mulching, or spreading organic material on top of the soil between plants, is also important during the growing season. You should use acid materials, such as peat, grass cuttings, compost, or manure, in order to counteract the alkalinity of the soil.

Handling Sand

A very light soil, sand tends to drain easily and can therefore be cultivated when other soils are lying sodden and unworkable. As it also warms up quickly, it is an ideal soil for raising early crops. However, sand is also hungry and very demanding. So the price of having an easy soil to work is the need to apply extra organic matter and plant food, in the form of fertilizers, because nutrients, as well as water, will drain away.

Digging

When you cultivate sand is relatively unimportant. It is not necessary to leave a sandy soil rough during the winter months for the frost and rain to break down. The large particles make it very easy to cultivate to a fine tillage anyway, so it is best to dig it in the spring a short while before you intend to sow or plant. If you never venture on the soil when it is so wet that it sticks to your boots, you will not go far wrong.

Drainage

During the year, sandy soil will tend to lose water, both through surface evaporation and free-draining, and this could be detrimental to the plants. To reduce the problem, spread organic matter, or mulch, over the beds between plants as often as you can. This lowers the evaporation rate and improves the soil structure.

Organic Matter

It is very important to improve sandy soils by adding substantial amounts of bulky organic material each year. Because of the quick-draining nature of the soil, the organic matter will work down into the subsoil very quickly so, to save work and to put it in the root zone, dig the organic matter into the top few inches or spread it over the surface.

Try to maintain a cover of vegetation over the surface more or less all the time, and certainly in the winter, when the "leaching" of nutrients is at its most rapid. In the vegetable garden, it is a good idea to grow a green-manure crop during the winter when the beds are empty and to dig it in during the spring. This will not only hold many of the nutrients in the soil during the winter, but will also add large quantities of organic matter.

Handling Silt Soil

The main problem with a silt soil, as with clay, is one of drainage. Of all the soils formed by grinding, silt has the smallest particles. Only the particles of clay are smaller, but they were formed by chemical action. The size of the particles means that they tend to pack together very closely when wet, preventing the free passage of water and air through the soil.

So drainage is poor and there is a danger of the soil settling down to form an airless mass. However, if you never walk on the soil when it is wet (use boards) and condition it as recommended here, silt is perfectly manageable and will produce satisfactory results.

Digging

Silt soil should be cultivated only when it is dry enough not to stick to your boots. Conditions underfoot permitting, aim to dig silt during the fall to take advantage of weather which will help break the soil down to a sowable tillage. Like clay, when silt gets wet and dries out again, it expands and contracts, causing the mass of soil to crack into small clods.

If water then gets into these cracks and freezes, it will force them further apart, breaking the soil down even more. So by digging silt over in the fall, you expose the maximum amount of the soil surface to the elements and work the organic material into the topsoil at the same time.

Drainage

In order to improve drainage, the soil particles have to be forced apart physically to allow free passage of air, water, and plant roots. Do this by digging one or two bucketfuls of coarse sand into the soil every square yard/meter when you dig in the organic matter. Raising your ornamental beds slightly and growing vegetables on the deep bed system will improve drainage, helping the soil dry out and warm up.

Organic Matter

The structure of silt soils benefits greatly from the addition of liberal quantities of well-rotted compost or manure. Adding plenty of bulky organic matter to the soil will hold the particles apart so that roots and water can pass through more easily. If possible, keep the soil covered with a green-manure crop in order to add organic matter and remove surface water.

Indentifying Soil Layers

If you dig a deep hole in the garden, the varying color and textures make it easy to identify the different layers. This is a valuable exercise because it enables you to understand the nature of your soil and therefore gives you a clue as to the best way to work it. The depth of each layer will vary considerably from one area to the next.

Topsoil

This is the darkest layer of soil. It contains the organic matter, fungi, bacteria, insects, and worms necessary for healthy plant growth. The depth of the topsoil can range from 2in (5cm) to 6ft (2m). The deeper this layer, the better, because plant roots have more space to grow and take up nutrients.

Subsoil

Lighter in color than topsoil because it contains no humus, this layer is largely devoid of plant nutrients. The structure of subsoil affects the drainage of the soil.

Parent matter

This consists mostly of unaltered rock. It is the area least affected by any cultivation of topsoil. The depth at which this level starts depends on the underlying rock and the height of the piece of land.

5 Types of Soil You Should Know In Your Garden

When seen together the five soil types—clay, sand, silt, peat, and chalk—look very different. Remember that many soils are a mixture of minerals; the soils illustrated here are as near to the pure mineral as possible. Each soil type has advantages and disadvantages, so each needs a slightly different management technique and supports different types of plants.

1. Clay

This is a heavy, cold soil which feels sticky when moist and hard and compacted when dry. The minute particles are less than 0.002mm in size. This means that clay does not drain easily and is difficult to work in wet conditions. However, it is possible to turn it into a very workable fertile soil. Clay soils are normally well supplied with plant foods and are capable of supporting a wide variety of plants.

Soil - The Art of Organic Gardening

The soil is the basic raw material of the gardener’s art. It should never be dismissed as a mere collection of mineral particles used to anchor roots, or worse still as "dirt". It is much more than that. Certainly, its basic structure consists of rock particles broken down by frost and thaw action, wind and river flow, to produce the different textures that give us soil "types".

However, a large part of its makeup is organic matter—vegetable and animal remains in various stages of decay—along with air and water, which are all essential for the support of plant and animal life. All of this provides a home for millions and millions of living organisms such as soil fungi, algae, bacteria, insects, and worms, which work to provide just the right conditions for healthy plant growth.