How to improve your soil and create new beds now for a great garden next year
Hello, friends!
Today I’d like to talk a bit about soil. I know, it’s not as exciting as flowers or fruit or vegetables, but without good soil, you can’t succeed with any of those things. And fall is the perfect time to improve it because your amendments will have all winter to work their way deep into the ground and provide you with a nutrient-rich clean slate next spring.
First things first: If you’re planning a new bed or border for next year, prepare it now. Delineate the shape and size you’d like with a garden hose, and when you’ve got it how you want it, mark the area with flour. Yep, flour, I have no idea why so many gardening folks recommend spray paint when 1) it’s toxic and 2) if you make a mistake you have to look at painted grass until it grows and gets cut back.
Just put some flour in a gallon-sized zipper-top plastic bag, clip off one of the bottom corners and “draw” your garden bed with it.
Next, clear all vegetation from the area. Depending on the size of the bed, you can either hand-pull or dig up weeds and plants. If it’s lawn, you’ll have to remove it at the roots; a sod cutter might come in handy for large areas (you can rent one).
Regardless of whether you’re preparing a new garden area or tending to an existing one, take a soil sample. Dig three separate areas of the bed 4-inches deep and put a couple of tablespoons of soil from each section into one plastic bag or container, then mix it up. You can buy a soil pH test kit at your local nursery or bring your sample to your local cooperative extension office for testing.
Look up the pH requirements of the plant(s) you plan to grow there, and if your soil isn’t within the plant’s range, amend it now by incorporating dolomitic lime to raise the pH or make it more alkaline — or peat moss, aluminum sulfate or sulfur to lower the pH or make it more acidic.
Work amendments into the top 12 inches of soil or as close to that as possible. If you’re working around existing plants, work it in between them as best as you can.
For reference, a pH of 7 is neutral.
Readings above 7 indicate alkaline soil; below 7, acidic. Those amendments can take up to three months to alter soil pH so adding them now will be more beneficial than waiting until spring.
In bare beds like vegetable patches or newly prepared areas, plant a cover crop like clover. It will sprout and grow fairly quickly, and in spring you just have to turn it over with a shovel (it’s easy; the roots will be small).
Clover is a nitrogen-fixing plant, which means it captures nitrogen from the air and adds it to soil (free fertilizer!). When you turn it over, the clover plants themselves will decompose, adding more nutrients to the soil (again, free fertilizer!)
For already-populated beds, top-dress the soil with a couple of inches of well-rotted manure or compost, add some leaf mold or simply fallen leaves and work it in around and between plants.
If you do this now, I promise next year’s garden will suffer fewer diseases and pest problems, plants will be more vigorous and they will fruit and flower better, and soil will retain and drain water better.
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