Bert Swope
Garden soil quality is of utmost importance for healthy plants. Not just dirt, it contains billions of microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi, nematodes, and insects that provide essential components to your garden ecosystem.
Ideal soil is loamy, consisting of equal parts sand, silt, and clay particles. This texture holds moisture but drains freely, so plant roots can penetrate easily into its depths.
Check the Soil’s Structure
Garden soil structure is as essential to its health as its pH, macronutrients, and micronutrients. It determines how easily water and air enter and exit and how much of both they retain. Healthy soil has strong, well-defined aggregates that remain intact with only gentle pressure breaking them apart, plus sufficient pores between aggregates so water and air enter and drain freely, yet aren’t too large as to impede nutrient uptake.
Soil comprises three inorganic components — sand, silt, and clay — which combine to determine its porosity and whether plants can grow easily. Professional testing may be the best way to assess its texture, but you can also perform simple DIY tests to get an idea of its texture.
Start by wetting a handful of soil and running it between your fingers, feeling for texture. Sand can feel gritty or coarse; silt can feel smooth like moist talcum powder; heavy clay soil may feel harsh and slippery when wet – most soils fall between these extremes.
Once you’ve identified the proportions of sand, silt, and clay in your garden soil, you can make any necessary amendments to improve its composition. For instance, if it has a pH higher than 7.8, adding ground sulfur can acidify it quickly by mixing into the surface layers of soil. Furthermore, adding organic matter such as composted manure or peat moss could further enrich its structure.
If your soil is too compacted, to increase its pore spaces, you’ll need to add organic matter in large amounts. Wait until the soil has completely dried before working with it, and use rototilling or digging instead of walking on it to aerate the ground surface. High-carbon organic material, which takes time to decompose, is particularly helpful as it stabilizes soil conditions while stimulating microbes that turn matter into nutrients for plant roots.
Add Organic Matter
Organic matter is essential to healthy garden soil. It binds soil particles into porous crumbs or granules, allows water to percolate through, promotes an abundance of beneficial organisms and retains moisture (humus holds 90 percent of its weight in water), provides essential nutrients to plants, and improves texture.
Organic matter is any matter derived from living organisms containing carbon compounds, such as leaves, animal manure, grass clippings, or homemade compost. Organic matter can be added directly to soil, mixed into topsoil, or integrated into planting beds – it works best when introduced when soil has not yet been utilized since organic material needs time to break down and become part of its environment.
Target 5 to 10% organic matter content in your soil mixture and carefully blend it. Too much organic matter may increase microorganism activity and alter soil pH balance over time, using up available nitrogen resources and altering pH balance of the area. Adjust organic matter over time alongside other soil amending techniques.
Soil organic matter can be divided into active and passive fractions. The active portion includes living organisms, recently dead organisms, and fresh material that provides food sources. At the same time, the passive fraction consists of humus that binds other soil particles together and makes the soil more resistant to erosion.
Healthy soil has large pores for proper drainage and air infiltration, allowing plant roots and organisms to flourish in its ecosystem. Add organic matter such as compost or well-rotted manure to loosen and aerate the soil. Furthermore, when possible, use raised beds as this will further decrease compaction of the ground surface.
Loam is the ideal soil texture, consisting of silty and sandy elements that provide adequate pore space to allow plants to take in enough water while having enough structure to prevent overwater logging. To create loam, incorporate 3-4 inches of organic matter each year by tilling less frequently or using mulches.
Add Nutrients
Maintaining healthy garden soil often comes down to maintaining an equilibrium among its constituent elements: soil particles, organic material, water, and air all play important roles in creating optimal conditions for plant growth. For optimal results from your garden soil investment.
Most soil is composed of sand, silt, and clay particles. The predominant type often depends on how a piece of land was created; for instance, sandy soil from floodplains will differ significantly from clay-rich glacier deposits.
Healthy soil is rich with humus and full of beneficial organisms such as earthworms and other microorganisms that make nutrients available to plants, making healthy growth much simpler in rich and well-managed garden soil. Plants grown in less-than-ideal conditions are more vulnerable to pest attacks, diseases, and nutritional deficiencies.
An initial soil test can help identify your soil needs. Most university-affiliated Cooperative Extension services offer these tests at a small fee; alternatively, you can conduct your own DIY jar test by placing some soil into a jar with some water, adding it, and then making amendments as necessary until the balance has been restored in your soil.
Soil tests not only indicate what pH level your soil has (where lower numbers signify more acidic), but they can also reveal which nutrients are depleted, so you can supplement with organic fertilizers that contain these depleted elements, such as alfalfa meal, which provides nitrogen; worm castings which provide phosphorous and potassium; or bone meal which supplies calcium.
Mulch is essential to healthy garden soil. It helps keep the soil moist and cool, prevents weed growth, and provides natural slow-release fertilizer – especially beneficial in sandy and clay soils that tend to compact and restrict drainage. Add organic material such as leaves, straw, or grass clippings into your beds’ top 8-12 inches for the best results!
Keep It Moisturized
Maintaining healthy garden soil requires keeping it properly moist to meet plant roots’ and organisms’ moisture needs, reducing plant stress, which can cause diseases and even death over time. A key element to keep the soil moist is adding organic material, which acts to slow evaporation while creating insulation properties to keep temperatures down while providing insulation to keep temperatures at an optimum level. Mulching can also protect it from direct sunlight, while hydrogels or water-absorbent mats can provide extra support in keeping it damp.
Poor soil maintenance can leave it too dense and compacted to retain sufficient moisture and to test this theory, you can take several measures: to determine its ability to retain enough, grab a handful and squeeze it between your fingers; if the crumbly texture comes off easily it’s sandy/loamy soil while any harsh texture that sticks onto your fingers indicate clay soils.
Compost can help improve the texture and hydration of soil by feeding it with nutrients it already contains, loosening it up for easier root systems to get air, increasing soil capacity to hold nutrients, balancing pH levels, and protecting plants against disease. Remember to add it regularly, as maintaining garden soil health depends upon it!
Organic materials like leaves and grass clippings can help improve soil’s ability to retain water, helping it stay in place longer for your desired plants. Mulching the topsoil will slow evaporation and cut back on weeds that take up moisture that should go to them instead.