Simple Tips for Better Garden Soil

(Page 4 of 4)

April/May 2009
By Barbara Pleasant 
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As a general guideline, soil that has been steadily improved with organic amendments for three years or more should have an organic-matter content of at least 3 percent. This amount of organic matter holds enough nitrogen to support low-demand crops with short growing seasons without additional fertilizer. Low-demand vegetable crops include beans, squash, baby salad greens and cucumbers.

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As more long-lived crops such as tomatoes, carrots and sweet corn reach adolescence, they may exhaust the nutrient supply within reach of their roots. This is why these vegetables (and many reblooming flowers) benefit from a midseason side dressing with a high-nitrogen fertilizer. In addition to ensuring good crops, midseason feedings with alfalfa, cottonseed meal or a blended organic fertilizer — along with biodegradable mulches and limited tilling — protect the soil’s nutrient reserves, making it fit for replanting right away.

Only the most fertile soils can support nitrogen-hungry cabbage family crops, which are among the few vegetables that seldom forge beneficial relationships with soilborne fungi. Mix an organic fertilizer into the soil prior to planting cabbage family crops, and then be patient.

Respecting the Underworld

Soil pH readings and other characteristics that can be distilled into numbers are useful, but the best thing you can do to build better soil is to respect it as a diverse community of living, breathing organisms. In your mind and in your methods, cast off what Cornell University plant physiologist David W. Wolfe calls “surface chauvinism” — the tendency to think that what we see at the soil’s surface tells the whole story, and that it’s all we need to know. You would be wiser to nurture the hidden soil food web. In the long run, compost plus mulch plus limited tilling will give you better soil and better harvests, with less work than “conventional” methods.

Barbara Pleasant has co-authored an outstanding new book on better soil called The Complete Compost Gardening Guide. Order here.
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  • hazel Watson 5/9/2009 12:34:32 PM

    I'm starting garden spots (mostly vegetable, some flowers and shrubs) where only grass has been grown for years. Using two methods: one, using paper, corrugated cardboard, or black plastic, I'm covering areas of the grass surrounding the new planting, with holes just large enough for the desired plants; the second is scooping all the grass away from the area, then scatter-planting seeds of annuals.

    Right now I'm hoping the first works better, because it's a lot easier!

    In both cases, I'm mulching the areas with last year's leaves and straw. I'm also building compost, some right in the gardens, and two large piles of cut weeds, grass, leaves and kitchen scraps. My intention is to spread it onto the gardens next spring.

  • Steve Thyng 5/8/2009 12:03:33 PM

    The limited tilling concept is well explained here, but is based on the assumption that the laqnd in question is being used regularly as a garden. It recognized the fact that bacteria, etc in soil is disturbed by tilling, and therefore the processes ocurring in the soil which promote optimal plant growth are disturbed. There is more information on all this in a book entitled "Roots Demystified", by Robert Kourik, published by Metamorphic Press. The author explains that soil bacteria can be understood in terms of three fairly distinct layers: top, middle, and bottom. The top layer is only 3 to 4 inches deep, and the bottom layer starts about where subsoil begins and goes down. Each layer has bacteria, etc which is unique to it. When the soil is disturbed greatly, as I do when I til an area to 12+" deep and hoe the soil into a pile, place 2+' of leaves and brush in the area, cover it with about 5" of horse manure and then shovel the hoed out soil on top of it. Mr Kourik explains in his book that it will take awhile for the bacteria to find its place again after it has been disturbed, but that eventually it will settle in. I am expecting that my 'developed' areas will not produce well for awhile, but that they will eventually. I am "raising" areas like this to overcome a drainage problem, and am hoeing out the soil because I can't see the sense in burying good topsoil.
    Any comments, ideas on this method?

  • Mary Ann 5/1/2009 3:15:02 PM

    I can see why limited tilling is the way to go, but how do you turn in a green manure in the spring that was planted in the fall?

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