You should not underestimate the importance of good soil quality.
If you want to reap what you sow, you’ve got to make sure that the foundations are there. Whether you’re trying to grow a herb garden or vegetables or flowers, you need to provide nutrients to your plants. Let’s show you how you can improve your garden soil quality.
Easily Increase Soil Quality With These Five Tips
Do these five easy things to make your garden healthier, rot-resistant, and pest-resistant. In the end, you’ll harvest a better crop.
1 – An Organic Diet
Many lawn care specialists will tell you that your soil should have the key nutrients. If your lawn is deficient in phosphorus and potassium, you can use a variety of spring fertilizers. You should also feed your soil an organic diet and make sure it has the basic requirements, in other words: water, shelter, food, and air. Adding organic ingredients during the fall months, like kitchen scraps and fallen leaves, will help, too, as the soil will break it down.
2 – Get a Soil Test
If you don’t know why your lawn is not fulfilling its potential, the pH level may be a little off. A soil test can determine soil fertility and point you towards how you could do it better. But don’t forget, the best pH depends on what you need to plant. For example, if you want to plant blueberries, they need a pH of between 4.3 and 5.5. The right soil test will be able to determine the appropriate balance.
3 – Do You Need to Put More Nitrogen Into the Soil?
Nitrogen is one of the most, if not the most important, ingredient. Nitrogen will feed the plants and soil organisms, but nitrogen is usually in short supply. This is why you have to know what is a good source of nitrogen and what is not. For example, you would avoid using compost because it is not a healthy nitrogen source.
4 – Do Not Neglect Your Weeds
One of the most important things to do to get your garden under control is to remove weeds. Weeds always compete with garden plants for any nutrients, and you can make a big difference by adding more mulch during the fall months. You can use weed killers as well, but make sure you concentrate it on a particular area. Adding these chemicals does more harm than good if you kill all your plants with overspray.
5 – Knowing Your Own Soil
If you want to create high-quality soil, you should spend time growing a cover crop, which will loosen the structure of the soil and give nutrients to your garden. But before you plant any garden during the spring months, make sure that the soil dries out. Any adverse weather conditions can greatly damage the structure of the soil. The best way to check if the soil is ready during the spring months is to grab a handful and squeeze it. If any water comes out, you need to give it more time to dry.
The Takeaway: Excellent Soil Quality Yields Better Gardening Outcomes
The garden is an essential part of your home, and if you are looking to improve the foundations, it is all about the soil. Your soil quality needs to be as robust as possible because this is where everything grows from.
She has a B.S.Ed. in Secondary Education/English and a Spanish Minor. In addition, she holds a Certificate in Natural Health from a fully-accredited program and is a Certified Herbologist. She pursued these natural wellness certifications due to her love for herb gardening.
Despite freelancing to make a living, her love is "all things home."
Deborah grew up in a family that grew a large vegetable garden and a fruit orchard, helping her parents pull weeds and can home-grown foods as part of her childhood. In fact, she had no idea that she could purchase veggies and fruits in pre-packed steel cans until she went to college and made a food run.
Today, she lives in Bertie County, North Carolina, an agricultural rural area with more chickens than people. She lives with her husband and two rescue pets a sweet toy fox terrier and a cat who showed up one day and moved into the house. Together, they enjoy DIY projects, furniture refinishing, gardening, and canning.
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