Growing Green: Amending for Success (Tip #2)

 

Today I'll talk about soil. Disclaimer: I am not a soil expert but I have worked with muddy soil, dead soil, and hard packed clay soil, and learned how to amend it to get things to a state in which plants will grow. I am not a scientist; only a gardener sharing what she's learned.

As I said before, I didn't know the first thing about gardening when I began. So when it came time to get some soil to plant our seeds in, I simply went to the grocery store and purchased a few bags of Miracle Grow soil, then plopped my seeds into it. I figured that whoever bagged the stuff up probably knew what they were doing. 

Since then I've learned a lot! I transitioned to purchasing bags of organic soil, initially mixing it in with my native soil to save on money. Unfortunately I began encountering new challenges and had to figure out how to overcome them without breaking the bank. 

The main challenge I faced was that the organic soil mix became compacted. It was too heavy; muddy. While I hoped for the best, some of my plants developed root rot--a result of not getting enough oxygen and sitting in too much moisture. It probably didn't help that I was trying to grow things on the Oregon coast, where everything lives in a perpetual state of soppiness, but I knew I needed to do something to aerate the soil and guessed that my plants were also needing fertilizer.

Tip #2: Amend Your Soil

I began working compost into my garden, which helped with both problems (the heavy soil and the nutrient-deficiencies). For those interested I will do a post that explains how to make and maintain a compost pile, but if you don't want to mess with making your own compost, you can purchase fertilizer and amendments instead.

Even if you start with great soil, your plants will use up nutrients as they grow, requiring you to provide supplementation. So this is really a tip for everyone who wants to grow any kind of plant. Learning to amend soil is part of having a healthy garden.

Amending Native Soil:

In the Twin Falls area, the native soil is astoundingly heavy with so much clay. It's practically gray, it's so clay. What does clay soil look like, you ask? Like this:

After putting in all of our fruit trees, we had piles of this clay. The only thing that grew in it was weeds, and those it grew abundantly. 

We didn't want to waste the clay soil but also didn't want to it in our raised beds. We ended up using it as the base of our compost pile and amended it with lots of nutrient-rich materials over time. That compacted, heavy clay soil looks great now! I'll be spreading a thick layer of it around my fruit trees this week!

Filling our Raised Beds:

After planting fruit trees, our next task was building raised beds. To fill them, we purchased truckloads of a top soil/compost mix from Kimberly Nurseries. After they delivered our truckload of dirt, we hauled it one wheelbarrow at a time--a serious workout! To each bed I added five bags of steer manure, which I purchased from D&B. (When ordering my raised bed soil, I followed an employee's recommendation and lowered the amount of compost in the mix. When it came, I immediately knew I should have gone with my gut and had them mix in more compost. Live and learn. The ratio I initially asked for was 30% compost, 70% top soil.)

Where we started.

Soil Testing:

The prevailing advice about gardening in a new environment is to begin with a soil test. Soil tests give you a breakdown of what your soil lacks, telling you exactly what amendments you need to add. In Twin Falls we have Stukenholtz Laboratory, who will test your soil for you.

I've never had my soil tested, reasoning that I don't need another expense or delay, and besides that it, isn't like the pioneers coming to the PNW had labs to tell them when to add what. They had to figure stuff out! I absolutely see the value in dialing things in scientifically but for now am happy doing it the old fashioned way. Maybe one day I'll test my soil, to see if it levels up our harvests. Who knows?

Seed Starting Mix:

So once my beds were filled, I needed to figure out an affordable, organic seed starting mix. I've read widely on this topic and experimented with a few combinations. These days I use a simple homemade mix. Everyone has a different idea of what ratios to use of each, but this is what has been working well for me. It balances cost and availability, and my seedlings have been very happy.

(Pictures below are linked to a place where you can buy the items.)

Kellogg Organic Plus Raised Bed & Potting Mix is my base. I simply dump it into my garden cart and pick out the big chunks, which I set aside for mulching later. The reason I pull out the big chunks is to eliminate obstacles for my tiny seedlings. At the urging of some online garden experts, I made a soil-sifter a few years ago that worked very well but was a lot of extra work. I decided to stop sifting and just take out the big chunks of twigs and have noticed no difference in my seedlings.

Tip for all amendments: I'm not loyal to any brand--I end up using a variety of brands because my highest loyalty is to health and then cost. I purchase whatever is cheapest at a given time. Also, check Amazon prices in the off-season. By shopping out-of-season I pay only 25-40% of the regular price.

Espoma Organic Garden-Tone fertilizer. This is the granular fertilizer that I use in my garden. I can buy it in bulk for a good price, but any all-purpose fertilizer you find a good deal on will work. For one giant bag of Kellogg's soil mix I use about 1.5 cups of the Garden-Tone fertilizer. Now that I've got a compost pile up and running, I will be using that instead. I'm not sure if I'll discontinue the Garden-Tone entirely or do a mixture.

Peat Moss: This amendment helps the soil to retain moisture and also helps to retain the nutrients from your fertilizer. It also helps create a loose and loamy texture in your soil, preventing heaviness. You can probably find this cheaper locally, but I'll link to an Amazon page because that's where I buy mine. Of course none are on sale right now, but do search for the best price when you're ready to purchase. For one bag of Kellogg's soil mix add about 4 cups of peat moss.

Vermiculite or Perlite: This has been a huge game-changer for me! I use it in a few ways, but one is to mix into my seed starting soil. Vermiculite is ground up rock and perlite is volcanic glass. Both function to retain moisture and lighten up heavy soil. I prefer vermiculite but have bought perlite locally when I needed it ASAP. For one bag of Kellogg's soil mix I add about 2 cups of vermiculite or perlite.

So that's how I filled our raised beds and mix up soil for seed starting. There are a few other things I do that contribute to healthy soil, but I'll talk about those when I get to that part of the gardening story.

Let's recap: Soil can get out of balance and cause problems. A soil test will tell you how to balance soil. For raised beds, I purchased a soil/compost mix from Kimberly Nurseries. For seeds, I start with a base of organic soil and amend with organic fertilizer (or compost), peat moss, and vermiculite (or perlite). 

For my next tip, I'll talk about seeds and planting. Which seeds to buy, what to look for when buying, the best containers to use, and tips for planting that start you off on the right foot.