Improve Your Soil with Less Work
Don't Yank Out Those Old Tomato Plants. Cut Them off at the Base.
On Episode 144 of the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, we talked about some easy ways to improve your soil, including leaving crop remains (the roots) and topping the garden beds in the winter with shredded leaves from your trees. Also, we talked about how adding wood ash to your garden can change the pH of your soil (bottom line: know your pH).
One warning about adding leaves to the top of your garden bed to improve the soil, from organic gardening professional, Living Resources president Steve Zien: this will only work if you have a healthy soil to begin with.
So, the question arises: how do you start to get a healthier soil? Zien responds:
“Don’t have an organic garden? Leaving crop residue and leaf mulch on the soil surface will still be worthwhile. Mulch and crop residue protects the soil from nature’s forces of wind and water, reducing erosion and the impact of raindrops on bare soil. When a raindrop hits bare soil it loosens the sand, silt and in particular clay particles and moves them around in a way that results in the creation of a hard crust that seals off the soil restricting the movement of air, water, nutrients and biology from entering the soil. Crop residue and mulch also conserves moisture, reduces the need for irrigation, prevents weed growth and insulates the root zone from heat and cold creating a more favorable environment for beneficial soil biology and your plants roots.
When the crop residue and mulch break down and enter the soil, nutrients and organic mater become available to an ever increasing abundance and diversity of soil biology known as the soil food web. These organisms nurture your plants while protecting them from pests. They also glue and tie individual soil particles (sand, slit, and clay) to create favorable soil structure with a diversity of pore space sizes. Small and medium size pores hold on to water that will be available to soil biology including plant roots. Large pore spaces drain providing life giving oxygen while serving as place for plant roots to grow. Have a heavy clay soil? Only a healthy soil food web that can create and maintain soil structure that opens up that clay soils allowing water to penetrate into and percolate through the soil.
The goal of every gardener should be to create a healthy soil food web that will yield the most productive and nutritious foods and beautiful landscapes. Leaving crop residue and mulch on the soil surface is just one technique to accomplish this goal. Regularly applying compost and worm castings to the soil surface not only supplies additional soil biology but organic matter, the energy source for the soil food web. It is also important to minimize soil disturbance (cultivation, tillage) that reduces both the diversity and abundance of soil life.
One must also realize that soil organisms are destroyed by synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, therefore their use must be eliminated or at least minimized. One should only use organic fertilizers, ideally following the recommendations of a soil test. Rototilling the soil, using a synthetic fertilizer or pesticides will only be a step backward in creating a vibrant and resilient soil food web.
The sooner and more completely you adopt these practices (among many other regenerative soil practices) the faster you will create a healthy soil food web with good soil structure and an abundance of organic matter capable of producing the garden and landscape you dream of.”
We are hopeful Mr. Z shares with us in the future those “many other regenerative soil practices”.
Know Your Soil pH
In discussing the use of wood ash in the garden with college horticulture professor (retired) Debbie Flower, also on Episode 144 of Garden Basics, she pointed out to know your soil pH before you add any wood ash. Wood ash is highly alkaline and can throw your soil out of whack if your soil is already teetering on alkalinity (at or above 7.0). On the above chart, note how some elements, such as iron, become less available to plants as the pH rises. “Less available” doesn’t mean the soil is missing that element; it just means the plant isn’t able to uptake it because of the existing pH level. Here’s a list of the preferred pH range of many garden vegetables, from the University of Nebraska:
pH test kits run the gamut of price and quality. Among the easiest and most widely available are the inexpensive pH test kits found at nurseries, online, and home supply stores, such as this from Rapitest. A step up, but subject to fluctuations and durability issues, are the pH meters that are available (you get what you pay for!). For more accuracy, consider the LaMotte test kits, which also give rough measurements of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium content, along with 2 booklets that are very educational.
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