One of the first and most important things we need to do when planning, and planting a kitchen garden, is to ensure we have the right quality of garden soil.
In a perfect world, we would step outside, and dig up section of our yard, and discover perfect garden soil. Sadly this isn't the case for most of us. So we need to help mother nature out a bit. The best type of soil was can hope for is roughly a 50/50 mix of solids (inorganic material) and more porous material. (organic)
Inorganic materials
The inorganic material is usually comprised of clay, sand or silt. If you are really lucky, the will all exist in correct quantities, of 20% clay, 40% each of silt and sand - which gives us loam. I find in the region where I live, we have a ton of clay, so I normally have to add some inorganic material to lessen the high percentage of clay in my kitchen garden.
Organic materials
Organic materials cna be anything that was once living. Grass clippings, compost from your compost maker, leaves from your fall raking. In a pinch, I've used peat moss when starting up a new garden when I don't have any compost handy. Since I also have horses, I have a ready supply of horse manure. However unless it's really old manure, I don't care to use it, since horse manure results in a lot more weeds then steer manure for example.
When to add material to your kitchen garden soil.
The optimum time to add new materials to garden soil is in the spring, when cleaning up debris, and preparing beds for planting. I have been known myself to also do this in the fall. I haven't decided which is really better. I think it mostly depends on which time of year is more convenient for you to do so. It's just important to be in the habit of doing it every year, since organic materials will continue to breakdown over time.
In a perfect world, we would step outside, and dig up section of our yard, and discover perfect garden soil. Sadly this isn't the case for most of us. So we need to help mother nature out a bit. The best type of soil was can hope for is roughly a 50/50 mix of solids (inorganic material) and more porous material. (organic)
Inorganic materials
The inorganic material is usually comprised of clay, sand or silt. If you are really lucky, the will all exist in correct quantities, of 20% clay, 40% each of silt and sand - which gives us loam. I find in the region where I live, we have a ton of clay, so I normally have to add some inorganic material to lessen the high percentage of clay in my kitchen garden.
Organic materials
Organic materials cna be anything that was once living. Grass clippings, compost from your compost maker, leaves from your fall raking. In a pinch, I've used peat moss when starting up a new garden when I don't have any compost handy. Since I also have horses, I have a ready supply of horse manure. However unless it's really old manure, I don't care to use it, since horse manure results in a lot more weeds then steer manure for example.
When to add material to your kitchen garden soil.
The optimum time to add new materials to garden soil is in the spring, when cleaning up debris, and preparing beds for planting. I have been known myself to also do this in the fall. I haven't decided which is really better. I think it mostly depends on which time of year is more convenient for you to do so. It's just important to be in the habit of doing it every year, since organic materials will continue to breakdown over time.
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