The chances are that you will not find a spot of ideal garden soil ready for use anywhere upon your place. But all except the very worst of soils can be brought up to a very high degree of productiveness, especially such small areas as home vegetable gardens require.
The ideal garden soil is a "rich, sandy loam." And the important fact cannot be overemphasized that such soils usually are made, not found. "Rich" in the gardener's vocabulary means full of plant food; more than that, and this is a point of vital importance, it means full of plant food ready to be used at once, all prepared and spread out on the garden table, or rather in it, where growing things can at once make use of it; or what we term, in one word, "available" plant food.
Practically no soils in long-inhabited communities remain naturally rich enough to produce big crops. They are made rich, or kept rich, in two ways:
"Sandy" in the sense here used, means a soil containing enough particles of sand so that water will pass through it without leaving it pasty and sticky a few days after a rain; "light" enough, as it is called, so that a handful, under ordinary conditions, will crumble and fall apart readily after being pressed in the hand. It is not necessary that the soil be sandy in appearance, but it should be friable.
"Loam: means rich, friable soil," says Webster. That hardly covers it, but it does describe it. It is soil in which the sand and clay are in proper proportions, so that neither greatly predominate, and usually dark in color, from cultivation and enrichment. Such a soil, even to the untrained eye, just naturally looks as if it would grow things. There are some garden loams that will do well just as taken up, but as a rule better results will be obtained where the soil is properly prepared. It is remarkable how quickly the whole physical appearance of a piece of well cultivated ground will change.
Perhaps in yours there will be too much sand, or too much clay. That will be a disadvantage, but you could fix that problem by ordering proper rich, light and friable soil from supplier or doing it on your own.
Rich, light, friable soil could be made up specially as follows:
Rotted sods two parts, old rotted manure one part, and enough coarse sand added to make the mixture fine and crumbly, so that, even when moist, it will fall apart when pressed into a ball in the hand.
Large tracts of soil that are almost pure sand, and others so heavy and mucky that for centuries they lay uncultivated, have frequently been brought, in the course of only a few years, to where they yield annually tremendous crops on a commercial basis. So do not be discouraged about your soil. Proper treatment of it is much more important, and a garden- patch of average run-down, or "never-brought-up" soil, will produce much more for the energetic and careful gardener than the richest spot will grow under average methods of cultivation.
~ www.knowledgefun.com
Whether you are an avid gardener or just starting out, the idea of creating a garden using organic methods can seem overwhelming at first. But organic gardening is less daunting than you may think if you understand some basic principles and can be done right in your own backyard.
There are many reasons why today, more than ever before, every owner of a small place should have his, or her, own garden. The old days of home meat producing, cheese-making, and traditional cooking are gone. The growing of healthy organic vegetables and fruits that taste great cannot be so easy disposed of.
Most things, in the course of development, change from the simple to the complex. The art of gardening has in many ways been an exception to the rule. The methods of culture used for many crops are more simple than those in vogue a generation ago. The last twenty years has seen also a tremendous...
