| 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.
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:
1. By cultivation - which
helps to change the raw plant food stored in the soil into available
forms.
2. By manuring or adding
plant food to the soil from other outside sources.
"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.
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