How to Put Together a Healthy Soil Mixture for Your Garden

Gardening experience tells me that the key to a perfectly healthy garden is to have great soil. The extra effort you put forth in the beginning in a soil mixture will serve you well by producing healthy and abundant plants.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Compost
• Mulch
• Shovel
• Spade
• Additives of choice such as lime or sulfur, concrete mixer (can be rented), sandy loam, strings, stakes or mower and truck

1. You'll naturally want to mark the boundary lines of the flower beds. This step may be achieved by using string and stakes. Or, if you prefer, you can take the lawn mower and merely mow the shape of a flower bed, leaving an area of taller grass to illustrate the section of the bed.

2. Now, with the area of the proposed beds earmarked, it is essential to take care of the grass. You will need to remove it before placing the additives into the soil.

3. The way to remove the grass is as follows:
   * Divide the bed into easy to manage squares.
   * Cut under each square with a spade. You may then add the squares to your pile of compost.
   * If you prefer, you might save the squares in order to repair any bare areas in your lawn. However, consider that the top layer of soil and grass provides a good deal of organic substance that may enhance the health of your garden.

4. Place compost and any needed lime or sulfur on the bed before tilling the flower bed.

5. Compost added to an annual flowerbed is not a great concern as you may add it each year. However, you are not going to be able to add it yearly with a perennial bed so take care to assure you maintain healthy soil by using the following suggested methods.
   
   First off, try to "steer" clear of walking on the soil of your perennial bed. The problem with walking on your bed is that by doing so the soil becomes more compact, thus forcing air out found inside the soil.

6. Mulch is helpful in building soil structure around perennials. Mulch may be comprised of compost or leaves. Essentially as the leaves continue to break down, nutrients enrich the soil. Additionally, the decomposition of organic matter tends to bind together separate particles within the soil into aggregates.

7. Do not till weeds into the bed. The way to keep from spreading the "seed of weeds" is to pull the weeds up and out. By tilling weeds, the soil loses the ability to absorb water and the result is very rock-hard soil when dry. Also, more weeds will develop as a further consequence of spreading seed when tilling.

8. You may feel hesitant to plant a garden. Perhaps you believe you will not be able to improve the soil enough for a garden. Perhaps the place you would like to have your garden is too "soppy" or wet. The way to remedy such concerns is to create raised flower beds. You may place a customized soil mixture in a raised bed perfectly suitable for perennials. The bed should be built, at minimum, 12 inches in height so as to accommodate the roots of the plants. This height is adequate in assuring that water reaches below the roots.

9. If you wish to create fertile soil naturally without having to use fertilizer, you can create a concoction that works wonders. The first thing you will need is acid or granite sand. River or mineral sand is preferred over "washed" sand. Get a small concrete mixer in order to mix up the soil ingredients. A mixer may be rented for roughly $30 per day. The following materials will need to go into your concrete mixer as follows: Two parts sandy loam (meaning soil rich in clay, sand and organic matter or any rich, dark soil), one part sand and one part compost. Allow the mixer to run for a few minutes. By doing so, you will find no out of the ordinary clumps of soil in the garden. Additionally, all you will need to do after mixing is pour the new soil mixture directly on the bed.

10. In conclusion, by preparing the soil properly in the beginning, you will be assured many years of abundant plant and flower life in your garden with healthier plants that are much easier to maintain.

Tips & Warnings

• Take newspaper and place it over the grass in the bed where you wish to eradicate it. Shovel a fair amount of compost onto the top of the newspaper in order to secure it. In combination, the paper and compost will not allow any sunlight to reach the grass. In six to eight weeks, the area can be tilled without concern that the grass will reappear within your garden.
• Do not go light on the compost. It takes tons of material, not several pails or wheelbarrows full, in order to create a soil mixture that is necessary for a healthy garden. Determine how much compost, peat and other enhancements you'll need by applying the following equation: multiply the length of your bed (in feet) by width (in feet) to arrive at square footage. Next, multiply square footage by depth of the compost and soil enhancement layer (in inches). Divide said number by 324 to attain cubic yards. In this example, let us presume you would like to add 4 inches of compost to a 20 x 20-foot garden. The following equation applies: 20 x 20 feet is equivalent to 400 feet. Thus, 400 square feet x 4 inches equals 1600. Thus, 1600 divided by 324 (as noted above) is equal to 4.9 cubic yards of compost. A cubic yard of compost essentially weighs between 600 and 2,000 pounds (The weight is determined by the ingredients within the compost and the amount of moisture). Therefore, if you are hauling compost in a half-ton truck (which can handle three cubic yards and carry a maximum of no more than 1900 lbs.) then it should easily take you two to five trips in order to haul the recommended amount of compost. The amount, once again, in this example is 4.9 cubic yards for a garden that is 400 square feet in size and the number of trips it will take is dependent on the weight of the compost.
• Do not simply till the grass under when preparing the bed. This method is ineffective as the grass will merely grow back more profusely. The only way to prevent this from happening, should you decide to till the grass under is to eradicate it before tilling the bed.

[chava812]

on 4/28/2009 Great ideas on how to approach creating a new flower bed!