There
’s an old saying among long-time home gardeners and it goes
something like this: “If you had $10 to spend on gardening, spend
$9 on soil and $1 on the plant.”
There’s an old saying among long-time home gardeners and it goes something like this: “If you had $10 to spend on gardening, spend $9 on soil and $1 on the plant.”
Wholesale nurseries won’t like me for this, but it really is true. Especially this time of year, don’t make the beginning gardener’s mistake of throwing that new plant into rock-hard ground and expecting it to do well.
After a long winter, garden soils need rejuvenation. Oh sure, plants, flowers, vegetables and trees, will grow if you plant them in regular dirt, but they certainly won’t thrive. A lot of home gardeners think that they can skimp on the soil amendments simply by adding a little more fertilizer. Trust me, it doesn’t work.
More home gardeners also think improving their garden dirt is tough work. OK, I won’t lie because hauling in soil amendments isn’t fun, but it doesn’t have to be the huge task that you dread.
For one thing, your garden dirt isn’t picky when it comes to getting improved. Any type of soil amendment will do. It can be peat moss, redwood soil conditioner, organic compost, steer manure, mushroom compost, gypsum, milorganite … you get the picture.
About the only limiting factor is that you don’t want to put too much organic matter, such as steer manure or mushroom compost, on at any one time. Too much, with warm weather, can lead to “burning” of plants.
How to buy soil amendments? Well, all of the above are available at any garden center in bags. If your area to improve isn’t that big, buying soil amendments in bags is the way to go. It isn’t that expensive, and it’s not that difficult to haul the bag from your car to the garden.
However, if the area to be improved is large, you’ll save money by buying in bulk from a rockery. Even after the $15 or $20 delivery charge, you’ll come out ahead when you’re buying a dump truck load. One dump truck load is equal to about seven yards of material, or enough to mostly fill a two-car driveway with about 2-feet high of soil. You don’t have to buy seven yards of all one material either. You can buy 1 yard of this, and three yards of that. Go ahead and mix and match to your heart’s delight.
One local rockery has everything from planting mix and organic compost to redwood mulch and “gorilla hair.” The latter is a great way to finish off a new garden bed by providing a nice layer of mulch that not only looks great, but prevents weeds from coming up and prevent evaporation.
I won’t lie to now. It’s not fun, shoveling soil into a wheelbarrow and lugging it to the part of your garden where you need it. Believe me, I’ve lugged hundreds of wheelbarrow fulls of soil amendments in my time. And it’s not exactly fun, digging these amendments into your soil either. You can hand-dig using a shovel or pitchfork, or you can rototill. Tilling the soil with amendments will literally “fluff” it up, making it easier for roots to grow and develop. Not too many people remember that roots need air to grow, too, not just water, fertilizer and sunlight.
Good luck. Your hard work will be rewarded.
Keith Muraoka lives and works in Gilroy. His award-winning column has been in this newspaper since 1984. E-mail him at: ga********@jp*.net, or write him in c/o Morgan Hill Times, P.O. Box 757, Morgan Hill, CA 95038.
