Improving Garden Soils, Naturally

Today's grocery shelves and home pantries are adding more organic, natural, and locally-grown foods to the dinner table. Many people are also looking for other ways to further their sustainability goals and help conserve community resources.

Home gardens and backyard landscapes are a great place to start! Many natural garden practices and products can help reduce water use, recycle materials that might otherwise end up in the landfills, and enrich the environment – all the while growing beautiful flowers, healthy shrubs, yummy vegetables, and deep green lawns.

Because the soil is the very foundation of the garden, the improvements we make there pay big dividends throughout the seasons. Organic matter is a versatile workhorse in the garden. It improves the water-holding ability of sandy or gravelly soils, so you get better results with less watering. Organic matter also helps sticky, dense, often soggy clay soils. It gets in between those packed particles, creating channels for water to drain through and letting air reach plant roots.

When organic matter is mixed with soils, water is absorbed into the soil more quickly. Whether from natural rainfall or from sprinklers and hoses, the water ends up in the root zone, where plants can use it. When the soil cannot soak up water quickly enough, that water may wash off lawns and landscapes into storm drains and creeks, often taking plant food, garden chemicals, and even soil with it. So, adding organic matter not only helps your plants, but helps protect waterways, too.

And, organic matter doesn't stop there, either. It provides a rich food source for the helpful soil microbes that go on to make nutrients available to plant roots, reduce the impact of soil diseases, and increase a plant's ability to thrive in drought conditions.

You can start building up the organic matter in your soil at any time, year-round. Whenever you plant, think about enriching the planting bed. Cover the area with a couple of inches of a good, organic soil amendment. Mix it in well with shovel or tiller. Then plant.

Even when planting a single plant, improve as large an area as you can. This encourages the plant roots to spread way out into the soil, where they can get all the water and nutrients they need.

You can also enhance the soils in permanent beds of perennials or shrubs. Over time, a mulch of good organic matter or garden soil will be slowly worked into the soil by worms and broken down by other soil critters.

Compost is a great soil amendment, and making your own compost from leaves and yard clippings collected around the yard or around the neighborhood is a fun project. Bins can be home-made or store-bought. A home composting system can be quite simple or somewhat more demanding. For more information on home composting, check out our OSH Composting How-To at /Cultures/en-US/Projects/GardenNursery/Project+Composting.htm

For gardeners with less time or space available, well-made commercial composts and garden soils are available, as well. Miracle Gro Organic Choice Garden Soil contains organic matter from forest and farm, composted for long-lasting soil improvement, plus added natural nutrients from pasteurized chicken litter. For more information about building your soil with organic amendments, visit http://www.miraclegro-organics.com.

Building a rich soil that captures and holds water while encouraging flowers, vegetables, and shrubs alike is a great way to do something for yourself and improve the environment we all live in.