There is a good chance that if you are not finding pleasure in your yard, the plants you try to grow won't find any either. The thing that will make your plants happy is also the thing that will turn your yard work into gardening--SOIL. If working with your soil is a pleasure, chances are it will be reflected in the growth and vitality of your garden. What you do in your garden in the month of March just might mean the difference between gardening and doing yard work for another year. Conditioning your soil will make the garden experience more pleasurable and your flowers and vegetables will be happier too.
The ideal soil is sometimes referred to as, loamy. This means it is a balanced mix of sand, silt [humus or organics] and clay.
Heavy, or clay, soils are lacking either sand or humus or both and tend to bind nutrients in an insoluble state. Sandy soils are low in humus and clay and nutrients tend to leach out quickly. A quick and easy test to determine your soil's texture can be done by simply taking a handful of moist soil and squeezing it into a ball. If the soil ball holds its shape when you open your hand but still crumbles easily, then your soil is more or less well balanced. If the ball does not crumble you have too much clay. If it will not hold its shape there is too much sand and/or silt.
Silt, aka humus or compost, is often thought of as the fix-all. It will loosen heavy soil and will also add substance to sandy soil. However, humus alone is a short term remedy and needs to be added annually even to well balanced soil. By adding sand to clay soil and clay to sandy soil you achieve a more long term fix and the humus becomes a treat for the soil and the plants and makes cultivating a pleasure rather than a chore.
Nutrients are often plentiful but not available in poor soils. By amending the soil closer to the ideal, nutrients are not necessarily added, but they are made soluble and therefore available to the plants. Fertilizers and fertilization is another topic that becomes important a little later in the season.
March is our transition month. I love to watch the snow melt away to reveal the anxious Daffodils and Tulips. By the 31st the soil is beginning to show its potential.
I love to cultivate and turn the soil, but I have to be patient and wait for the spring flowers to show themselves so I don't inadvertently chop them out.
A little bit of effort in March creating well balanced soil will yield a season of gardening and a harvest of many pleasures.
People often ask me how many hours I spend working in my yard. That is a hard question to answer since I don't think of my gardening as work in the typical sense. I spend far less time than what most people imagine. I have found that gardening takes much less effort not much more time than the less appealing "yard work."
Happy March everyone!
Silt, aka humus or compost, is often thought of as the fix-all. It will loosen heavy soil and will also add substance to sandy soil. However, humus alone is a short term remedy and needs to be added annually even to well balanced soil. By adding sand to clay soil and clay to sandy soil you achieve a more long term fix and the humus becomes a treat for the soil and the plants and makes cultivating a pleasure rather than a chore.
Nutrients are often plentiful but not available in poor soils. By amending the soil closer to the ideal, nutrients are not necessarily added, but they are made soluble and therefore available to the plants. Fertilizers and fertilization is another topic that becomes important a little later in the season.
March is our transition month. I love to watch the snow melt away to reveal the anxious Daffodils and Tulips. By the 31st the soil is beginning to show its potential.
A little bit of effort in March creating well balanced soil will yield a season of gardening and a harvest of many pleasures.
People often ask me how many hours I spend working in my yard. That is a hard question to answer since I don't think of my gardening as work in the typical sense. I spend far less time than what most people imagine. I have found that gardening takes much less effort not much more time than the less appealing "yard work."
Happy March everyone!
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