Understanding your soil

Understanding Your Soil

Understanding your soil type and exploring its possibilities is critical to what you will be able to grow in your garden. Working with your soil and protecting it against the elements is crucial to developing a successful garden.

Working in harmony with the conditions of your site will ultimately make your life easier. Don't try to fight the natural environment; it will require less maintenance in the long run. You can really lean into the different soils on a site and enjoy the different habitats they create.

However, good soil health is the foundation of a successful garden, and any time invested in improving soil health is well spent.

Where I can, I prefer to work with the natural conditions and adjust my planting accordingly. But if this becomes too limiting to the landscape, I will work to improve a soil by adjusting its composition.

Clay Soil

• You will be able to pick this up in your hand and mould it easily into a ball that keeps its shape
• Not free draining and tends to therefore hold too much water
• Takes time to warm up in the spring, and can bake in the summer which leads to cracking
• Potentially fertile, as nutrients can bind to the clay minerals

Loam Soil

• Combination of clay and sandy soil, this is the ideal. You can roll it into a ball, but also break it down easily in your hand
• Free-draining
• Easily worked
• Fertile

Sandy Soil

• Tends to be a very loose soil and crumbles easily. Can be the easiest to work with as it's light and mobile
• Drains quickly
• Warms up quickly in the spring, but can dry out quickly too
• Nutrients often get washed away, making it less fertile

You can adjust the composition of your soil and make it healthier by adding organic matter, mulching or feeding with manure and compost.

• A heavy clay soil can be made more open and free-draining
• A loose sandy soil can be made more absorbent
• A kitchen-garden soil can be made more nutritious with compost
• A hot or dry soil can retain moisture better with a layer of mulch

The foundation of a good garden is understanding the soils; working with them; nurturing them when they're being gardened; and planting appropriately to the existing conditions.

Testing a Soils pH Level

A simple way to assess the pH level of a soil is to look at what is growing locally. Rhododendrons, for example, thrive in acidic soil, whereas Scabious can be a sign of limestone within the soil.

A soil-testing kit is a quick and easy way to find out if your soil is acid, neutral or alkaline. The extremes of the pH spectrum are more difficult to garden in, while the middle zones around neutral offer the best gardening conditions.

Choosing Responsive Plants

If it's your own garden, you can take time to trial certain plants to see how they grow in the soil conditions. You can fasttrack the process by opting for trial plants that respond quickly.

Mulching

Mulch is a layer of organic matter that you can apply to the top of a soil to:

• Save and conserve moisture levels in a soil
• Prevent self-seeding plants such as weeds from taking root
• Provide added nutrients

Even on a good soil, mulch is a great additional organic layer to hold moisture in and protect it from the elements. The soil is one of the most important aspects of a garden, and you need to work with it and protect it.

I mulch immediately after I cut the garden back, around the end of February or early March, just before the bulbs come up and everything starts springing back into life.

It can be layered on year after year to keep your soil healthy.