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Fertile Soil

One organic vegetable gardening strategy that is very important is to create rich, fertile soil to provide the best possible growing conditions for healthy, tasty vegetables and great yields. Soil fertility is best when essential nutrients are available to your plants and when the humus levels are at 5% or more.

Humus is the stable decomposed remains of plant tissue – a product of composted vegetable matter. The cellulose in humus acts like a sponge and holds moisture in fertile soil, available for growing plants, creating better drought tolerance. It has a water-holding capacity of up to five times its own weight.
Humus helps prevent water-soluble nutrients from being leached from the soil via watering or rainfall by binding itself to the nutrients, but at the same time making them available to plant roots.
It helps bring about a loose, crumbly structure in heavy clay soils, while allowing free drainage during excessive rain; and provides cohesion in sandy soils.
So you see that humus is really the best way to overcome whatever problems you may have with your soil. Humus is also necessary to maintain healthy levels of essential soil organisms, fungi, bacteria and earthworms – they are essential for creating rich, fertile soil

Get To Know Your Soil.

Sandy soils

Sandy soil has large, freely draining particles. Any nutrients present are leached by watering and/or rainfall.
You need to apply to the surface or dig in large amounts of humus to retain water and provide nutrients. All organic matter breaks down over time, so sandy soils will benefit from a large amount of compost, which will need replacing regularly. Always mulch well to reduce evaporation. A 20cm (4 inch) layer of mulch can reduce evaporation by up to 70%, giving you more fertile soil.

Non-Wetting Soils

Sandy soils can become non-wetting soils, where any amount of irrigation will just run across the surface. If your soil is like this, you will need to add copious amounts of organic matter to correct this problem. Another solution is to apply a soil conditioner or wetting agent. Then add compost and a layer of mulch. Over time, keep adding more organic matter to your soil, and your soil will improve.

Clay soils

Clay soils are made up of tiny particles. It will hold water well, but the spaces between the soil particles are so small, there’s neither room for air, or space for water to escape. Clay soils tend to become boggy in wet weather, and dry out and crack in hot, dry weather. Clay soils often have high reserves of mineral elements, but roots are unable to mine them from the clay.
Gypsum is a well known clay breaker. Dig it into the soil for good effect. The clay will become friable and can then be made more workable by incorporating river sand and organic matter to create rich, fertile soil. You may want to build raised beds to increase drainage, which is very important to most plants – especially vegetables.

Test Your Soil

Most soils are somewhere between the two extreme soil conditions above. A very simple, but effective way to test your soil is to use a glass jar. Add a handful of your soil, fill it with water and shake vigorously. Let it stand for a few hours until all the suspended materials have settled. You will see quite distinct layers. Course sand will be the lowest layer, then finer sands, silts, clays and lastly organic matter.
A good garden loam will have approximate equal proportions of clay, sands and silt, with a good percentage of humus or organic matter.

Another simple test you can do is this: first, take a handful of your soil, close your hand around it and compress it in your hand a little. If it doesn’t hold its shape and crumbles without any outside force, your sand ratio is probably a little high. If you poke the compressed ball with your finger and it doesn’t fall apart easily, your soil contains too much clay. Your soil is ideal if you can compress it, then release the pressure of your fingers and it stays in a ball, but if you poke it, the ball falls apart.

Fertile soil needs the right pH

To create rich, fertile soil the acidity or alkalinity of your soil is also an important consideration. Most vegetables need a neutral to slightly acidic soil, with a pH of about 6.5. If your soil pH isn’t right, then some nutrients will be unavailable to your plants.
You can buy a pH testing kit at your local nursery or hardware store– they are very easy to use.
Some plants prefer to grow in more acidic soils, such as blueberries, strawberries, camellias, azaleas and rhododendrons – around pH 5.5.
Others can tolerate growing in more alkaline soils, such as peas, pumpkins, cucumbers, squash and members of the cabbage family – up to around pH7.5. To make your soil more alkaline, you can add wood ash, limestone or dolomite to the area.
I recommend having a few dedicated areas of your vegetable garden to cater for the specific needs of these plants if you want to grow them successfully. Otherwise you can grow some in containers that you can use potting mix specifically for that type of plant. If you’re growing acid loving plants in pots, you can add coffee grounds (cold), pine needles or mushroom compost as mulch.

The really great news is that no matter what kind of soil you are starting with, there are ways to greatly improve your soil. The more organic matter you include the easier it is to create rich, fertile soil. Continued addition of compost and other organic materials to your garden beds will correct nearly every kind of soil problem. Even your pH levels will eventually balance out over time.

Do you have any great tips for creating rich, fertile soil? Let us know in the comments below. 🙂

Warm regards,