What’s going on everyone? I’m just here cleaning up my garden, getting ready for spring, and in today’s episode, we’re going to talk all about amending your soil. We’re going to talk about some steps that you can take to get your soil to what you want it to be, but also, we’re going to talk about some mistakes that I see a lot of gardeners making, as well as some different soil amendments that are available to you and what they can do for your soil. With that, let’s get going.
So, when it comes to amending your soil, there are three different ways to amend your soil. Amending your soil basically means fixing, and so if you’re targeting a certain texture, targeting a certain pH, or targeting a certain level of fertility, those are all going to be things you’re going to be fixing within your soil. Essentially, what we can do is we can break it down by those three categories. We can look at those three categories, and there are many different products available, as well as things we can do to get to that target.
You might want to amend your soil for a whole variety of reasons. If you’re growing something like blueberries, you’re going to want to amend your soil to have a very acidic pH. In that case, you’re going to be amending the pH of your soil, but you might not want to touch the different other parts. Like, you might not want to adjust the fertility, and you might not need to adjust the texture, just tweak the pH a little bit. You might also want to adjust the overall fertility of your soil. If you’re growing something like spinach, lettuce, or kale, your leafy greens which take a ton of nitrogen, you may want to make sure that you have enough nitrogen to account for that growth when other crops may not need it as much. So, in those cases, you’re going to be adjusting the fertility.
Based on the crops that you’re growing or the conditions that you have and what you’re looking for, it’s really important that you understand that. Because if you just let your garden be, you’re going to do pretty good in most cases. A well-amended garden for just overall texture and overall fertility is going to do pretty good. But if you want great, that’s where you have to start targeting different things and knowing how to adjust your soil to meet what you’re growing.
So, when it comes to amending your pH, that’s what we’re going to talk about first. This bed right here, we’re going to be growing some brassicas in, so it needs a little bit of lime. Now, lime is going to make your soil slightly more alkaline. This soil right here has a pH of around six. How I got that was through a really simple soil test. All I did was I simply took a little scoop of soil from about four different spots of the garden, I mixed it up in a jar of water, and I went over to my pool supply store and I picked up some pH test strips. Those litmus test strips, I just dunked it in the water after it settled, and I was able to tell that my soil was still slightly acidic from last year. So, to fix that because we’re going to be growing our cabbages and broccoli in here and they prefer a slightly alkaline soil, what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to be adding dolomitic lime. Now, you could amend with something like dolomitic lime, you could also mend with something like wood ash. Wood ash, lime, they’re all slightly alkaline. Now, let’s say I was growing something like potatoes here and I had a pH of six. I could grow potatoes in a pH of six, but knowing the pH that potatoes like, they like a slightly lower pH, a slightly more acidic soil of around 5 to 5.5. And because of that, if you just throw them in a pH of six, they’re not going to be able to uptake all the nutrients, but also you run a higher chance of them forming what’s called scab, and that’s basically a disease that affects your potatoes. So, if I was growing potatoes here, I would want to use something like sulfur.
The thing about amending your soil is that you don’t want to amend it too much. We can’t just dump on things like lime, we can’t just dump on things like rock dust or wood ash because if we dump those things on, we could over-amend, we could make the soil far too alkaline, and that becomes a problem as well. So, always follow the directions on your bag. For a bed like this, I have just found that if my soil is right around 6.0 and I want to get closer to a 7 to a 7.5 for growing my brassicas, I’m going to apply about two cups every 10 square feet or so, and that gets me to that sweet spot. Typically, what’s really nice is you have a window. That window, I’m not going to go higher than 7.5, so I’m not going to need more than that. And in most cases, a 6.5 to a 7.5, it’s such a small window that moving the pH one point doesn’t take all that much. And so, it’s not like it’s going to be a massive jump, and if you were to apply less, it’s not like it’s going to be the end of the world. It will change the pH, it will alter the pH, which will be a benefit, and some benefit is better than not amending at all. So, that is this bed right here. We got this bed ready to go for some brassicas, which I’m super pumped about. Now, we’re going to talk about the next type of amending, which is amending for fertility.
So now, we’re going to talk about fertility. This is probably the most common form of amending you’re going to be doing. When it comes to fertility, it’s really based on the type of crops you’re growing. So, if I was using this bed as an example, I know that brassicas use a lot of nitrogen. And generally, if I’ve let this bed go from the previous season, I haven’t done a ton of amending to it, it more than likely could use a little bit of nitrogen. Nitrogen usually is lost through the soil first because a lot of your water-soluble nitrogen will leave the soil through a process called leaching. That’s just where rain and snow melt, they take with it the nitrogen and they carry it out of the soil. So, if we’re going to be amending just for nitrogen, you could use something like alfalfa pellets. That works out really great, and ultimately, you’re going to cover your soil with that and they’re going to break down. Alfalfa pellets have been fermented and compressed into a pellet, so there’s very little weed seeds, there’s a ton of nitrogen, and that’s basically all there is. Now, you could also use something like blood meal. Blood meal is going to give you the nitrogen, but not as much phosphorus or potassium, so it’s really focusing on the nitrogen. Now, you could also use something
like an all-purpose fertilizer like Trifecta. Right now, I’d only use something like an all-purpose fertilizer when I’m ready to plant, and that’s because this is very concentrated and you’re going to lose a lot of that benefit through the next month or two before you’re actually getting plants in the ground. So, I would hold off on amending with a very heavy fertilizer. But if you’re just doing a gentle amending for fertility, something like these alfalfa pellets can be awesome. You can also apply something like worm castings, which is very gentle. So, 1 0 0, that means it’s got 1% available nitrogen, 0% phosphorus, and 0% potassium, and so it’s going to be very, very gentle, but it will do some amending, which is going to overall fix the soil, make it slightly more high in nitrogen, which is going to be great for growing our brassicas.
Now, the next form of fertility is going to be trace minerals. Now, trace minerals are really important to your garden. If you’re not amending your trace minerals over time, your plants are going to suffer. And the crazy thing is they’re not going to suffer in a way that they would if they were missing something like nitrogen, which is the leaves turn very yellow, or phosphorus where the leaves might turn more red, or potassium where the leaves might kind of brown around the edges and get kind of burnt looking. They’re going to look a whole lot worse because micronutrient deficiencies are not something you could really identify very quickly, and it’s generally something that’s more chronic. It’s something that really just kind of plagues the plant the whole life, and they always kind of lag behind. So, trace minerals are found in every bit of soil that we work with. The unfortunate reality, though, is that most modern soils are depleted of a lot of trace minerals because we’ve only focused on the main three macronutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. And the problem with doing that is because there’s such an emphasis on those three main nutrients, oftentimes your trace minerals get neglected. You see, if you have something like a tree that has deep roots that go deep down into the soil, it’s able to tap into those trace minerals and bring them back up in the form of leaves. And then the leaves drop to the ground and those trace minerals are then brought back to the surface of the soil. But if you’re in a standard American track home and all you have is grass around you, you could be using compost, you could be using your own compost from your own compost pile, and it’s still going to be depleted in a lot of those trace minerals because those trace minerals are just not as abundant on the surface as they are had you had something like leaves, or if you’re to use kelp, right? Or you can use something like this azomite. Azomite is a ground glacial rock dust. It’s ancient rock that contains over 70 different trace minerals. I absolutely love using azomite. It’s not something that you need to use, but it’s very convenient. If you want an all-in-one, azomite is what I choose to use and it couldn’t be simpler. The finer you go, the faster it’s going to be acting because it takes some time for it to weather and degrade and be taken up by beneficial bacteria and fungi. I’ll tell you what, I love this pelletized simply because it’s low dust, it’s very safe to use, you’re not having to wear a dust mask if you use this pelletized. Every single year, and you use a little bit, I only use about 2 lbs per 50 square ft, it builds up in the soil because one thing that someone will tell you that I don’t really prefer is that you need to use it all the time, every time. The thing is, if you’re using it on a regular basis and you’re using a small amount of it, it doesn’t all go away right away. Trace minerals, they can stay in your soil far longer than other minerals, like your nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. So, because those ones leave your soil much faster, people say, you know, use a ton of it, right? Use a ton of it. Those are generally the people that either are trying to sell you on it or don’t know what they’re talking about. I find that generally, it takes about 2 years for a pelletized azomite to fully break down and become plant available, and so you have many seasons where that’s going to be breaking down. So, if you make it a part of your seasonal routine in the spring and the fall to apply a little bit, a little bit goes a long way, and it builds up in your soil. And then over time, your plants are going to benefit from it.
So, if you remember not too long ago, we planted in this bed some root crops and some other early spring crops like lettuce and spinach. In the parts of the bed where we’re planting our root crops like carrots and radishes, we want to be really careful not to overapply nutrients. A lot of times, people make a mistake of applying fertilizer to their whole bed, or they put a lot of nitrogen down and then they wonder why their radishes form beautiful tops but very small roots or they’re very forked and wiry. That’s because of too much nutrients, and it’s really important that you understand, like I said, what you’re planting and the needs of that plant. Because in the case of a lot of root crops, too much nitrogen can actually be a bad thing. So, what we did was we amended the soil generally with a lot of compost. Compost is just a very gentle fertilizer. It’s got a lot of food, a lot of nutrients, a lot of trace minerals as well from all those leaves that have been broken down, but it’s not really crazy high in anything. And so, we did use a little bit of Trifecta over the parts of the bed that had our leafy greens, but we left out that fertilizer in the parts that had the root crops because we don’t want to overstimulate that growth and end up with small root development. We want to focus more on the really beautiful roots like in carrots and radishes.
Now, the final thing we’re going to talk about is amending for texture. And this is really simple. If your soil is very heavy clay, you’re going to want to loosen that because heavy soil holds onto too much water, it suffocates root development, and it ends up being really bad. Now, if you’re trying to amend to make your soil drain really well and you’re growing something like carrots and you want nice deep roots, you may want to consider adding a little bit of sand or adding a little bit of perlite. You can absolutely do that. Now, generally what I always recommend for a bed in our case here where we’re going to be putting our brassicas, this bed tends to be a little bit compacted because we haven’t fully amended this soil yet for its texture. And so, what I would recommend is just some compost. We make our own compost. We’ll take you over there in a second, but this soil here, this soil here is really, really nice. It’s very nice.
The only thing that it’s lacking is organic material, and that organic material can have a tendency to leave your soil over time as it weathers and breaks down and it ends up kind of turning into stuff that can get a little bit, even though the color looks great, it can get a little bit compacted. And that’s not great for root development. So, let’s take a trip over to our compost pile. We’ll finish up now.
This is our own compost. We made this from things like yard waste, grass clippings, leaf mulch, food scraps from the kitchen. It has all been broken down, and this stuff looks absolutely incredible. The sheer amount of worms in here is mind-blowing. Now, this was really hot as of about 6 months ago. And what this will do for your soil’s texture is it will add moisture-holding capabilities, nutrient-holding capabilities. It will also add some nutrients. It’s a really gentle fertilizer which your plants will love, but it also will help to break up your soil and keep it from compacting. And I can tell you what, our soil is going to be amazing once we add this into our garden. But I hope you guys enjoyed. I hope you all learned something new. If you have any questions, post them down in the comments box down below. Again, I know this is kind of a surface level soil amending article, but I can safely say that this is where a lot of gardeners make mistakes. And if you know how to mend your soil properly, you know the right things to do and what to add, you can really take your garden from a pretty good garden to an absolutely amazing garden. So, I hope you guys enjoyed.
