Have To Improve Your Soil Conditions

User Rating: / 0
PoorBest 

Soil Conditions And What To Do To Improve Them

Poor soil conditions can sabotage your organic gardening efforts before you even get started.  First you will have to go get a soil sample from your garden and take it some place to get tested. (There are several places that will do this for you for free.  make sure you take your soil sample correctly.)  Once you know what your soil is like, you can use the solutions below to fix the soil problems in your garden while keeping it organic.  Most of the materials needed are available all around you.

Here are some tips on what to do if your gardens ph, nitrogen or potassium levels are off.

Low ph - The acid of your soil is too low.  Add lime or wood ash.

High ph - Your soil acid is too high or alkaline. To lower your soil’s ph add elemental sulphur, cottonseed meal, or gypsum.

Low Nitrogen - Your garden needs fertilizer!  Add manure, green or aged animal, hoof or horn meal, fish meal or cottonseed meal.

High Nitrogen - Your garden has too much fertilizer!  Don’t add anymore and water frequently.

Low Phosphorous - Add wood ashes, cottonseed meal, bonemeal, fish meal, or rock phosphate.

High Phosphorous - Once again you might have too much fertilizer!  plants will eventually eat up the excess so make sure you plant a lot of plants or make sure you do some good succession planting.

Low Potassium - Add manure, potash, wood ash, dried and cleaned seaweed, cottonseed meal or fish meal

High Potassium - Fertilize with phosphorous and nitrogen rich and avoid potassium rich fertilizer for up to two years

Poor Drainage - If your soil is think and dense with clay it won’t drain well or absorb water properly. If your soil is too sandy it won’t hold water it won’t hold nutrients either.  Mix in peat moss and compost until you get a better texture to your growing area.

How to take soil sample from your garden.

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed