The Natural Life - Chapter 13 - Dirt
You know you came from it, and someday you'll return to it.
Hello Frens!
Welcome back to The Natural Life where I talk about everything on the farm. I’ve decided to deep dive into the garden for a few weeks and today we are talking about Dirt.
“Dirt, you know you came from it, and someday you’ll return to it” Florida Georgia Line
Garden Location
I have to cover garden location first since it goes hand in hand with soil preparation. For garden locations, you want to keep a couple requirements in mind. Sun, Water, and Pests. You want a place that gets full sun at least 75% of the day. Stay away from trees and anything else that might obstruct the sun from reaching your plants. If there is an obstruction you can’t avoid, you will want your garden on the south side of it.
You need water for your garden so unless you plan on watering by bucket or an auxiliary pump, you will need your garden reachable by a garden hose. You can install an underground water supply out to your garden, but it takes time and money. I’ve installed water lines all over my property so if you need help getting started running a water line, shoot me an email or dm and I’m happy to help.
Lastly, you want to keep your garden fairly close to your house. There are a few reasons for this. One, is because you will need to be in your garden at least once a day, the farther it is from your house, the less likely it is that you will enter it and work in it. Second, there are many rodents and pests that will want to eat your plants, keeping it close to your house and human activity will help to reduce furry friends from getting your goods.
Ok now on to Dirt
Farmer is learning that life is really all about data. You can’t make an informed decision without good data. Just as important as a full panel blood test once or twice a year, soil tests are necessary if you want to be successful in the mud out back, lol.
I highly recommend getting a soil test done once a year. You can buy one here, or contact your local agricultural state college extension service. Soil test can be good at helping you decide where to put your garden. Lets say you have a couple different locations you’re thinking about placing the garden and you cant decide, do a soil test in both locations and that will be the determining factor, just pick the location with the best soil test results.
Why do a soil test?
Well, the soil test is going to tell you what nutrients are in the soil, the PH levels, and a few other metrics depending on where you get your test done. This information will help you know what to add to your soil in between seasons so that you can optimize your garden’s performance.
Once you find a spot for your garden, it’s important to know that you are not going to want to move locations. I would recommend staying there instead of moving your garden location each season. The plan is to build up the quality of your soil each season, adding compost, manure, leaves, grass clippings, and many other amendments. Each year your soil should be better than the next using your soil test data and amending as needed based on the results.
Soil Texture
In addition to making sure your soil has optimum nutrient and PH levels, you also want to amend your soil to get the texture right. You want soil that has a nice soft crumbly texture because it will accept water and hold it in for longer without getting water logged. It also allows your plant roots to grow easily, which will produce stronger and healthier plants.
If you have clay type soil or sandy soil, adding plant material will help you get a better consistency. Ever year you will want to save your raked up leaves, grass clippings, old mulch, manure, and other types of plant debris. Simply dump it into your garden area in between plantings. The material will break down over time you will be amazed at the improvement it makes to your soil.
Even if you use raised beds, each year you will want to add amendments to spruce up the soil after a long season. Now is the perfect time to amend your soil right after you pull your old plants and before you plant new ones.
Analyzing a Soil Test
Here is my soil tests from last year. All of the nutrients in your soil are listed and the levels. You can see P, K, MG, S, ZN are all marked H+. This means I do not need to add any of those nutrients to my soil. If some of the items were low, they would be marked L and I would need to add amendments to raise the level.
Autist Note: You can fine tune your garden and provide the exact nutrient levels for a certain plant you might be growing. Different plants require different soil conditions. You can even tell the soil testing agency what plants you are trying to grow, and they will provide you with a detailed amendment list. Here I got them to recommend amendments for growing blueberries. But the recommendations were to add chemical fertilizers and they had no organic alternatives to recommend, so it wasn’t as helpful as I had hoped.
Another important metric on the soil test is PH. Most plants prefer PH levels in the 6.5-7 range. You can see mine is 6.9… Autism Intensifies…
Amendments
There are many different fertilizers, most of them are measured in N-P-K, which is nitrogen, phospherous, and potassium. Here is a list of what each nutrient provides for your garden. I found this in a good online article here.
Nitrogen(N) promotes strong leaf and stem growth and a dark green color, such as desired in broccoli, cabbage, greens and lettuce, and herbs. Add aged manure to the soil and apply alfalfa meal or seaweed, fish, or blood meal to increase available nitrogen.
Phosphorus (P) promotes root and early plant growth, including setting blossoms and developing fruit, and seed formation; it’s important for cucumbers, peppers, squash, tomatoes—any edible that develops after a flower has been pollinated. Add (fast-acting) bonemeal or (slow-release) rock phosphate to increase phosphorus.
Potassium (K) promotes plant root vigor, disease and stress resistance, and enhances flavor; it’s vital for carrots, radishes, turnips, and onions and garlic. Add greensand, wood ashes, gypsum, or kelp to increase potassium.
You may have noticed that Nitrogen is missing from my soil test report. This is because nitrogen levels change quickly in the soil and aren't easy to test accurately. Most soil testing labs only make recommendations on how much nitrogen fertilizer to add based on what your crop needs.
Since my nutrient levels were all in a good range, all I needed to add to my soil this year was nitrogen. A quick google search will show you all of the soil amendments and their nutrient ratios. There aren’t many organic options for adding nitrogen. Blood meal is listed as having the ratio of 13-0-0 which means a high ratio of nitrogen with no P and K. This is exactly what I’m looking for to amend my garden, but good luck finding an inexpensive, easily accessible supplier of blood meal in large quantities.
After searching for a long time, I finally came across this great idea of adding alfalfa pellets to my garden. Since grasses and plants are what they call nitrogen fixers, it makes sense that adding alfalfa grass pellets to your garden would add nitrogen. These are pellets of grass for feeding horses and goats, and it’s super easy to sprinkle out onto your soil and till it in or just let the rain dissolve them and rake or drag the dirt to mix it in. Nitrogen levels fall quickly through evaporation and rain, so you will want to add these to your soil right before planting.
Another way to add nitrogen is to plant certain “cover” crops in between garden seasons. Plants like clover, beans, peas, actually create nitrogen. I’ll plant clover after I pull up my winter garden and till it into the ground in the spring to help add nitrogen.
To finish this up, the last thing is to make sure your PH levels are optimal. There are a few ways to adjust PH levels of soil, one is to add lime. This can be a lot of work since it takes many pounds to make a difference. Also, it doesn’t absorb into the soil easily, you want to do this well ahead of your planting season. Another way is to add ashes, I have a fire pit where we burn leaves and sticks, when the ashes get real high, I scoop them up and dump it in the garden. You want to make sure you don’t burn any plastic since the ashes are going in the garden.
Getting Ready to Plant
Farmer added all of his alfalfa pellets, compost, and lawn debri to the garden over the last few weeks. I just got done tilling it up and this is what it looks like. Next I’ll draw the rows with an attachment on the tractor and then it will be time to plant seeds. I’ll go over every step of the way here. Please comment, and let me know if you have any questions.
Until next time remember, We all gone make it.
Your Fren,
Farmer
Good info here. I have an above ground pool that we no longer use. Apparently turning these into gardens is a thing. Have you heard about this? I'd need to bring in a bunch of soil to fill the bottom, but it'd be safe from deer and other critters.
This is giving me PTSD about soil classification labs from my geotech courses.