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While it’s not growing time yet, its most certainly planning time. One of the best things to improve before the growing season is your soil.
Your soil is the most important part of a successful garden. So let’s look at 5 tips for powering up your soil.
Add Organic Material
Every year, you need to add some things to your soil. You need to add material that will keep the soil moist and fight compaction.
You will also want to add something like earthworm castings or mushroom compost to boost the vitality of that soil.
Compost
Making your own compost is such an important part of a self-sustaining garden.
You are going to quickly find that your leaves, grass, and food scraps will give you all you need to have a great garden.
Compost-topped raised beds are about as ready to go as it gets. Compost is the key to a strong garden.
Unco Industries WWSB30LB Builder Worm Castings, 30 lb. Compost, Soil, 30-Pound
FCMP Outdoor IM4000 Tumbling Composter, 37 Gallon, Black
Protect it in the Cold
The bitter freezing cold is hard on your soil and the microbiology therein. This is why most people opt to cover their raised beds through the cold winter months. It’s a great practice.
The sun can also damage your soil during the winter, too! With nothing to absorb that light, it can punish all the goodies that are hiding inside the soil.
We have to protect our soil when we are not growing in it.
Let it Be!
For years it seemed like tilling the soil was the best method. Now it seems that leaving that soil along and letting it become a mass of various fungi, bugs, dirt, and decomposing materials is the way to go.
Don’t fall victim to this idea that you need to rip up the ground around you in order to grow food in it.
Use Cover Crops
If you decide that you aren’t going to be growing in a certain bed than you should look at planting cover crops in that bed. If you really sucked the life out of a bed growing nightshades like tomatoes and peppers, you should grow cover crops.
These crops will add nitrogen to your soil and will also protect your soil from erosion. Some great cover crops are red clover and buckwheat.
