Improving your garden soil organically is essential for creating a thriving, sustainable garden, especially if you want to plant a variety of gorgeous plants, fruits, or vegetables. Without decent soil, no amount of planning, garden design or care will matter. Your gardens will struggle to succeed.
The sad fact is that with new-build gardens in particular, home builders often ignore soil quality, leaving you with less-than-desirable garden soil. In fact, some of the soil I've had to work with can barely be called soil; it's more clay and rubble!
However, there are tricks to help improve this, such as making planting more successful and reducing the amount of hard work digging. Nurturing the soil provides a strong foundation for your plants to grow and flourish. Over time, you can help improve and enrich it for the benefit of wildlife and your garden design skills.
Here's a detailed guide to help you transform your garden soil organically, Garden Ninja style!
Soil is a living, breathing organism and should be treated as the most precious resource in your garden. After all, it gives life and sustains all your plants, trees, shrubs and wildlife.
Before you start, it's crucial to understand the type of soil you have. By understanding the soil, you can work out its characteristics, which then informs you what plant types you can grow and the areas your soil lacks in. Each of the three main soil types has different attributes. Soil can be sandy, clay, silt, or a perfect mix, loamy, but if you already have perfect soil, you won't be reading this guide!
Soil texture refers to the size and arrangement of soil particles and greatly influences water retention, aeration, and root penetration.
| Soil Type | Attributes |
|---|---|
| Sandy Soil | - Large, coarse particles - Drains quickly - Low in nutrients - Warms up quickly in spring - Prone to drying out |
| Silty Soil | - Medium-sized, smooth particles - Retains moisture better than sandy soil - More nutrients than sandy soil - Easily compacted - Feels silky when wet |
| Clay Soil | - Small, fine particles - Retains water well - High in nutrients - Drains slowly - Can be heavy and hard to work with |
Understanding your soil type can help you adapt your approach to improving it. For example, clay soil will need more drainage than sandy soil, but sandy soil needs far more food to sustain plants. If you don't know what soil type, you're left guessing to a degree, but even without knowing your soil type, adding organic matter, which we discuss further, will help all soil types.
Conduct a simple soil test by lifting a handful of soil out with a trowel to determine its composition. Squeeze it together, and you can roughly find out what soil type it is by the following:
This knowledge will help you choose the right soil amendments, improvements and treatments.
Organic matter is the cornerstone of healthy soil and will improve nearly all soil types. It improves soil structure, enhances nutrient content, and boosts water retention by helping to open up the soil structure and providing slow-release feed for plants.
Here are some great sources of organic matter:
You may be wondering how adding organic matter improves soil, or you've seen us TV gardeners talk about it all the time. So, let's delve a bit deeper into how organic matter improves the content and structure of your soil.
Organic compost, leaf mould or manure helps improve the soil by providing the following soil benefits:
Organic matter acts as a binding agent, helping to aggregate soil particles into stable clumps or "peds." These aggregates create a crumbly texture, improving the soil's overall structure. This improved structure enhances water infiltration, reduces surface crusting, and promotes deeper root growth.
Organic matter increases the soil's ability to retain water, which is crucial for plant health, especially during dry periods. When added to sandy soils, organic matter fills the large pores between sand particles, holding more water and making it available to plant roots. This improved water retention reduces the frequency of irrigation, conserving water and promoting a more resilient garden.
This is the most significant benefit for clay soil sufferers! In clay soils, organic matter helps to break up compacted clays, improving drainage and aeration. Organic particles create spaces between clay particles, preventing the soil from becoming waterlogged and poorly aerated. This leads to healthier root systems and reduces the risk of root diseases caused by excessive moisture.
Well-aerated soil is essential for healthy plant roots and beneficial microorganisms. Organic matter helps to create a loose and friable soil texture that allows air to circulate freely around roots. This oxygen-rich environment supports root respiration and the activity of soil-dwelling organisms that decompose organic matter, releasing nutrients for plant uptake.
A healthy population of soil organisms is critical for maintaining good soil texture. Earthworms, for example, thrive in organic-rich soils, where they burrow and create channels that improve soil aeration and drainage. Microbes break down organic matter, releasing sticky substances that help bind soil particles into aggregates. These processes collectively enhance soil texture and fertility.
Organic matter helps to protect the soil surface from erosion by wind and water. It enhances soil cohesion, making it more resistant to being washed or blown away. A stable soil structure with good texture reduces the risk of nutrient loss and soil degradation, promoting long-term soil health and sustainability.
Organic matter can act as a buffer, moderating soil pH and creating a more balanced environment for plant growth. As organic matter decomposes, it releases humic acids that can neutralize both acidic and alkaline soils, bringing the pH closer to a neutral range where most plants thrive. This improved pH balance further enhances nutrient availability and soil texture.
Organic matter is a reservoir of nutrients, including nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and trace minerals. As it decomposes, these nutrients are slowly released into the soil, providing a steady supply for plants. The improved soil texture ensures that these nutrients are evenly distributed and readily accessible to plant roots.
Mulching helps retain soil moisture, suppress weeds, and add organic matter as it breaks down into the soil. Mulch is any material placed on top of the soil to surround the plant. It helps lock in moisture and prevent weeds from germinating as quickly. It's the gardener's secret weapon!
Use organic mulches like straw, wood chips, grass clippings, or shredded leaves. Apply a thick inch layer of mulch around your plants in early spring or autumn to help feed them and improve the soil as beneficial bacteria, earthworms, and insects break down the mulch. Thus, mulching helps aerate and improve the soil structure.
No-dig gardening is a revolutionary approach that minimizes soil disturbance, creating a thriving ecosystem in your garden. Instead of tilling or digging, you add layers of organic matter on top of the soil. This method fosters a healthy soil structure teeming with beneficial microbes and earthworms and enhances nutrient availability.
By leaving the soil undisturbed, you maintain its natural structure and promote the activity of beneficial organisms. This approach improves soil health and reduces weeds, as a thick layer of mulch smothers them and curtails their growth. Additionally, organic layers improve the soil’s ability to retain moisture, reducing the need for frequent watering. No-dig gardening also saves time and effort, eliminating the need for back-breaking digging. Simply layering compost, mulch, and organic matter nourishes your soil effectively.
It goes without saying that large chunks of brick, stone, plastic, or rubble will not be good for your plants. So, it is vital to work through the soil before adding improvements to remove these. If you have a newly built garden or are renovating one, keep a sieve to remove stones and rubbish from parts of the garden. While it will take time, it is better to remove these before improving the soil, if possible.
When planting new plants in my garden, I always have a bucket with me for any bits of rock or plastic waste I come across. Then they either get recycled or placed in the appropriate bin! It's also worth noting that the old practice of adding gravel to the soil to help aerate it has been disproven and is a poor alternative to simply adding peat-free compost to break up the soil.
Supplement your soil with organic fertilizers when growing crops or demanding hungry plants like Roses or vegetables. These feeds usually act far faster than compost mulches alone. Imagine your vegetables are like rockets that need super fuel to put on all that growth rapidly. This is where liquid feeds come in to help boost plant growth without taking months to have an effect.
These organic feeds help provide essential nutrients for your plants and garden. Options include:
Avoid chemical plant feeds as these tend to burn plants if applied incorrectly or leach out of the soil when it rains. At the same time, the above organic fertilizers, such as bone meal or comfrey tea, are slower to be released and stay in the soil structure more effectively than man-made versions, which can easily be misapplied.
One of the biggest problems with soil quality is that gear gardeners trample and compact it by walking on it too frequently. Treat soil as a precious resource and only walk on it when absolutely necessary. This helps prevent heavy feet from squishing the soil together and compacting it, causing it to pool water and become difficult to work with.
If needed, use long-handled weeders or hoes to avoid walking through the borders and mulch each spring and autumn to keep the soil structure light and airy. Try to keep walking to a minimum or add stepping stones if you must walk through the border to prune, plant or mulch.
You've been amazed at how healthy, non-compacted soil teems with beneficial microbes that break down organic matter and release nutrients. Encourage microbial activity by:
Water-logged soil is another issue that impacts soil health and the quality of the growing media for your plants. When soil becomes compacted, such as walking on it or from builders when houses are new, the water that falls or collects on the soil gets stuck there. This causes the soil to flood and the air pockets in between the soil particles, such as sand, clay, or silt, to get saturated.
Waterlogged soil can lead to anaerobic conditions, accumulating toxic substances such as hydrogen sulfide and methane. These can harm plant roots and reduce soil health. That eggy smell is caused by ammonia building up or rotten plant tissue.
Other issues with water-logged soil:
The best way to improve water-logged or compacted soil is, yes, you've guessed it, adding organic matter and avoiding walking or overworking the soil. There are a few other means to improve soil structure and improve compaction.
Many bloggers and gardens write about adding perlite, sand, or grit to open up the soil. However, this is only a temporary measure and just forces the water elsewhere. Grit and sand are a good option if you're using land drains or French drains to move water away from your garden and into a drain, but they are not the best idea just to add to a flower bed to try and improve the soil.
Adding grit won't magically move the water away. It just pushes it into other areas, making them even more water-logged! Instead, add leaf mould or even chipped bark to help open up the structure.
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Improving your soil structure is probably the best step you can take, especially with new gardens, to help improve your success rates in gardening. Plants will thrive in soil that is airy, full of well-broken-down organic matter, and allows water to move quickly through it without becoming waterlogged.
Improving soil is not an overnight activity. Creating perfect soil will take a few years of consistent work, whether mulching or adding organic matter, leaving the soil to break down these additives naturally. Beware of immediate soil fixers or man-made soil improvers; most of the time, these are just fast-acting fertilizers which soon leach out of the soil. By following these steps, you can improve your garden soil organically, creating a vibrant and sustainable garden. Embrace the Garden Ninja approach and watch your plants thrive!
Happy Gardening!
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