Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 23
Amending Soil
I've shoveled a lot of soil and compost in my time. I quite enjoy it. Moving rocks is no
fun, but soil is easy. When I was a professional gardener, I would often bring two to four
yards of compost into a backyard for a new garden installation, 10-20 big wheelbarrow
loads. This is the best time to amend your soil,
before
you plant a garden. With new
ground, you can get compost, fertilizers, and microbial inoculants mixed right down into
the root zone. You can do this in an existing vegetable garden in the off-season too if the
bed is empty.
When you're planting a tree, you want to amend the soil over a larger area than just the
planting hole. You don't want to remove the native soil from the planting hole and replace
it with just lush topsoil and compost, because the roots may never want to leave that hole.
It's much better to amend a bigger area with compost and minerals than just the planting
hole, leaving the native soil intact over the whole area. That's what the roots ultimately
have to get used to.
