Choosing the Perfect Soil for Your Home Garden

What is more beautiful than watching your plants growing from seeds or seedlings? Soil is a house where your plants live and grow. And like with humans who need to have a quality home to live in, plants too love to have a nice place to stay. If you want to make your plants happy and satisfied, you should opt for organic, well-drained, fertile soil. In a word, go for a soil that is rich in organic matter. I would like you to keep reading because you’ll find out some valuable info on how to have the perfect gardening soil.  

Choosing the Perfect Soil for Your Home Garden

   

Get Your Soil Ready          

First of all, you should know that soil is composed of clay, sand and silt and variations on the topic. Soil structure determines its aeration, drainage and water holding capacity. Each soil type contains minerals, rocks, organic matters, water and air. Ideal ratio of soil substances is 25% water and air alike, with 40% mineral matter and 10% organic matter. The smartest thing to do when building a soil is to get it tested for a pH value.

Add Organic Backup        

After testing your soil’s pH, you will probably find out that some nutrients might be missing. What can you do? You can add organic material like compost along with natural soil amendments  . Soil amendments act as fertilizers by increasing your soil’s organic content. There’s a whole variety of soil amendments such as greensand, rock phosphate and bone meal.

Take Care of Your Soil’s pH

Your soil’s acidity and alkalinity value is calculated according to the pH scale. A pH is an abbreviation for “potential of Hydrogen” and it presents a number from 1 to 14, where 7 is the middle (neutral) value. Numbers below 7 indicate acidity while numbers above 7 indicate alkalinity. Do you wonder what all this pH stuff has to do with your organic garden? I’m just about to come to that.

The pH of a soil is a vital condition for the quality of your plant growth. It is interesting to know that most garden vegetables, ornamentals and grasses prefer slightly acidic soil with a pH range between 5.8 and 6.8. It is also worth knowing that you can change the pH of your soil. If you want to increase, decrease, or simply saying, correct acid or alkaline soil, you should add either alkaline material or a source of acid. Speaking of pH values, I assume that it’s been a while since you’ve checked pH info on something other than your shampoo pH values.

Feel free to get in touch with me if you have any questions regarding organic gardening soil.