Garden Soil Amendments It is the season of gratefulness. We have gathered in our harvests and are putting away the garden for winter’s long sleep. We are thankful. But what about the garden? What will replenish its fertility and wellbeing for the next growing season? Now is a good time to add garden soil amendments…
Healthy Soil for Healthy Plants
If your dirt is less than ideal, don't despair. Learn to add good things to it to improve its tilth and nutrient value. Included are many methods, but composting is one of the best known.
Learn how to grow plants well by starting with the ground they grow in.
Rock Dust
I came across an interesting video that combines some thoughts I’ve attached to over the years. It inspires me to get some local rock dust from the gravel pits around here- we are a glaciated region. Well, I’m not considering becoming vegetarian any time soon, but it just makes sense to build the depleted soils…
Garden Therapy
Science discovers one reason we find solace in the garden clipped from tomatoes4health.blogspot.com Getting dirty may lift your Mood Bacteria found in the soil activated a group of neurons that produce the brain chemical serotonin Treatment of mice with a ‘friendly’ bacteria, normally found in the soil, altered their behavior in a way similar to…
Here’s the Poop on Manure
In all this talk about raising urban chickens and growing organically in city allotment plots… it was bound to raise the topic of manure. After all, it is no secret that this is a big part of life (albeit not spoken of in polite company;), and gardening is all about life. So in my search…
Satisfaction of a Hard Day’s Work
All those chores and garden ideas I accumulated during the winter are now in process of becoming accomplishments. Yesterday I put in a good hard days work, taught my kids some things and put them to work practicing horticultural skills. The garden is a great place to talk about not just horticultural practices and facts,…
dirt#2- McAdditives
i have been making my soil since 1983, here in the piedmont region of georgia. i have tried and often used many ways to add organic nutrition to my soil, without the longterm time-frame in waiting on cover cropping. whatever the size of your garden, there is always time for compost. i usually make a…
making dirt #1: green manure
i am a longtime transplant into georgia upper-southern soil. gardening in the deeprich topsoil of ohio has been GREATLY missed, but over the years i have managed torecreate some version of that chocolate-cake dirt here in my gardens. the image ofmaking a cake is a pretty apt one; with the right ingredients, and long hours…
Humus Equation
The Hunky Gardener gives a lesson in humus. He’s not just a pretty face….
5 Tips to Improve Clay Soil
This page has moved. It can be found @ Ilona’s Garden: 5 Tips To Improve Clay Soil, along with other informative posts on soil improvement. But if you want only one really important tip for working with clay soil, it is this: Don’t work (dig, hoe, rake, step on, etc) clay soils when they are…
Do You Dig Your Soil?
That is “sixties-speak” for whether or not you like the soil handed to you in your garden… do you bloom where you are planted? Here in Central Ohio I have gardened on clay types of soils. Presently my garden soil is composed of a dark clay loam called Kokomo. With the way the weather has…