Gardening can be difficult, especially if you’re a beginner who’s stuck with clay or sandy soil. But don’t despair. You can grow healthy plants in your home garden once you figure out how to improve the soil quality in your backyard.

Assessing your garden soil

If you’re having trouble growing anything in your garden, start by assessing soil quality. This will help you figure out what kind of soil you have. Using a pH test kit will also help you determine if the soil is too alkaline, which means plants will have trouble absorbing the nutrients they need to grow.

You can get your soil tested for free at the local extension, or you can test it yourself using items in your kitchen. An acidic solution will react when added to something basic. This means you can use vinegar, which is acidic, and baking soda, which is basic, to find out your soil pH.

You will need:

• Baking soda
• Clean glassware
• Coffee filter
• Distilled water
• Hand shovel
• Liquid measuring cup
• Vinegar

Instructions:

1. Use the hand shovel to dig four to six inches below the surface of your garden for a soil sample.
2. Remove stones, sticks and other debris from the soil sample. Break up any large clumps.
3. Add at least one cup of soil into a clean glass container, then add enough water to turn the soil to mud.
4. Add half a cup of vinegar to the mixture and stir. If the soil fizzes, foams or bubbles, you have an alkaline soil.
5. If the soil sample doesn’t react, repeat the test. After adding water to the soil, add half a cup of baking soda. Stir slightly. If the soil fizzes, foams or bubbles, you have an acidic soil.

If the vinegar and baking soda tests don’t have much of an effect, your soil is probably in the neutral range.

Next, observe your garden. Is the grass thick? If your yard is mostly crabgrass, you might have poor soil. If you can see a lot of wildflowers and different tree species near your property, the soil is probably good enough to grow food. A garden with clay soil is fertile, but you need to make the soil friable (crumbly) enough to work and drain properly.

Sandy soil drains well, meaning you don’t have to worry about overwatering. This type of soil also suits many root crops. However, nutrients tend to wash through sand so you need to amend it regularly to produce healthy plants.

Fixing clay soil

Clay soil can be fixed with sheet composting. This method uses layers of mulch to crush weeds, keep the soil moist and add organic matter. Gardens with clay soil will benefit from sheet composting because it has a major loosening effect over time. You can use mulch like rotten or fresh straw, but you can also use whatever organic matter you have.

Start by picking your garden plot and marking out the edges. If the area is full of tall grass or weeds, mow it down but leave the clippings in place and water thoroughly. The surface needs to be wet before you cover the ground with mulch.

Get some cardboard or newspapers and cover the entire space. Make the layers overlap so nothing comes through. You’ll need two to three layers of cardboard of six to twelve sheets of newspapers.

Once you’re done setting up the weed-block layer, wet it thoroughly and start adding mulch. Since you’re composting in place, mix grass clippings with pine bark, straw with manure or leaves with coffee grounds so things will break down better. Stack the organic matter high and water as you go. You can plant on the amended soil immediately. Just pull back some of the mulch, add some compost then plant seeds or transplants.

On the other hand, you can get better results if you wait a year or so after you’ve established the garden patch. During this time, the cardboard will have rotted away and you’ll have more mulch on top after the previous layers have settled. The ground beneath will also be full of compost, which can help you grow healthy crops. If weeds escape the sheet mulch, add more mulch to get rid of them. Don’t till the soil under because this will undo your hard work.

Fixing sandy soil

If you have sandy soil, pile fresh leaves and tree debris over the area. After several months, you will have black, rich sand full of life. Unfortunately, sand doesn’t usually stay that way for very long.

Constant cover will improve sandy soil in your garden. It can be difficult to do this with organic matter since you may have trouble covering large areas with mulch. To save on costs, cover sandy soil by growing something on it. In summer, you can grow amaranth, cosmos plants, southern peas or sunflowers to keep the ground healthy and moist.

During winter, overseed with lentils, mustard, peas, turnips, various brassicas or small grains like winter wheat to keep the ground living. Even if you don’t harvest the plants, you can chop them down in place to keep the soil healthy until you want to plant something you want to eat.

It can take several months to a year to improve clay or sandy soil, so it’s best to plan ahead. Amend poor soil immediately so you don’t have to wait too long before you can start growing veggies in your home garden.

Sources:

TheGrowNetwork.com 1

TheSpruce.com

TheGrowNetwork.com 2