A great garden starts with healthy soil. Learn how to improve any soil for gardening this fall so you can revitalize tired soil to grow an abundant garden. Spend the time this fall with these simple tricks and supercharge your garden next spring!
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As summer draws to an end and fall begins, it is time to improve soil for gardening and work on soil preparation. Soil improvement is especially important if you plan on growing over winter, the soil has lost some nutrients supporting the growth of summer vegetables and just like you need food, so does your soil to help your plants grow healthy and strong.
How to Improve Soil
The good news is that the fall goes hand in hand with a garden tidy up and provides leaves and other materials that can be used to improve the fertility of garden soil. And here’s the bonus bit, whilst the snow covers everything up, your soil will be converting these amendments into an all you can eat buffet for your plants come spring, without you having to do anything else!
Let’s be real here, do you really want to be trying to sort out your garden soil in spring or would you rather be sowing seeds and transplanting tomatoes?
The 3 Keys to a Healthy Soil
A healthy soil means healthy, nutritious plants for you and your family. A fertile soil can help your plants manage diseases and environmental changes like drought or frosts.
There are 3 key steps to a healthy soil:
- maximizing soil cover
- maximizing biodiversity
- minimizing disturbance
Before you start amending your soil, it is a good idea to test your soil using a home testing kit
A soil test means you can concentrate on adding the nutrients which are needed. This will help to not only save you money but also prevent problems which happen when you over fertilize the soil, an excess of nitrogen can kill your plants!
Maximizing Soil Cover
There are a couple of ways to cover the soil and fall is a great time to add soil amendments then cover the garden bed with mulch or a cover crop.
The best way to keep the soil covered is to keep growing vegetables on it and grow a fall garden! Using a hoop house or row cover will allow your veggies to keep growing despite bitter winter conditions outside.
The easiest way to improve soil fertility in the garden is to sow a fall cover crop. You then cut it down and dig it into the soil in spring. A cover crop will help improve soil texture and increase nutrient availability. Winter rye and other grass/grain cover crops have long roots. These pull nutrients from deep down in the soil, whilst legume cover crops like vetch or field beans add nitrogen into the soil.
Don’t want to do a cover crop or you don’t think you have enough time to grow? Then add 2 – 3 inches of compost then cover the garden bed with straw or fallen leaves.
The mulch will cover the soil reducing erosion from the wind and rain and will be broken down over time by worms and microbes in the soil which release more nutrients into the soil.
Maximizing Biodiversity
Biodiversity in the soil means lots of soil life; more worms and microbes. Growing cover crops and using no-till gardening methods helps to attract life into the soil.
Worms will come to breakdown materials which are placed on the soil or are dug into the soil. Lasagna gardening or sheet mulching lets nature do the hard work of digging for you. Making a raised garden bed using sheet mulching methods takes about an hour if you have the materials available and are some of the most productive garden beds and for such little work!
Biodiversity isn’t limited to in the soil either, growing a variety of plants together is called polyculture. Sometimes the plants have benefits which help other plants to grow. The most well known example of this is the three sisters gardening of corn, squash and beans where the corn provides trellis for the beans, the squash shades the ground with its leaves retaining moisture and keeping weeds out and the beans provide nitrogen for the corn and squash.
Sowing a soil building cover crop mix will contain a mixture of grasses or grains and legumes which pull up different nutrients from different levels of the soil releasing more nutrients for your veggies to use. Cover crops also attract beneficial insects if they are allowed to flower before they are cut and turned under or dig into the soil.
In case you were wondering, you can use cover crops in tall raised beds too. They also provide green material to add to your compost heap and keep the soil covered.
Minimizing Soil Disturbance
Soil disturbance means tilling and compaction of the soil. Opting for a no-till or low till garden will provide habitat for soil life very quickly. For instance, a low till garden would be where you till a little bit such as digging in your cover crop.
Some soils, like clay really benefit from being dug over in fall. As you are digging, add some straw and well rotted compost. The straw and the freeze-thaw action of the water helps to break apart big lumps of clay soil. Sowing radishes as a cover crop can also help to break up hard clay soils.
Sheet mulching garden beds cover the soil with mulch. Therefore protecting it from erosion and provide a food source for worms and soil microbes. Worms and soil microbes benefit your plants. In other words, they help them grow bigger and better. You can sheet mulch beds with cardboard, newspaper, fallen leaves, straw and compost.
Growing in raised beds is the easiest way to avoid compaction of the soil. The beds and pathways are clearly defined in the garden.
If you need to walk on the in-ground garden beds, use a plank of wood/board to walk on. This will distribute the weight over an area and reduce the compaction.
Summary
Get a soil test done to hone in on the nutrients your soil needs. Therefore, once you know what your soil needs, you can add organic amendments.
If you feel that you are running out of time and who doesn’t at this time of year? Improve soil for gardening by adding 2-3 inches of well rotted compost. Then cover the soil with mulch or a cover crop to protect it from erosion by the wind and rain.
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