Tip #2: Building your soil

Editor’s Note: This is a continuation of a series of articles on low cost gardening. See Tip#1 on planning, published August 25, 2022.

Jane Mack

Gardening is an amazing activity that can help enrich your family’s life. With gardening, you can get the entire family involved in the process in preparing to garden, planting, tending the garden, harvesting, and pre-paring the food you get from the garden. If you want your family to eat more vegetables and pro-mote their health, then plant a garden! When everyone helps, they feel more invested and interested in the results.

As mentioned in Tip #1, gardening can also be a shocking money drain. If you’ve got the budget, you can afford the time-saving products and devices within your means. If you don’t have the budget, don’t give up! There are a lot of ways to garden with very low or no expenditure of funds.

A lot of what I’m sharing here is information I’ve gleaned from obsessive watching of YouTube videos, reading lots of articles and plant studies, and my own successes and failures. I am not an expert gardener — far from it! Just sharing what I’ve learned.

Here’s hoping these tips help.

Tip #2: Building your soil

ONE of the first things you’ll need to successfully build your garden (whether that is one plant or hundreds) is soil. Nothing is more important for the eventual success of your gardening efforts than soil. If you live in a place where you’ve got land and there’s some depth to the dirt, you’re probably good to go!

If you live in an apartment or condominium, or on a rocky slope like I do where there’s not a lot of soil, then you’ll need a plan for getting soil.

Cheap and easy: The cheapest method is to dig in your yard for what dirt you’ve got, or get some dirt from a friend or family member who has soil. You’ll need a container—like 5 gallon paint buckets, a cardboard box, or even plastic bags. But not all soil is equal.

Building dirt: Be sure to do your research and write in your preparation notebook. Soil is com-posed of minerals (rock-like substances), organic material (decayed living materials like leaves) and a layer of living microorganisms, like bacteria, fungi and insects. These are the living part of dirt and essential to healthy gardening soil.

When it comes to how to recognize and handle soil, there are different, competing, and opposite recommendations. Is your soil loamy or clay like? Will you till your soil to turn it over and get some air into it or use a no-disturb method to protect it from stress? Do you want to test the soil? Some gardening channels and web-sites recommend getting your soil scientifically tested to let you know if there are deficiencies and assess the soils acidity. Others allow or recommend that you test on your own where you find its potential by planting into it, trying diverse options, and taking your chances.

If you still don’t have enough dirt, you can buy soil at the store. Hard-ware stores like Ace and True Value have garden centers and supplies. Shop around. Ask about discounts!

Types: Topsoil is the layer of soil that is general-ly from the top of the ground. In decades past, this was considered a rich soil, but now the top soil sold in stores is more like ordinary dirt without a lot of nutrients. It’s the cheapest dirt appropriate to gardening that you can buy, ranging from about $7 to $10 for a cubic foot.

Fill dirt is used in construction, and consists of rubble, gravel, dirt, sand, rocks, and any filler that’s accumulated. This is not gardening dirt.

Of course you know what is sand. Some plants grow well in sand, and sometimes sand is a useful addition to traditional dirt, to help with drainage and aeration around plant roots. It’s generally not a good addition to clay soils, however, because it bonds with them into a cement!

Potting soil is dirt that’s been enhanced with nutrients. Some potting soils are organically enhanced and some are chemically produced. The non-organic/chemical enhancements often kill the important living layer of bacteria, fungi, insects and other microorganisms you need for healthy soil. For example, Miracle Gro is dirt that’s been enhanced with non-organ-ic chemicals that can interfere with building a healthy soil. Don’t fall for pretty bags or familiar names. Do your research!

Diatomaceous earth or DE is a powdery substance made from living sea creatures; it is a gardener’s friend, but not as a potting or rooting medium, but rather for prevention of certain pests.

Coconut coir and peat moss are also not soils directly but can be used as growing mediums for some seeds and plants.

Hydroponics is another option, where you grow in water. You’ll need to do lots of research to learn about the process and what’s needed for that option.

Videos. Here are some interesting links that encourage you to pre-serve your land and build your soil into a healthy, living gardening environment:

• Next Level Gardening channel – “Why I Don’t Use Miracle Gro”

• What’s Growing On channel – “10 Steps to Growing Mangos in the Arizona Desert”

• Huw Richards channel – “Growing Amazing Food Affordably Starts with This”

For most gardening projects, you can and should take advantage of any dirt you’ve got, whether it’s red clay or dark humus soil, because plants grown locally will take on the flavors of the soil, and give you the best homegrown produce. Good luck and happy gardening.