The deal with soil building

It has come to my attention, through various expressions of eye-rolling, sideways glances and similar distraction techniques during coaching sessions, that soil testing, soil building and soil amending are not folks' favorite gardening subjects.

I know.

It sounds like work. It sounds dirty. It sounds time consuming. It sounds like less fun than madly planting all of the green growies that you just snatched up at the nursery.

But what if I told you that soil building was what turned my mundane, ho-hum, sort of not working garden of yesteryear into the crisper-busting, pantry-bursting, belly-filling beast of today?

Because it was.

Learn from my mistakes, friends, and then get to building that soil in three worthwhile steps.

I'm not going to say it's fast, easy and clean, but I will say that your efforts will be worth it and you'll finally start to see the results from that vegetable garden that you are fantasizing about when you pick out those vegetable seedlings in the spring.

Step #1: Prep
Time commitment: 10 minutes per raised bed
Materials and tools: One 2 cubic foot bag of organic soil amendment per 24 sq. ft. bed, digging fork

Firstly, add a good dose of organic soil amendment to each of your growing areas.

We add one bag of Gardner & Bloome's Harvest Supreme (but feel free to use the organic soil amendment of your choice) to each of our 24 sq. ft. beds, so you can adjust the amount you add based on the size of your space.  Are you amending a bed half the size? Use half the bag.  You get it.

Step #2: Test your soil
Time commitment: 20 minutes per raised bed
Materials and tools: One soil test kit, a clear container that will hold about 6 cups of liquid and soil, trowel, notebook, pencil

You can certainly send soil tests off to a lab to be professionally analyzed - it's a great way to get very specific and accurate reads on all kinds of soil elements, texture, pH and they can also make recommendations for how to amend your soil for the crops you're aiming to grow.

If you're more of a DIYer, I still use home soil tests that you can buy online or at the hardware store. I have heard, and you likely will, too, that these aren't accurate or don't provide enough information or just plain don't work.

Well, this is what I used when I first started testing my soil and it provided good enough results for me to use as a guide for amending my soil. Plus, it gives me the flexibility to test multiple sites without having to send out half a dozen soil samples to be tested.

One test kit has enough material to do multiple tests and includes amending information that you can use to calculate the amounts of amendments you'll need to build your soil for the specific crops you're going to grow. 

Here's my full How-To for testing your soil with these kits.

I estimate that it takes about an hour for me to test, do the calculations (just the tiniest bit of math) and amend my five 24 sq. ft beds.

Step #3: Amend your soil
Time commitment: 10 minutes per raised bed
Materials and tools: Organic dried blood, bone meal, greensand or kelp meal, pH preference and amendment list from your soil test kit, a measuring cup with ounce measurements, your notebook with test results

Once you know what your soil needs and their amounts, just add the amendments (the amounts are smaller than you'd expect), mix them into your soil, water and you're done.

I use only organic amendments like dried blood for nitrogen, bone meal for phosphorus and greensand or kelp meal for potassium. I also add in a handful of worm castings to each bed and that bag of Harvest Supreme I was talking about earlier, so by the time the soil's been amended and watered, it's like a buffet for the plants you're putting in.

Soil microorganisms (think beneficial bacteria) and macro organisms (think worms) are partying in there and the plants will settle in and take off without delay.

And when you get to the end of the warm weather growing season, it'll be time to rotate your crops and plant cover crops anywhere that's not getting a food crop.

This is Bonus Step #4 of soil building, but you can set it aside until fall. You know, when you'll be stuffed full of summer garden goodness and starting to wonder whether you can grow a winter garden because OH THAT SUMMER GARDEN WAS SO AWESOME.

Hint: You can.