Harvest Helper Soil Secrets

From Dirt to Dinner: Soil Enrichment Simplified - Soil Secrets

Planting starts, not with digging a hole for your seedlings but to improving the soil

Fertility. I have raised beds. So, I used bags of topsoil and composted manure for my different types of boxes. I have 3 raised boxes 8” high and then I have 6 raised beds make of wood standing on 2 x 4s and are waist high. I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to stand up and plant potatoes.

I never grew a garden with raised beds that were filled with bought soil. In Florida the soil is sand. You have to augment the sand with many bags of topsoil and composted manure. And that includes Landscaping plants.

DO NOT ALLOW

YOUR LANDSCAPER TO POP YOUR SHRUBS AND TREES INTO THE SOIL WITHOUT AUGMENTING THE SOIL WITH BAGS OF TOPSOIL AND COMPOSTED MANURE.

More soil secrets. When I moved to Florida, I used raised beds for my vegetable, but the soil was bought. I thought that I didn’t have to augment the topsoil and composted manure with more fertilizer. WRONG!

Growing in boxes is much different than growing in the ground. When gardeners talk about raised beds, they usually mean that you pile up the soil from the ground and put a structure around it. In CT I used metal and railroad ties. But the soil was from my garden soil, and I always augmented composted manure, and peat moss.

If you are not sure of your Soil Fertility have it tested by the Agricultural Extension

Service. You also need to test your pH but you can buy that from any box store or

garden center.

You can never go wrong with compost, worm castings and composted manure.

In my next video, I augmented the soil with these 3 natural fertilizers. In that video I put all three in the hole before I planted the tomatoes. And I also put a few books of paper matches. That was to add a pinch of sulfur which the plants like very much.

In my book on page 309 and 310 there is a list of the different products such as (N) Cotton Seed Meal, (P) Rock Phosphate and (K) Greensand or Woodash.