A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Banter Hall Gardener's Chat Gardening Tips and Tricks All About Soil

OK, this can be another thread for Gardening Tips and Tricks (Thank you Bill!).

Another thing I never paid attention to is what is in the soil !! Stupid I know...and yes, I actually had a small vegetable garden once! Go figure!

But I never understood about the PH factor, so never understood anything on bags of soil(in my case now, potting soil). And I would really like to know everything about it!! (Which is one of my basic problems...I want to know everything about everything!).

In this wonderful book I bought I read about soil testing kits; what happens if you have too much nitrogen, or too much phosphorus, or too much potassium; about acidic and alkaline soil, etc. It's all rather overwhelming to me!

How about sharing what you know, what you do and don't do or don't even worry about; do you use those soil testing kits and are they really helpful; do you understand what it says on those bags, and so on and so on.

I also get confused about the terms...compost, fertilizer, and mulch!!! Are they all one and the same, or different things?

All about soil! (Diane corrects me when I say 'dirt'....seems to be a dirty word!)

This is too cool! A whole forum for tips & such. Awesome. Great idea.

"Soil pH" is the negative logarithm of the hydrogen ion activity of the soil. Blah blah. More than I need to know. It's a measure of the relative acidity (lots of H+ ions) or alkalinity (fewer H+, more OH-) in the soil. Water is neutral, neither acidic or basic (alkaline). Water's pH 7. Soils range from pH 4-9, with most plants adapted to pH 6.5-7 (although there are exceptions).

The soil's pH matters for the following reason. Pretty much everything that goes on in a plant-- growth, development, reproduction-- is dependent on the activity of enzymes. This is no different than in animals. Enzymes are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions-- typically, but not always enzymes speed up the reaction-- by "binding to" another molecule. Because they are proteins, they have a characteristic 3-dimensional shape. The concentration of hydrogen ions can alter that shape, and as a consequence, the enzyme may not bind to the other molecule. (The old "lock & key" model that we learned in school isn't quite right, but good enough.) So the reaction, whatever it may be, is either slowed or stopped completely. Bad bad bad.

Each enzyme has an "optimal" pH, but of course, each will work within a range. And so for the plant as a whole, there's a range within which the plant will do just fine, but closer to the extremes of the range, the plant will begin to suffer b/c more & more enzymes will no longer be in an environment that close to their optimal pH.

I have never used a soil test kit. Ever in my entire life. I came across an old book that suggested you can figure out your soil's general (close enough) pH simply by looking at what's growing! This is the kind of advise I like. Low work, no money. Clover, for example, does not do well in acidic soil, so if you have beautiful patches of clover trying to take over your flower bed, your soil's not acidic. On the other hand, azalea, rhododendron, and moss do like lower pH soil.

So, that's why pH matters, and why I generally don't pay too much attention to it. N-P-K on the other hand is a different story!

Sorry, more than necessary, probably. Waiting for the yeast biscuits to rise. ...

LOOK WHAT I JUST FOUND!! http://www.thegardenhelper.com/soilPH.htm

I've never used a tester either,,

There are many variations of soil composition, but the three basic types are sand, clay, and silt.

1. Sandy soil is easy to work with and drains quickly, but it can dry out too quickly for many plants.

2. Clay is very heavy and hard to work with. When it is dry, it is very hard and when it is wet, it is very sticky. Drainage is poor.

3. Silt drains reasonably well and is workable when wet, but very hard when dry.

Most soil is a composite and has varying amounts of organic material. It may also have varying amounts of rocks. Regardless of which one of these soils you have, or what composite you have, the secret to helping your garden is the magic of composting. Composting turns garden waste into humus. It mimics nature.
I always have a bin of compost going,, I always amend it into my soil in my yard,, I will sometimes cut the cop of a plastic milk jug open to the widest part place an old strainer over it , take some compost and slowly let water flow over the top of the compost to make compost tea then water my house plants with it , especially in the spring and mid summer.
And Yes I corrected Shirley many time while she had her hands in my compost while saying I love this dirt No It's Compost!!!!! and Once it's amended into the ground it's Soil!

Marica--I enjoyed your post and because I love to read science books of all kinds, from macro physics to molecular, and biology, I understood what you were saying about the 'reactions' and 'shapes'. It helped me. but I also like having a simple chart or something giving me the info I need...that 'instant gratification' going on again.
The link to the site here on Garden Helper is good, except I don't know what any of those lise of numbers on the side of the chart 'mean'. Therefore I don't know how to 'read' the chart until I understand about soil composition.
(But I'm saving it, and your post!!) I'm deffinitely learning as I read!
Now, are you going to come back and tell us about N-P-K please?

Diane, so if I don't use a soil testing kit, but have good compost (like yours!!) to amend my dirt into soil then I will be changing the composition of most any bad 'dirt' to grow most anything....but I can tell how a plant 'looks' whether it needs more nitrogen etc added to it's diet, right?

I tried making a butter-tub composter for my counter top for my houseplants....I would forget to shake it up, or to add dried leaves from outside etc.
I will give that a try again while here in an apartment.....it would be good to make a compost tea with that for my houseplants?
But when I get to VA I am getting me a large plastic, lidded trash can like yours! and I will be very consistent about taking care of it!!

soil....soil.....soil my new word!

Shirley here is the thread on here with members suggestions about compost it may help you as well

//www.agardenersforum.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/5087/nt/2/fpart/1

the numbers on lets say a box of fertilizer is
I.E 10-30-10 = 10% N (nitrogen ) -30% P (phosphorus) -10% K (potassium).

The N-P-K numbers indicate the amount of nutrients in the fertilizer. . The fertilizer ratios are always listed in the same order:
Nitrogen (N)-for stem and leaf growth;
Phosphate (P)-for root growth
Potash/potassium (K)-for flower and fruit production

Nitrogen provides plants with the ability to produce more chlorophyll, which in turn allows plants to grow quickly. With each additional nitrogen application, plants will grow taller and develop a darker green color.

Phosphorus Phosphorous aids in root development and increases flowering ability and bloom size. High-phosphorous fertilizer should be used when plants are being established in your garden – when sowing a new lawn or planting new trees and shrubs, for instance.

Potash used by plants for flower color and size. It is also important for the strength of the plant.
depending on your plants needs as to what # you get,, In the first of spring I apply 20-20-20. As the plant grows and mature I use a higher middle number to promote blooms .

Thank you!!!! And thank you for that site where I can read the other members comments!!!

I love haveing this all here!!....It's like 'one stop shopping'!!

I *should* be out there working, but... .

I would like to recommend a book to everyone: Plowman's Folly by Edward H. Faulkner, published in 1943. It's hard to find. I just looked at Amazon & some other sites and the prices vary wildly, but if you can get your hands on a copy, it's worth it's weight in gold. (Ha! I got mine for $0.50 at a junk store.) Anyway, here's a blog post about the book that's pretty informative: http://conservationblogger.blogspot.com/2008/09/edward-faulkners-plowmans-folly-still.html

From this post:

Faulkner cited an excerpt from Paul Sears book Deserts on the March which reads, “The face of earth is a graveyard, and so it has always been. To earth each living thing restores when it dies that which has been borrowed to give form and substance to its brief day in the sun. From earth, in due course, each new living being receives back again a loan of that which sustains life. What is lent by earth has been used by countless generations of plants and animals now dead and will be required by countless others in the future…No plant or animal, nor any sort of either, can establish a permanent right of possession to the materials that compose its physical body.” Faulkner follows this with, “This is the solemn, necessary truth; and the earlier it becomes a part of our thinking, the more quickly can we plan intelligently the necessary work of recreating the soils on our farm lands. We have been too squeamish to visualize dead tissue being transformed into living, though with every mouthful we eat we demonstrate precisely that fact.”

Anywho... Some of the science is "outdated" (I don't care), but it does explain a lot. And Faulkner does wax "poetic" at times, but I think this is one of THE BEST books ever if you care and are interested in the relationships among soil, water, sun & plants.

Back to work-- this made me fill guilty being inside!

That sounds like a very interesting book on the subject of soil!! And I was going to type here just what you said....so I'll type it anyway...he waxes very poetic....I would love reading that style of writing!

Exact-a-mundo!

And here's too much more information, Shirley!

Recall the periodic table of elements. That's pretty much what's on Earth. Of those elements, only a few are necessary for plant (animal, fungal, all) life. Here's how I learned the "essential" elements for plants:

"C. Hopkins Cafe, managed by mine cousin Moe."

Huh?

Let me rephrase:

C H O P K [I] N S Ca Fe Mg Be Mn Cu Zn Mo

Huh?

Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus, Potassium, [Iodine], Nitrogen, Sulfur, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Beryllium, Manganese, Copper, Zinc, Molybdenum.

["Iodine" is in brackets b/c plants don't need it, but animals do.]

The way those elements are incorporated into plant cells differs based on the state of the chemical element. The first three come ultimately from air (CO2) & water (H2O). But note what the next are: P-K-N. Rearranging, we get; N-P-K, which is what Angelblossom talked about. And if you look at a bag of fertilizer with "minors" (as I am doing right now), you will see that those "trace" or "minor" nutrients are exactly the rest of elements.

Of course, those elements are not minor in the sense that they are unimportant, just minor in the sense of quantity relative to others. (Iron could be considered a "minor" element for mammals, but with no iron, we'd be in bad shape, actually we'd be dead, but that's another story.) For example, here's the chemical formula for chlorophyll a:

C55H72O5N4Mg

55 carbon atoms for every 1 magnesium. Pretty minor, except that like iron in hemoglobin (in blood), without the magnesium atom, chlorophyll just doesn't "work".

As Angelblossom talked about, it's not only important that the elements, N-P-K, be present, but that they be present in the correct proportions, based on the individual plant, and where it is in it's life-cycle. AB said: "In the first of spring I apply 20-20-20. As the plant grows and mature I use a higher middle number to promote blooms." Bingo!

Fertilizers are *in*organic elements in molecular forms that the plant is going to be able to "take up". The nitrogen in this bag of fertilizer 10-8-8 fertilizer is 4.52% ammoniacal nitrogen, and 5.48% urea nitrogen. The 1.5% magnesium is derived from sulfate of potash magnesium (I think, too tiny to read).

BUT compost just is decomposed plant stuff! I don't know what form magnesium is in in compost (like what bigger molecule, or if it's elemental Mg), but whatever it is, it has come from broken down chlorophyll. (I just learned chlorophyll is broken down by sunlight! wow.) So, in general, what the plant needs is already there in more or less the correct proportions!

I never actually thought about this before, but I wonder if there would be any utility of having more than one compost pile-- like more than one recycling bin. One for stuff like grass clippings that's heavy in nitrogen, another for stuff you pull out by the roots that would presumably be heavy in phosphorus, etc. so that you could use, e.g., the nitrogen-rich compost in your lettuce patch. Sounds like too much work.

Hey Marica, that actually helps me understand more!!!

Wow, Marica, that is more info on the elements than I learned in Botany. I could discuss the importance of sulphur and Iron and the relation they have concerning availability at different soil pH, but if you could elaborate, you could probably get it right, and I might get it wrong. I know that sulphur increases acidity and aids in the uptake of iron, very important for low pH loving plants, and clay soil can inhibit Iron uptake, thus the combination, and the primary secondary elements (minor elements). This is why many fertilizer formulations have Sulphur as the 4th constituent, and Iron as the fifth, but how magnesium plays into that, all I know is that soil pH too acidic can inhibit Mg uptake, and cause a chlorosis type situation with some plants like Magnolias. Could you elaborate?

i wish I had found this thread earlier, I thought it was chat moreso than info so I hadn't explored before.

Oh oh. What have I done? I do believe I'm going to have to go so some research before I elaborate. (But fortunately "Science and the Garden" (2008) is sitting right next to me.)

Peppereater, under Gardening Tips and Tricks, I wanted this thread to be all about soil, the other thread is Chat Room about Gardening where we are sharing all kinds of 'tips and tricks '.

Any one subject that sound worth while could be started in another thread by anyone, keeping to that one subject.

I'm glad you found this and will enjoy and contribute lots of info!!

I'm really wishing Bill would start a thread here about Implements used in gardening....he has a wonderful weed puller...and another one here, Lynne or Sheri, or maybe Carol? has a wonderful pair of ergonimic shears or cutters!

I'm a simple woman at heart. For me the difference between soil, compost, and mulch is basically this.

Soil is what I plant in. Compost is what I add to the soil to make the plants get big and healthy. Mulch is what I put on top of the soil so the weeds have a hard time coming up through it.

Compost is also normally pH balanced. I don't know how that happens. It just seems to be a general rule unless you add something unusual to the compost heap.

Also I would say that I started out with a trashcan for my compost. But within a short period of time I moved to a compost pile. It's easier to play with and turn when it isn't in a container. Well at least for me. And I do like to play with my compost. I have two piles so far and look forward to starting a third this year.

Well I'm out to rake up some grass clippings to add to my major pile. Have a good day all.

who would have thunk that dirt could be so interesting and complex. I think it's amazing that before all the books were written people just figured this out for themselves.

Your explanation of Soil, Compost, and Mulch is perfect! Thank you.
I wondered if homemade compost wouldn't naturally be PH balanced. So glad you verified that.
I LOVE playing in compost too! It's wonderful stuff!!

tk...that's it in a nutshell, well put.
I believe that depending on ingredients, though, that compost can be slightly acidic, If that's true, it would be very slight, enough to benefit an acid loving plant but not enough to really alter overall pH much.
I once read that pH of soil is less a factor when there is a great deal of organic matter in the soil...it makes sense on a sort of intuitive level...nutrients, moisture holding and draining, and soil structure are all moderated and improved with compost.

I've found that compost will also improve the structure of clay. Something I have a great deal of at my new place. Not surprising since it's on a slope and doesn't have any errosion control plants on it. Except what I've done over the last year. And there is a long way to go yet. Anyway if I put down compost the next year several inches of the clay will have softened so that it's easy to dig in. I think at that point it would be easy to add sand. Something that can't be done directly to clay unless I want to create cement. That will be going in my tree bed next to perfect the soil there.

Considering that you have played with plants for some time, tk, you'll know when you can put down sand....I'm not sure when it would benefit clay soil, keep on composting. There are some situations where gypsum can help to loosen clay soils, I still don't get it, but it's worth taking a look on google, the information is a bit contradictory or at least, to me, unclear, but salt content can determine how beneficial gypsum can be..............
some soils can only be amended by organic material, peat, compost, that kind of thing...
Do you have red clay, like what's common here, or gray, I don't know what the constituents are, but drainage is perhaps the biggest issue...
but I'm only stating the obvious here.
Keep it going, tk, you're on top of it, I'd say!!!!!!!!!

The compost does the same work as the gypsum to my mind. Both soften the clay. My clay is red in color. The purpose of the sand will be to increase drainage as you surmised. We have a river near by and I may check it out and see if it has sand or soil on the edges of it. My neighbor has a place down there.

TK-- check out the "bottom land" near the river. We lived for a year on the Shenandoah. My observations were that that, although there was a lot of river rock, there were sandy patches on the banks. But more importantly, the bottom land was rich rich rich. I could be off here, but I considered the bottom land-- a strip of flat land running along the banks of the river-- to be Nature's compost pile. Everything that ran off the mountains (blue ridge & massanuttens) wound up in the bottom land. Our house sat on a hillside above the river and I wouldn't have stuck a shovel into that dirt if you'd paid me-- grew tomatoes in pots on the deck-- b/c it was too clay-y. BUT the flat land between our house and the river was some of the best soil I've ever seen-- all the good stuff ran down hill & settled there.

Along the same lines, and in total agreement with TK, we are getting ready to move to Mississippi where the soil is hard red clay. I talked to some folks there about veggie gardening & they say, "can't be done, too much clay." Now, if that were the case, I'd expect to see a lunar wasteland. Right? Nothing grows in clay. Except that in fallow fields and the woods, where the organic "debris" has just laid there year after year decomposing, the place is amazingly fertile. So, add compost to clay.

This is my first post. I don't really think I'm doing it right, but need some info. on adding chicken poop to my composter, so maybe someone can help. I have a great supply of poop that has been sitting in the coops a long time, so it is dried up....can I still use this in the composter? Thanks in advance for any help!!!!!

you have to be careful with chicken poo because it is very nitrogen rich and can burn plants. But if it has aged a year than it's great to add to garden soil. Since it's going in a composter and will still be decomposing I don't see a problem.