Soil Enrichment, Preservation, and Plant Care
This post focuses on soil enrichment, preservation, and plant care for spring. This is an ideal time to do the following garden projects.
Soil Enrichment and Preservation
My approach to gardening is built on this foundation: The ground is the foundation of your garden. It all starts here.
Soil enrichment and preservation is the crux of plant care, because it is in the ground where your plants are rooted and receive their nutrition from. This is what makes your plants healthy, beautiful, and able to thrive in reaching their full potential in the right conditions and ideal climates, aside from weather extremes and human/animal damage we cannot control. Survival of the fittest is the name of the game when it comes to outstanding gardens. What we can do is support and encourage thrival by how we relate to and participate in our gardens.
On a side note: doing this work can make you healthier and stronger. Gardening helps you reap your human survival of the fittest by getting fresh air, getting grounded with your hands in the earth (possibly your bare feet too), and moving your body. The Japanese Okinawans tend to be a culture of Centenarians - people who live 100 years on average - with gardening fundamental to their healthy lifestyle supporting this. One couple in Southern Oregon told me recently that one of their garden bed is a "therapy garden." You can read their testimonial below.
Now on to my basic tips to enrich and preserve your soil:
Put the right soil with the right plants. This means that azaleas, rhododendrons, ferns, Japanese maples, evergreens, oak trees, dogwoods, and holly for example all prefer acid soil and fertilizer.
I use the acid planting mix by Gardener and Bloom along with Dr. Earth Acid Fertilizer to set these soils up right from the get go and/or to amend the soil of existing plants for preservation and enrichment.
I have consistently excellent results with both Gardener and Bloom soils and Dr. Earth fertilizers. They have all your organic soil and fertilizer needs for different plants and soil types between the two brands.
Soil amendment is the meat of your garden beds and fertilizers are icing on the cake. This means to use way less fertilizer in ratio to your soil amendments and compost when staging garden beds before you plant them.
It is important to remember to not add fertilizer directly into the holes and roots of plantings and transplants. This can cause shock. No problem to mix and water them into the soil before planting when preparing your beds, but not directly.
When the plants in your garden have problems and are showing signs of ill health the solutions will almost always lye in the soil, and if the plant was planted properly in the first place - especially when it comes to trees and shrubs. Soil and plant care go hand-in-hand, complimenting each other.
Plant Care
After you've laid the foundations with the right soil and planting your plants properly, here's the plant care basics you should be doing on a seasonal basis in addition to yearly soil amending and fertilizing.
Always keep the root zone and feeder roots free of leaves and debris during spring, summer, and fall.
This is the area your plants respirate from and when it is covered or has moldy leaves piled up there it can cause disease, lack of oxygen, and if left for too long death.
During the winter this is not as important because most plants are in dormancy.
Periodic pruning to keep your plants free of dead materials, open, flowing and growing.
Different plants will have different requirements based on your garden layout and the particular needs of the plants.
The most important time to get the soil right, and put in larger investments of time and care, is when you do all your planting. Especially when it come to trees and shrubs you can't easily move once they grow past a certain point. Planting is the time that you establish a plant for the long haul of its home in your garden - you are setting it up for life.
Here is my latest testimonial from a project in Southern Oregon, with a picture of the sword fern found and saved, along with a young weeping blue atlas cedar.
"We can look out the window and not feel stressed or overwhelmed, and are enjoying our little therapy garden again. We'll call you for our future projects and make sure we get you on the Millpond preferred list that the neighborhood association keeps. And thank you for finding our little sword fern!"
Henry & Annette Baker
Ashland, OR
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