If our biggest focus is on the five elements that create the healthiest, most-productive garden plants—immense amounts of direct sunlight, amazing soil, just the right amount of water, the proper temperature, and ideal spacing— we end up with plants that practically take care of themselves! The final two big secrets—companion planting and garden design and layout—provide the final complement that bring out the absolute best of our plants.
Deep Most gardeners add richness and organic matter with soil amendments and till them in, attempting to create ideal soil, but tillers only incorporate these amendments and loosen the soil about six-to-eight inches deep. Our garden plants, however, actually benefit greatly from our soil being improved and loosened much, much Read more…
Well-Loosened Most gardeners know that our garden plants really suffer in deeply compacted soil. This is one of our reasons for tilling each season. We till to destroy weeds and turn vegetation into the soil, sure, but we also till to loosen the soil. We all know this intuitively. We’d Read more…
Well-Drained Well-drained soils allow water to seep through and drain to the deeper water table. They also keep plants from partially suffocating or even completely drowning after massive rains. What we want, as gardeners, is evenly moist soil, not waterlogged soil. Well-drained soil accomplishes this, even after heavy downpours. We Read more…
Full of Organic Matter Even those who know the importance of the organic matter in our soil might not know all of its benefits. There are many! Organic Matter’s Origins First, where does the organic matter in our soil come from? Organic matter in our garden soil comes from all Read more…
Rich In the past, to gain richness, gardeners and farmers have typically added plenty of macronutrients to their soil—the nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (NPK) found in most fertilizers—for their plants to grow large. However, they haven’t always taken into account the availability of micronutrients that make plants truly healthy and Read more…
Perfect Soil Perfect soil: Deep. Rich. Full of organic matter. Well-drained. And well-loosened. It’s a gardener’s dream. Deep. We all have a line where our topsoil meets our subsoil. It’s where, as you dig, the soil changes color, usually from a darker brown or black to lighter brown, brownish-red, tan, Read more…
A Gardener’s Relationship with Soil As gardeners, we feel like we grow plants. But we don’t. At least, that’s not the whole picture—or even the most important part of it. The wisest insight green-thumbed gardeners possess is knowing they don’t grow plants; they grow soil. Plants are merely a byproduct, Read more…
Should I Water? Okay, I now know how to meet most of my “watering” needs by conserving the rain I already receive. But it hasn’t rained for weeks, and the mulch I added isn’t doing the trick. Should I water? And how? The honest answer is that I can’t answer Read more…
What’s the Best Mulch? If done correctly, the best mulch is the plants themselves, followed by straw. Using Plant Foliage as a Living Mulch It’s possible to let plants’ foliage aid their roots by casting enough shade to keep the soil moisture that’s necessary for themselves and all of the Read more…
Contrasting Alliums Two of our alliums (the onion family) give us contrasting stories about mulch: Onions and Garlic Onions Some old-timey gardeners will tell you to never mulch onions, claiming it will spoil the crop. Onions, however, are one of the garden’s thirstiest crops and do quite poorly in dry Read more…