Testing Your Soil To Determine Suitability For Your Organic Garden
Soil Test
In my previous section I talked about the different types of soil you may have in your garden and how this can impact on the type of plant you would like to grow in an organic garden. Knowing your soil texture, its composition, nutrition value, drainage and acidity is important to prevent disappointment when your soil turn out not to be suitable for the type of garden you want. Now lets go on to look at how to test for the different type of soil you may have in your garden.
To determine the type of soil you have, take a handful of moist soil from your garden, and give it a firm squeeze. Then, open your hand. One of three things will happen:
1 If it hold its shape when you give it a poke and it crumbles then you have loamy soil
2. If it hold its shape when poked then you have clay soil.
3. It will fall apart as soon as you open your hand then you have sandy soil.
Worm Testing
Now that you know what type of soil you may have, now lets look at whether your soil is healthy by doing the worm test. This I learnt when I first because an amateur gardener despite my dislike of earthworms or anything that wiggles.
I had to overcome this because of my love of gardening and I certainly did not want this to stop me from following my passion.I learnt that the amount of earthworms you have in your soil is good indicator of how healthy it is.
In order to do this test you need to:
1.Let the soil heat up to at least 55 degrees then take a lump of soil that you dig one-foot-deep and one foot across.
2.Collect the soil on a piece of cardboard and sift through it looking for earthworms. If you find at least 10 earthworms, then the soil has a good nutrition value.
3.Less than that indicates that there may not be healthy enough to support a healthy worm population, or that your soil may be too acidic or alkaline. This now takes us on to Ph testing to determine whether your soil is acidic or alkaline.
PH Testing
If your soil is too acidic or alkaline this will prevent your plant from growing as they should. Your plants will thrive better in a soil with Ph level of between six and seven.
The scale for acidity ranges is from 0 to 14 with 14 being highly alkaline and 0 being highly acidic. The optimum pH value is 7 or neutral pH. When the Ph level is lower than five or higher than eight, plants will not grow as well as they should.
Testing kits can be obtained in supermarkets or garden centres and once you have followed the instructions exactly you will get a fairly accurate reading.These are inexpensive and easy ways to ensure that your garden has the best foundation possible.
Another inexpensive method of testing which I found recently is to:
1.Take 1 cup of samples from different parts of the garden.
2. Put two spoonfuls of soil in a container and pour 1/2 cup of vinegar.
3. If it fizzes, the soil is alkaline. If it doesn't fizz, put two spoonfuls of soil into another container and add water until it becomes muddy.
4. Add 1/2 cup of baking soda. If it fizzes, the soil is acidic.
5. If there's no reaction after the second test, the soil is pH neutral.
Now that you have some knowledge as to whether your soil has a Ph problem or not and if there is, you can begin working to correct the problem by improving the soil gradually with compost and organic mulches. This will eventually bring the pH to neutral levels. The other alternative is to grow plants that are specifically for acidic or alkaline conditions such as Blueberry, Camellia and Rhododendron.
Now that you have an understanding of the type and the Ph level of your soil the next thing you will need to look at is the drainage, as poor drainage will also affect the development of your plants, their roots become soggy, rot and die.
Drainage
To test whether your soil has drainage problems, dig a whole one-foot-deep and six inches wide and fill it with water. Allow this to drain then measure how long it takes the water to drain completely. If it takes more than four hours, then the soil's drainage is poor.
My next section I will look at how you can improve your soil to get the organic garden you want.