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How to Make Healthy Gardening Soil for Growing Food

by Contributing Writer

  • Overview

    Millions of people wish to grow food at home in order to be able to eat pure and organic food. A lot of these people even go ahead and turn an area of land into a garden. Healthy food doesn't grow out of overly dry and unhealthy soil though. That's why knowing how to make healthy gardening soil is very important.

  • How to Start

 

  • Step 1

    Add livestock manure to your garden soil. It has nutrients that are readily available for plants and soil organisms. Moreover it is a source of nitrogen which is a must for plant growth.

  • Step 2

    Allow three months between application and harvest to avoid contamination. Use fast growing crops such as corn in initial stages for heavy feeding.

  • Step 3

    Apply one-quarter inch of compost per season to dramatically improve your soil's water holding and disease fighting properties.

  • Step 4

    Use earthworms to convert nutrient-rich materials into forms readily usable by the food plants. Worm castings help feed the plant roots and they carry a lot of microbes, which are beneficial to the soil organisms.

  • Step 5

    Build tall piles in bins with alternating layers of high-nitrogen grass clippings, with high-carbon and difficult to break down, dry leaves.

  • Step 6

    Plant valuable cover crops like legumes (clovers, alfalfa, beans and peas) in order to feed the soil and enhance its fertility. They help in fixing nitrogen present in the atmosphere into forms readily usable by other food plants. Try mixes of different crops at one time.

  • Step 7

    Employ the seeds when the land is fallow. Rake them in before watering.

  • Step 8

    Use organic mulch as a blanket for the gardening soil in order to increase soil activity and to shield it from erosion as well as weeds.

  • Step 9

    Lay down a layer of thick cardboard or newspaper covered with grass cuttings and leaves over a living grass sod in order to kill it for the preparation of planting of the new food crops.
  • 3
  • Manure Compost Earthworms Legumes Mulch Cardboard or newspaper
  • Manure
  • Compost
  • Earthworms
  • Legumes
  • Mulch
  • Cardboard or newspaper
  • -Restrict foot traffic to the pathways in order to avoid unnecessary compaction in the growing areas. -Always buy compost from a reliable source
  • -Restrict foot traffic to the pathways in order to avoid unnecessary compaction in the growing areas.
  • -Always buy compost from a reliable source

References & Resources

     
     
 
 

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