How to Improve Your Vegetable Garden's Soil

How to Improve Your Vegetable

Garden's Soil

Learn how you can have a bountiful harvest of healthy garden vegetables. Improve your soil with these practical hints from old garden guide books and farmers' journals.

Farmer and Horse Plow

The soil must be well drained, either naturally or artificially. It must be rich; and the manure should be thoroughly worked into the soil. Plow the land in the autumn, and plow it again as early as possible in the spring. If there is any rubbish, remove it or dig holes and bury it below the reach of the plow. Then plow again, or work the land with a cultivator. This work should be done when the soil is dry and the weather warm. You cannot possibly stir the soil too much while the sun is shining. It lets in the sun's rays and warms and and mellows the soil. On light sandy soil, thoroughly and deeply plowed and manured the fall previous, there are many crops which can be sown to advantage without again plowing in the spring. It often happens in this latitude that five or six inches of the surface soil in the spring is thawed out and dry enough to work, while underneath the ground is frozen solid. If we wait till this frozen soil can be plowed, we frequently lose a good opportunity for putting in early crops of peas, potatoes, onions, cabbage, lettuce, radish, spinach, etc. And besides, the soil that we turn up with the plow, and which comes to the surface, and in which we sow the seed, is cold and damp, while the surface soil which we turn under is warn and dry.

From THE NATIONAL FARMER'S AND HOUSEKEEPER'S CYCLOPAEDIA, 1888

A quarter of an acre can be made equal to half an acre. You can about double the garden, without adding to it an inch of surface, by increasing the depth of good soil. For instance, ground has been cultivated to the depth of six or seven inches - try the experiment of stirring the soil and enriching it one foot downward, or eighteen inches, or even two feet, and see what vast difference will result. With every inch you go down, making all friable and fertile, you add just so much more to root pasturage. When you wish to raise a great deal, increase your leverage. Roots are your levers; and when they rest against a deep fertile soil they lift into the air and sunshine products that may well delight the eyes and palate of the most fastidious. We suggest that this thorough deepening, pulverization, and enriching of the soil be done at the start, when the plough can be used without any obstructions. If there are stones, rocks, roots, anything which prevents the treatment which a garden plot should receive, there is a decided advantage in clearing them all out at the beginning.

By E. P. Roe, from his 1886 book, THE HOME ACRE

Many gardens can never be brought into a state of great productiveness on account of an excess of water in the soil. If the soil be heavy, and continues wet and heavy in the spring, let it be drained at once. After this, plough deep, pulverize thoroughly, manure highly, keep the weeds subdued, and in a few years you will have a garden that will produce anything that will grow in your locality. If the soil is heavy, haul on muck, sawdust, manure, in great abundance; and when such substances decay, the soil will be light, mellow, and productive.

The nearer the ground approaches to a sandy soil, the less retentive will it be of moisture; the more to a clayey, the longer will it retain moisture; and the finer the particles of which the clay is composed, the more retentive will it be of water, and, consequently, the longer in drying, and the harder when dry. But earth of a consistence that will hold water the longest, without becoming hard when dry, is, of all others, the best adapted for raising the generality of plants in the greatest perfection. This last described soil is called loam, and is a medium earth, between the extremes of clay and sand.

A light, sandy soil will be benefited if worked when moist, as such treatment will have a tendency to make it more compact; on the contrary, if a clayey soil be worked when too wet, it kneads like dough, and never fails to find when drought follows; and this not only prevents the seed from rising, but injures the plants materially in their subsequent growth, by its becoming impervious to moderate rains, dews, air, and the influence of the sun, all of which are necessary to the promotion of vegetation.

From the 1866 book, THE AMERICAN GARDENER'S ASSISTANT

This is part of an article from the book The Kitchen Garden Guide