Soil Care

Poor soil with courgettes struggling

My lads were making choc chip cookies last week and they missed out one ingredient, not something obvious like chocolate either. We didn’t have any vanilla essence. This made a really big difference to the final taste and instead of them being eaten as soon as they were taken out of the oven piping hot like they usually are, they were left on the kitchen table.

Our dog hasn’t got such a critical palate though and managed to eat the whole plateful in just a few seconds after the lads walked out of the room. They will complement the pound of butter she ate last week.

Good soil, the courgettes are thriving

Soil care

Soil, just like ingredients in baking, needs to be mixed in just the right quantities to make plants grow well. Getting a good loam (soil structure) to hold plants in place and store nutrients until the plant roots need them requires a mixture of sand, silt, organic matter and clay. In my experience, most gardens have a varying mixture of both good and poor soil. In our garden, we have an area where the bulk of the vegetables are being grown. We set up the raised beds and added loads of organic matter such as well-rotted horse muck, and the contents of the compost bin (lovely stuff). At the top of the garden we cut a long narrow bed out of the lawn to increase our veggie produce. This bed is very near to a mature escallonia hedge and willow tree, which both starve the bed of water, light and nutrients. We also had run out of our horse muck and compost so it this bed wasn’t so well fed –just a few handfuls of chicken pellets We planted the same batch of courgettes into both the good growing area and the poor bed. The lush leafy growth of the healthy plants compared to the diseased looking stunted growth of the courgettes in the nutrient and water starved one makes for interesting comparisons between the two areas.

Weeds

Weeds are also a good indicator of how a soil is performing. There are some types that like to grow on nitrogen rich soil, such as nettles, whilst others take over poor ground without competition from rivals. We were on Inishtrahull Island last week with the Inishowen Organic Group and I saw a large area on a hillside that was just covered in daisies. There was no soil to be seen and the plants were seemingly hanging on to the hillside by wrapping their roots around the scree, hardy or what?

Summer Bedding - Getting it right

Getting the right mix of soil is very important in summer bedding plants and containers. There are generally a lot of plants in a very restricted area, especially in hanging baskets. A container might have ten plants all battling it out in soil that would normally be used for just one plant. Most shop bought composts only have enough nutrients on them to last the plants four weeks, so regular feeding and watering is needed. Slow release organic fertiliser can be mixed in (or scattered onto the top if you forgot when you planted them up). Water retaining gel is a good idea too. Again if you forgot to put them in, all is not lost. Simply push a topless plastic pop bottle with the bottom cut off into the basket and fill it with water every day. It is important to keep your containers and baskets well watered –even during wet days.

Home made mix

I was always proud of how well my containers and baskets looked in the summer. I used to make a mix of peat, compost, sand, osmocote and garden soil. One year I didn’t quite get it right. I had got a load of free mushroom compost from the old mushroom polytunnels in Umrican –great for the veggies I have to say. However, it was a disaster for my summer displays. The mixture wasn’t rotted down well enough and the straw leached the nitrogen from the soil. Without a decent environment the poor bedding plants succumbed to all sorts of pests and diseases. The effect was devastating and my displays were pitiful hardly filling the baskets, yellow spotty leaves and barely a bloom in sight. My reputation went downhill fast, but you live and learn. As I am writing our windowsills are covered by pots of strong, healthy tomato plants and even though each one is only in a two-litre pot, they are quickly making their way up their sticks to the ceiling. This is because of good compost, regular watering and constant feeding (three times a day at the moment) With all that constant care and dedication, it doesn’t look as though I will be going on holiday this summer.