What are You Doing About Your Soil?

By David Wall
Guest Columnist

With the exception of fertilizing directly on plant foliage, efforts to grow and take care of vegetable plants are centered in the soil.  In other words, you feed and water the soil.  The soil will feed and water your vegetables.  As you begin your fall garden, what are you doing to take care of your soil?

Did you get a soil test?  For yards, a simple test tells you your needs to grow nice grass.  Go to your county extension office, get the soil test bags and instructions for how to get the soil ready for testing.  For your garden, an expanded test is needed cover additional concerns in having a garden can be examined.  so that when needed corrections are applied, your garden can provide great crops.

Now, how is your soil?  Great soils should be 50% solids and 50% pore space, & pore space should be 50% water and 50% air.  Roots, earthworms, soil microbes and other soil life are strongly affected by the environment created when plenty of air (soil porosity) is present.  Within the solids, 5-10% should be organic matter, although most soil tests in Texas usually check out around 1/2 of 1%. While you can grow crops with such a low organic content, forget about having a top producing garden.

With computers the answer to improving performance is always adding more memory.  With gardens, the standard answer is always adding more organic matter.  The only addition is adding that organic matter months before starting the garden.  For a spring garden, add mulch and compost in the fall.  Tilling mulch shortly before transplanting vegetables guarantees failure, because the rotting mulch will pull nitrogen from the soil.

Take care of the soil and it will take care of earthworms, microbes, and other aspects needed for  your  vegetables.