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Amending the Soil in Your Garden - Making Great Soil

Most gardens don't start out with great soil and the longer plants grow, the more help the soil will need. Here's some help identifying what your garden soil needs and what amendments to add to make it great garden soil.
Great Garden Soil: Why it Matters - Making it Great
Soil is often viewed as the boring part of gardening. While garden soil will never be glamourous or even as interesting as choosing plants, there is a whole world under our Wellingtons that literally and figuratively is the foundation for our gardens. New gardeners are cautioned to put money and effort into improving their soil before they even consider planting, but few appreciate this wisdom. Here's why you should.
Amending Your Garden Soil - Making Good Soil out of Bad
Most garden plant problems are caused by poor soil. What is good soil and how do you know what kind of soil is in your garden? Understanding your garden soil means knowing its fertility and texture.
Soil Amendments
Knowing how much mulch or amendment to purchase for your garden is always a bit of a guess, but you can make it an educated one by using a couple of easy measurements and calculations. Here's how to know how many bags, pounds or cubic yards of mulch will actually give you 3inches of coverage.
How Much Mulch or Soil Amendment Will You Need?
Knowing how much mulch or amendment to purchase for your garden is always a bit of a guess, but you can make it an educated one by using a couple of easy measurements and calculations. Here's how to know how many bags, pounds or cubic yards of mulch will actually give you 3inches of coverage.
What is Organic Matter and What Does it Do For My Garden Soil?
Every garden book talks about the importance of adding plenty of organic matter to your garden soil. But what is organic matter and just what does it do that's so wonderful? Is it compost? Manure? Cover crops? Organic matter is all those things and what organic matter can do for your garden soil is nothing short of a miracle.
Manure - Adding Manure as Organic Matter, to Amend Garden Soil
Manure, or decomposing animal waste, doesn't sound like it would be something you'd want to throw on your garden soil, but yes you would. Manure is one of several options for adding organic matter to your garden soil, to make it richer and more nutritious for your plants.
Green Manure - What is It and What Does It Do for My Garden Soil?
Green manure isn't some new trend. The term green manure just refers to an old practice of growing a quick crop to feed the soil and then turning in under, to decompose and become fertilizer. Here are some suggestions.
Using Wood Ash in the Garden
Is wood ash good for garden soil? Will it do more harm than good? That depends on your soil and, of course, on the wood that was burned. Here are some thoughts to consider before you put wood ash on your garden plants.

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