The secret to having an amazing garden is rich, fertile, and healthy soil. What’s awesome is that you have complete control over how to make your soil healthy based on what you want to grow in it, on your location and climate.

You don’t need to use prepared fertilizers that have chemicals in them to be successful with gardening. You can buy or make all-natural climate-friendly fertilizer. A great way to fertilize is to use chicken droppings or barnyard animal manure from plant-based eaters.

You don’t want to overwater your soil. Keep it moist, but don’t overwater so that it’s soggy. With proper garden planning, you can avoid using anything but rain water that you catch for your garden to keep it healthy. Watering is needed whenever you first plant, when you transplant, and during high development of edible plants.

It’s imperative that you always remove weeds the moment that they appear. The good thing is that you can use many weeds in your compost, so they’re not a waste. Keeping the soil free of weeds helps the plants you want to grow get healthier. Remember that weeds comprise any plant that is not growing where it should be growing.

You can improve your soil with the right cover crops, mulches, composts and more. In between seasonal growing periods, you want to use cover crops to restore the fertility and nutrients of the soil. In addition, cover crops prevent erosion, suppress weeds, and stop diseases. The best cover crops to plant are those that are native to your area of the world.

One way to know the right cover crop, fertilizer formula, and nutrients to add to your soil is to test the soil using a soil testing kit. Then, based on the plant you want to grow, add the right nutrients to the soil by using the right cover crop, compost, or fertilizer.

Even when you’re not actively growing in your garden, it’s important to keep weeding and keep it clean of debris. Much of the debris you find in your garden can be composted, but some of it might be contaminants such as mould due to overwatering.

Using good homemade compost is the best thing you can do for your soil. Make compost by adding brown matter, green matter, soil, water, air, and time right in your own yard – using a compost pile or a compost bin. Cover the garden with compost, then straw, if using as a ground cover.

If you find mould or other contaminants in your garden, don’t compost them. Instead, either burn them or throw them in the trash in special bags as per your city’s guidelines. You don’t want to add those types of things to your soil or to your compost.
Looking after your soil is an important part of the process of climate-friendly gardening. Everything that you need to do for your garden to help produce the healthiest plants without chemicals, synthetics, or fuel-based fertilizers is possible and preferable.
Improving the soil with plenty of organic matter in the form of compost helps drainage and aeration on heavy soils and conserves essential moisture on light ones. On the veg patch or areas of bare soil, consider growing green manures – these are seedling crops that are dug back in to enrich the soil.

Opened bags of new potting soil can retain quality for around 6 to 12 months. For unopened and unused potting soil, you can store it for about a year or two before it goes bad.

The best time to make your soil richer is to add compost at the beginning of each growing season. You can make your own compost from vegetable scraps and yard debris with a composter, or you can purchase bagged compost. A good rule of thumb is to add an inch of compost to your garden beds each year.

The manure will rot down and the soil level will sink a bit. You can just put the manure on the top of the soil and leave it, which will work but don’t forget to use well rotted manure that’s at least 2 weeks old and not fresh manure on your garden or yard.

Compost can dry out quite quickly, so mixing it with topsoil is a great way to provide balanced bedding for plants and flowers. You get the best of both worlds with a mixture since topsoil will offer a robust home for roots with plenty of water, while compost will provide a boost of nutrients.

When possible, apply manure or compost in the late summer or early fall. This allows manure nutrients to infiltrate the soil and stabilize with the soil. The later the manure is applied, the greater the risk of nutrient loss via snowmelt and spring runoff.

The manure may be spread atop the soil or incorporated into the garden soil. Pig, dog, cat, and human waste should never be used in a vegetable garden. Cow, horse, chicken/poultry, sheep, goat, and llama manure are acceptable types of manure appropriate for use in vegetable gardens. Fresh manure should be left for a week or two before using on the garden because fresh manure may burn young plants and roots due to stomach acids from the cows or horses digestion processes.