If you're planning a garden or looking to spruce up your yard for native pollinators, you'll need to understand what kind of soil you're working with and how healthy it currently is. Plants want nutrient-rich soil with optimal drainage, but if your soil isn't there yet, there are ways to improve it into a medium meant for successful harvests and happy plants.
What Type of Soil Do You Have?
If you need help determining what type of soil you have, there's a fun way to test it out - the Jar Test.
Grab a quart jar and lid, and fill it about one-third of the way up with the soil you will be planting in. If your garden spans over a large area, it may be a good idea to take multiple samples in separate jars from different regions of your growing space to see if there are varying differences in the soil throughout your land.
Use clean water to fill the jar about 80 percent full. Add a few drops of dish soap and screw on the lid.
Shake the soil, water, and soap mixture for a couple of minutes to combine all the contents. Then set the jar down for 24-48 hours to allow all the contents to settle.
Results: The bottom layer will settle first - this is your soil's sand content. The layer on top of the sand is silt, and clay will rest on the top of the other layers. If your soil has a lot of clay, it may take up to two days for it to completely settle. You'll know it's ready for evaluation when the water is clear again other than some organic material particles floating within. Using a ruler, measure each layer to determine the percentage of each. Then you can use this soil chart to determine the type of soil you have.
Improving Your Soil Type
If you've determined your soil is sandy, you can expect water to drain through with little resistance. Because of this, sandy soils can be low in beneficial nutrients. Add in organic materials like compost or manure, add mulch, wood chips, or hay to the top of the ground, or consider adding cover crops to build the sandy soil into a medium that retains water better and offers nutrients to the plants.
If it's clay soil you have, your medium will drain very poorly, and it is most likely low in organic material and beneficial microbial life. Plants will have a hard time growing in clay-heavy soil because their roots will have to work harder when pushing through the ground, and during heavy rains, the plants can become waterlogged due to poor drainage. To improve clay soil, work in some organic material regularly, like compost from your household food scraps. Consider raised garden beds to keep foot traffic low and avoid compaction. Additionally, aerate your soil in the spring and fall to help with water drainage, or try adding some compaction-battling plants to keep the clay soil looser for stretching roots.
Silty soil tends to be more fertile than clay or sand, so if it's silty soil you have, you may have some organic material and microbial life already living beneath the ground. Silty soil can still have poor drainage, so raised garden beds can counteract unwanted compaction and help make this soil type more manageable for growing plants. Adding more organic matter each year will keep the soil robust and draining more appropriately.
If you find you have a balanced loam soil, you've got the perfect recipe for most plants to thrive. You'll still want to amend your soil with some compost each year to keep your growing medium nutrient-rich.
Your Soil's pH
The perfect pH for your soil is between 6.5 and 6.8. It's worth getting a pH test to find out your soil's current state so you can adjust it over the next couple of growing seasons if necessary. If your soil's pH is much higher or lower than that range, the nutrients found within become unavailable for most plants to uptake, and future harvests will suffer.
If your soil is too acidic (under 6.5), you can raise the pH by adding powdered limestone or wood ash. Ground limestone will take several months to raise the pH, and while wood ash will increase the pH much quicker, it can easily become too high, so be careful with how much you add. Apply no more than 2 lbs/100 square feet, preferably in the winter, every 2-3 years. If you go the limestone route, apply in the fall 3-4 lbs/100 square feet for sandy soil, 7-8 lbs/100 square feet for balanced loam soil, and 8-10 lbs/100 square feet for clay soil (LaLiberte).
If your soil is too alkaline (above 6.8), you can acidify your soil by adding elemental sulfur or naturally acidic organic matter like sawdust and oak leaves. If using sulfur, add 1 lb/100 square feet for sandy soil, 1.5-2 lbs/100 square feet for balanced loam soil, and 2 lbs/100 square feet for clay soil (LaLiberte).
Growing your own fruits and vegetables or planting native flowering plants for the pollinators encourages a better relationship with our earth and cuts back on our environmental impact. But the success of a garden starts from the ground up - with healthy, robust soil. While there are many ways to improve your soil health, these simple tricks can help you take the natural soil you have in your backyard and turn it into a fertile landscape. But if you want a more in-depth view of your soil status, consider sending a sample to a testing lab, and they can provide a list of amendments needed to get it to perfection.
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