Improve Your Albuquerque Garden Soil – Here’s How

It is essential to have healthy soil to develop robust, vigorous plants resistant to pests and diseases and produce abundant fruit and vegetables. Whether you begin with new, high-quality soil or garden in the topsoil that naturally occurs on your property, enhancing your soil is an ongoing effort.

The mineral particles, water, organic matter, air, and microbes that makeup soil is what make it alive. Other components of soil include air. The equilibrium between these components must be preserved for a garden to be healthy.

Like all other living things, the soil must be nourished to offer a healthy environment to cultivate one’s veggies.

The Elements Necessary for a Nutritious Garden Soil

Good garden soil is a foundation for growing healthy, productive plants. Because the soil provides nutrients to the plants, the soil must be fertile to sustain plant life. Additionally, the soil has to be free to facilitate the formation of roots, drainage, and air circulation.

A nutrient- and mineral-dense, organic-matter-rich soil indicates soil health. Organic matter is essential because it supplies the soil with nutrients, encourages the development of a biologically varied subculture within the soil that is beneficial to plant life, and enhances the drainage and aeration capabilities of the soil.

What exactly does “Organic Matter” mean?

Anything made up of carbon molecules originally produced by living beings is considered the organic matter. Debris from plants, shredded leaves, grass clippings, and animal dung are some examples of organic waste.

What Benefits Does Organic Matter Provide to the Surrounding Soil?

The delivery of nutrients to plants, the improvement of soil structure, the binding of pollutants, and the assistance with soil buffering are all important roles that organic matter performs.

Organisms in your soil are responsible for decomposing organic matter and turning it into humus, which is rich in nutrients. When organisms consume organic materials, they produce tunnels and pockets in the soil, which lightens the soil and makes it easier for air and water to reach the roots of plants.

A soil that initially consists mostly of heavy clay will readily get compacted, be prone to being waterlogged, and hinder air, water, and nutrients from reaching the roots of the plants. Clay soil may have its structure improved by the addition of organic matter. This will allow the soil to drain more effectively, making it simpler for plant roots to develop.

If the soil is light and sandy, it will drain fast, preventing the roots from absorbing any nutrients in the soil. The addition of organic matter is another way to improve the ability of sandy soil to stick together, as well as to keep more moisture and nutrients.

Here’s How to Improve Your Albuquerque Garden Soil

With time, effort, and commitment, almost any type of soil may be improved to the point that it can be used as healthy garden soil. Improving the quality of your soil is a process that takes time and is continuous. Organic matter must be resupplied to keep the cycle moving forward. The following is a list of seven strategies to enhance the soil in your garden.

Add some compost.

The most effective method for enhancing the overall health of garden soil is to incorporate compost and decayed organic matter. By incorporating compost into the soil, one can feed the soil, improve the structure of the soil, enable the soil to retain nutrients, promote good drainage while also absorbing water deeply in the soil, and keep the soil loose so that air can reach plant roots, help maintain a neutral pH, and protect plants from a variety of common garden diseases.

Earthworms and other forms of microbial life in the soil are nourished by compost. Worms will burrow through the soil, which will enhance its aeration and drainage, and they will leave behind their castings, which will boost the fertility of the soil.

Get a test of the soil.

Adding compost is not a matter of doing it once and being done with it. It is an ongoing process that contributes to replenishing nutrients in the soil. The soil should be tested at regular intervals for a few years to identify what additional nutrients are required to support plant development and production.

It is relatively simple to perform your soil testing, and kits are readily available online and in stores selling gardening materials. It is also possible to do a more in-depth investigation of soil samples by taking them to the county extension office in your area.

Readings for the soil’s pH, potassium (K), phosphorus (P), calcium (Ca), and magnesium (Mg), as well as sulphur, are provided by a fundamental soil test (S). A soil test will not only tell you the amount of lead and organic matter in the soil but will also provide advice on how to change these amounts.

As soon as you have a better understanding of the nutrient deficiencies in your soil, you will be able to improve the soil’s nutritional content by adding organic amendments. For instance, alfalfa meal can enrich the soil with nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Castings from worms are an excellent source of nitrogen for amendments. Phosphorus and calcium are both included in bone meal. Most of the time, all that is required is the application of an all-purpose organic fertilizer.

Cover the Top of the Soil with Mulch

The use of mulch is essential for maintaining fertile soil and growing robust plants. It does this by maintaining the soil’s moisture content, preventing the growth of weeds, and keeping the soil at a comfortable temperature.

The soil’s fertility will increase due to the mulch’s gradual decomposition, adding organic matter to the ground.

Prevent Soil Compaction

If the soil is hard and compacted, water and nutrients will not be able to soak in, and the soil will eventually become barren and dry. Small plant roots cannot expand to look for moisture and nutrients, which causes plants to dry up and eventually perish. Compacted soil also inhibits the microbiological activity required to transform organic matter into the nutrient’s plants take up.

Clay soil has a strong propensity to become quickly compacted, even by the weight of seasonal precipitation such as snow and ice. The soil structure may be restored with the gradual addition of organic materials.

Compaction of the ground can also result from working with overly damp soil. Please wait until the snow has melted, the garden has drained, and the ground is dry enough that a handful of dirt can be picked up without it sticking together in the spring.

Staying off the ground is the best way to prevent compacting the soil. When you walk on the soil, you compact it, which makes it more difficult for water, air, and oxygen to reach the plant’s roots.

Instead, you could create permanent garden beds by separating your space into growing beds and walking paths, so you never have to walk on the soil. This will prevent you from accidentally compacting the soil.

About three to four feet in width should allow you to walk around your garden without having to foot on the dirt at any point. Allow enough space between the beds for a wheelbarrow or a manual lawnmower to fit through if you maintain grass in your walks. The least amount of space required is two feet.

Change the Crops You Grow Every Year.

It would be best if you planted your crops in a new position in the garden yearly. Doing so minimises the depletion of nutrients and disrupts the cycles of pests and illnesses, allowing the soil to remain healthy.

Eliminating potato pathogens through crop rotation is a great way to maintain the health of garden soil. During just one growing season, nematodes and fungus responsible for the scabby skin spots on potatoes experience fast population growth in the soil. It is possible that the crop for this year will not be harmed, but if it is planted in the same spot as last year, the crop for the next year will be wiped out by disease-causing organisms still present in the soil from the year before. If the disease spores and organisms are deprived of their food source of choice, they will eventually perish of natural causes.

It is recommended that all garden crops adhere to the three-year norm. Make sure to rotate your crops every year so that you don’t grow the same group of veggies in the same spot for three consecutive years. This allows sufficient time for the pathogens in the soil to perish.

Some plants can also improve the health of the soil. Nitrogen is added to the soil by peas and nasturtiums. After you have grown crops that take nitrogen from the soil, you may refill it by planting crops that provide nitrogen.

Plant some cover crops.

Cover crops are cultivated largely to improve soil quality, although certain varieties can also be used as food sources.

Planting a cover crop near the end of the garden season and allowing it to remain in the garden during the winter provides multiple benefits. A cover crop acts as a shield for the soil, preventing it from being washed away by the wind, water, or melting snow. During the mild winter months, the crops will keep the soil from being compacted and restrict weeds’ growth. Cover crops and food sources such as broad-leaf greens such as kale, radishes, turnips, and other leafy greens are excellent options during the colder months. Peas, clover, ryegrass, and legumes are other suitable cover crops to use throughout the winter.

In the spring, turn beneath any still-standing crops so they can work as green manure. After being turned beneath, the cover crop plants will eventually degrade, which will boost the fertility of the soil.

To this, add some aged animal manure.

Add composted animal manure to enhance the garden soil’s health and fertility. Fresh animal dung is excessively hot and will cause damage to plants. It also has the potential to house germs that are dangerous to people. Therefore, before applying the manure to the soil in the garden, you should wait for anything from several months to an entire year.

When integrated into garden soil, droppings from chickens, cows, rabbits, horses, goats, sheep, and bats are all excellent sources of nutrients and will improve the structure of the soil.

Your vegetable plant may suffer herbicide damage if animal manures are tainted with pesticides and herbicides used as a fertilizer. Once it has made its way into the soil, it is quite difficult to remove. If you buy manure, be sure the farmer gives you his word that the animals that produced it did not graze on or consume hay that had been treated with pesticides or herbicides.

You will be rewarded with robust, thriving plants that will yield plentiful harvests from your vegetable garden if you engage in the process of continually enhancing and constructing healthy garden soil. This improvement and building process is a continuous activity.