Keith Markensen

How To Cultivate Your Garden

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Once your plants are an inch or two high you will have another decision to make. Even the best garden soil tends to form a crust after a hard rain has beaten the air out of it and a hot sun has baked it. That crust makes it hard for the soil to drink up the next rainfall, and often forces much of that rain to run off uselessly to lower ground. To prevent this, gardeners cultivate the soil with a hoe. A “dust mulch” results, which diminishes loss of water by evaporation. There is, of course, a second important reason for cultivating the soil: to eliminate weeds.

Adding Organic to Your Landscape

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Soil is the gardener’s bread and butter, much like dough is for the chef. Without good soil all the effort in the world can come to naught, just as poor dough can lay to waste even the most extravagant culinary effort. Soil varies by area into three broad categories, and also varies in quality from area to area. The categories that soil falls into are claylike, sandy and silt. Ideal soil contains a good mixture of the three types, and is called good garden loam. Clay soil possesses the greatest water-holding capability, while sandy soil possesses the least.