More education..and a little seed advice.

Getting some air


So far we know we need some dead stuff and some ground up mountains ,or organic matter and mineral,
To create the soil we want to grow in. The next part may be a little harder to measure, or even see.
It is Air
Air is in some ways the most important part of the soil. Without it, nothing else can be released from the soil, nothing can penetrate the soil and very little will survive without it.
The secret with air is where it is. It lies in the spaces in between the particles or the crumbs of soil. Without the air, water fills the space and the soil becomes waterlogged. Oxygen is essential for healthy root growth and for plant respiration. Yes, plants breath. Organisms such as bacteria need air to respire and keep the plant healthy.
Air.
We need it, plants need it.
It’s no fun without it!
Bring your snorkel and wellies to the next blog.
It’s about something we may have had a little too much of recently.
Water.
Back to the hard work now.
Out of the class room, seeds need to be sown.
Sweet peas, more broad beans and early under cover lettuce can go in now.
Under cover means indoors, on a light windowsill or in a cool greenhouse, beneath a cloche in the garden or in a propagator .
That little bit of protection can raise the soil temperature by up to a couple of degrees.
In older times, and probably still in some parts of deepest Somerset, the best way to check if the soil was warm enough to sow was to sit bare cheeked on the soil. If you could do so, without risk of serious chilblains, it was ready!
I’ll stick to the method for hardy seeds. Look for annual weed seeds germinating. If the locals can bear the weather, the outsiders can. For half hardy seeds, I wait until I can happily walk about in shirt sleeves.
Television gardeners, competition growers and seed wholesalers may try to pin the sowing dates down to a few weeks but we all know that Mother Nature, like any woman, is fickle. Try to note in your diary what the weather was like, what temperatures and how much rain or sun we had. That way, you will be able to compare the rates of success between different growing conditions and judge for yourself when to sow in future years.
That is precisely what the grizzled old men who have been working the soil for decades already know.
Watch them, ask them and don’t be embarrassed to copy. In this instance, flattery is a very good idea.
Good gardening!

More soil and stones-organic matter

In our search to find out where our soil comes from and what it contains, we have divided it up into its various constituents and started to identify each part.
Soil, we now know, comes from rocks that have been weathered and ground down to smaller particles to make the mineral content.
Next we organize our organic matter.
Organic matter makes up the second largest portion of our recipe so it is vital we define it correctly so we can be sure of what we are handling and what we can add to our soil mix.
Organic matter or humus, originates from decayed plant and animal remains. On its own, it is a black unstructured mass and it works like a glue in binding all the other elements together. When bacteria gets to work on this shapeless compound, it breaks it further down to produce nitrates and other minerals salts essential for plant growth. Without it, all you have is dust. Deserts have a very low humus content. The mineral particles there ,sand, have nothing to bind them together and they just blow around . The other obvious effect of a lack of binding humus is water retention.
When we build our now common place compost heaps and create our own piles of rich organic humus, we add plant material in the form of kitchen waste . In the wild, in it’s natural state, trees lose leaves and bark, sometimes whole trees fall and decay. Plants germinate, grow, seed and die, some quicker than others but all adding their little contribution to the humus collective.
But the question on your lips is, where does the animal remains come into it?
Well, we are used to thinking of animals as large domestic creatures but the tiniest little insects that crawl through the leaf litter and eat their way through your compost heap will live and die and breed there too.
Some degree of animal remains come in the form of animal droppings too, commonly for the domestic garden in the form of farmyard manure.
The next ingredient in our cake mix is one you can’t hold in your hand or pour into the ground. You can’t weigh it are fill a wheel barrow with it but it means the difference between life and death to us as well as our plants.
Air.
How it works with the other parts of the soil and how we incorporate it will be covered in a future blog.

Starting with the basics:Soil

And so begins the lesson…

I decided to bring something of use to this blog. I have so far told of my own gardening antics and have pondered and probed the way I garden and even made recommendation but now I intend to give something that will, hopefully, be to your advantage. Something to learn and something to share perhaps, as I am. When we first place an eager foot into the garden for whatever purpose, one thing is essential to make it just that, a garden.

Soil.

We can grow things without it and some plants, such as epiphytic plants nestling in jungle treetops do grow with very little if any soil, but essentially, for what we perceive to be a garden here and now, we need soil.

So, what is soil? It’s easy to say that stuff you have in the garden but what is it made of, where does it comes from originally and what exactly does it do?

Well, to list the ingredients, soil consists of a mixture of particles of sand or clay, humus, air, water, dissolved salts and bacteria. Sounds tasty doesn’t it? Maybe not to us but it holds all that your plants need to thrive.

By proportion, broken rocks, or sand or clay particles, takes up the greater part.

We have a mix of: 40% Mineral matter, (those broken rocks)

10% Organic matter (decomposing materials)

25% Water

20% Air

5% Living Organisms

All these amounts are approximate and vary according to soil type and environment. They can also be altered by cultural management, meaning what you do can effect the soil. This we know and we use to our advantage. Every time we dig in some compost or add water, we are changing the soil.

Now, the mineral content forms the framework of the soil giving it most of its characteristics, but where does it come from? Can you buy it in bags at your local garden centre? Well, yes and no but mainly no, really, no.

Soil mineral matter starts, as I hinted earlier, as rock. Large mountains in fact.

Weathering eventually brings it down to a more manageable size thankfully. It’s done in three very slow ways, each achieving the desired effect over several thousands of years.

1. Chemical Weathering. Water and carbon dioxide combine to create carbonic acid which dissolves limestone. Take a stroll through Cheddar for a few fine examples of long term chemical erosion.

2. Physical Weathering. Let’s get physical with some wet and dry repetition. Periods of intense wet followed by extreme dryness repeated over thousands of years sets up strains which causes pieces to flake off. Freezing and thawing has the same effect due to water expanding up to 10% on freezing. Wind can pick up small grains of sand or clay and sandblast the surface of larger rocks.

3. Biological Weathering. Roots can push and crack rocks and buildings. Take a look at the damage weed roots can do to your nice paved patio. Also chemicals exuded from the roots of plants can dissolve rock surfaces. Lichens are favourites for this.

As I said, this takes thousands if not millions of years, so the grains of sand in your handful of soil you trickle through your fingers next time you are in the garden will probably have started the process of becoming soil before the dinosaurs roamed on some distant continent. That’s a sobering thought.

Next time: Organic Matter.

Time to get technical

I have decided to add some elements of education and information to this blog in an attempt to solicit some sort of response from any readership it may have. Either that or to encourage some readers to begin with.
I passed my certificate in horticulture certificate from the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) some time ago now but I know very little has changed in the principles of gardening and nothing has changed in that time regarding the composition of soil and plants in that short space that hadn't occurred in the previous thousand years of evolution so I will use the materials I used then to help me.
I also hope to include some recipes. There is no point growing all those delicious things if you don't know what to do with them!

Planning ahead

I was watching my good lady burning her old diary, something she has done every New Year’s Day since we’ve known each other, when I had a thought.
Diaries.
It’s the one thing you really should add to your tools list for a garden. If you want to learn from your mistakes and avoid repeating them, you should really invest in a good, large paged diary.
I know there are any number of fancy, floral print ones with nice pictures of gardens and favourite plants throughout them but, frankly, they won’t give you any help. As long as there is enough space to put down what you did, when you did it and what the results were, that’s all you really need.
A diary or even just a notepad will suffice as basic essentials but I would add a large pad of graph paper and a wall planner as extra if you can run to them.
The wall planner makes it easier to see what’s going on when your hands are caked in mud and I would use the graph paper to lay out a plan of the plot you are working on. All permanent features, beds, shed, water butt etc., should be marked in black marker. That way, if you want to you can trace those parts and add temporary things, such as trial beds and new crops.
By numbering the beds you can practice crop rotation for fruit and vegetable growers or plan bedding layouts for flower beds.
Make a list of what you want to grow each year, around now is usually when we get most imaginative , and you can start to plan how you are going to fit it all in!
Remember to try something new, make room for the old reliable items ,potatoes cabbages and more and the long term beds, such as asparagus and rhubarb and then let your imagination go wild!
On your plan, mark North and mark areas of shade or hard sun and tie it all in with the diary, noting what was planted when.
For the start of the year, nothing much will change but next season, when you come to plant your second crops, you will be better prepared. After the best of the year has passed, it will be good to sit down and look back and see what worked and what went wrong.
It’s another reason to have a good, comfy chair in the shed!