Make Do and Amend

As Spring creeps up on us and we all try to keep our heads from bursting into flames from our shared chaotic reality, I thought I’d revisit some simple gardening techniques this season. Soil amendment is generally best started in the fall but whom among us actually follows through with every autumnal gardening task? Adding some extra leaf mulch, chopped up woody material, or even some just-in-time pruning, can help inject some life into your soil ahead of the growing season. While materials will take time to break down, piles of sticks and leaves are crucial habitats to all sorts of beneficial insects.

I try to think of the early spring as a time to set myself up for success and re-visit my plan for the year. Soil amendment is an easy task to miss. While it’s a bit early for adding fertilizer, making sure there’s an abundance of organic material and mulch to help hold in water (and nutrients) will go a long way to not feeling like you’re playing catch up later on. Bark mulch generally is best on pathways and around edges/borders of beds. If you need a little refresher on making compost at any time of year, check out this from Charles Dowding. Increasing nutrients and adding to soil structure is something that can be done fairly easily but does take a little of forethought. If you look around your garden, where are some areas that have had stunted growth or gotten too dry in the last growing season? I would start there with your soil amendments. You may also think about where you are primarily growing annual vegetables and whether adding an inch or so of well rotted compost or soil will boost your soil fertility.

In gardening, as in life, we must adapt to our situation. Rather than looking to see what we can haul in from afar, it’s much more efficient to look for what is at hand and readily available to us. High quality organic fertilizers are great but they are costly and not always available when we need them. In our thinking about food security in our communities moving forward, I think it’s important for us to think about the resources we already have or that we can make ourselves.