Past Events
September Chapter Meeting - Healthy Soils
On September 22, we hosted Master Gardener Niki Vollrath at Grace Presbyterian Church to talk about healthy soils: the key to growing healthy plants. She had fun props to explain the difference between the sizes of sand, silt, and clay, saying that an equal mixture of all three (loam) was ideal. In the photo, she is adding “organic matter” (little foam leaf stickers) to her soil. Niki also provided the totally t-shirt-able line to remind us: Dirt is Dead, Soil is Alive.
We now have a new vocabulary word: tilth, meaning the fitness as a medium for growing plants (“good tilth” vs. “poor tilth”).
Five things to remember for managing and improving soil health are:
MINIMIZE disturbance. Stay off your garden right after a rain, plant cover crops with a strong tap root, don’t do a lot of tilling.
MAXIMIZE biodiversity. The more things you have in your garden, the more things in your soil you can feed.
MAXIMIZE soil cover. Add a cover crop, leave your finished plants on the soil, use organic mulch. These moderate the temperature of the soil and help to retain moisture.
MAXIMIZE presence of living roots. Keep plants growing throughout the year, and use compost as mulch. Cut down finished plants but leave the roots.
MINIMIZE use of chemicals. Try other things first. You may not need them.
