PREPARE BEFORE YOU PLANT
By Virgil Adams
How well you prepare has a lot to do with how well you plant, and how well you plant has a lot to do with how- and how much- you harvest. But in gardening, as in most everything, you start with preparation. Sounds redundant, but it's right. In this case, you start preparing the soil.
Soil scientists call it "pre-plant tillage." City gardeners may call it "soil preparation." Most country gardeners I know simply say they are "getting ready to plant." Whatever you call this step, it is no wimpy, sissy (I'm not talking about you, Sissy) exercise.
Soil preparation, if I may use the city term, is radical surgery of the land. You get rough and tough with it. You dig, till or turn as deeply as possi-ble, flail the daylights out of clumps and clods, and pulverize the soil. Your goal in getting ready is to loosen and break up compacted soil.
Root development depends on soil tilth and structure. The ideal soil is loose, deep, loamy, friable, well-aerated and well-supplied with water ab-sorbing organic matter.
If you dig, plow, till or turn only 3 or 4 inches deep, your plants are in trouble. And so is your reputation as a gardener.
So try to go down at least 6 to 8 inches. Ten to 12 inches is even better. In soil that deep, plant roots are free to roam. They can dig down and reach out for the nutrients and moisture they need. In hard, packed ground, they are imprisoned by impenetrable barriers.
Remember that it is virtually impossible to prepare wet soil for planting. But we try anyway. It is a universal gardening mistake. Invariably, work-ing wet soil ruins its structure. The particles get all gooey, stick together, and become clods as big and hard as baseballs.
Little seeds have big trouble coming up through baseballs.
Patience is the key here. Wait until the soil is dry on top and just moist beneath the surface. Then it's time to begin "preparing to plant."
The purpose of soil preparation is to help roots dig in, reach out, and take up nutrients and moisture. Hard, cloddy, clumpy soil is not the answer. Neither is fine, dusty, powder-like soil. When soil such as this is satu-rated packed with heavy rains, and then dries up, it sets up like concrete. It forms a surface crust that is just as difficult for plant tops to penetrate as it is for plant roots to dig into subsurface, hardpan soil.
Something in between is what the total plant- top and bottom- yearns for. It loves-not clods, not dust- but crumbs.
So pre-plant tillage, soil preparation or getting ready to plant-whatever you call it- is not some trivial chore to be entered into lightly. It is an ex-acting science that demands precision and timing.
One of the most important attributes of the tiller-gardener is knowing when enough is enough. The tendency is either to under- or over-prepare. Beginning gardeners don't go far enough. The old veterans, who have learned what a joy it is to dig in the dirt, often go too far. They just can't quit digging.
Whatever our tenure in the "Back Forty" (that's what I call my backyard garden), we need to go beyond clods and clumps but stop short of dusts and powders.
Think crumbs.
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