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Your Guide to Soil

July 27, 2018 by Jeanne

This Guide to Soil offers everything you need to know about soil tests, soil health, composting, and more. Start here to learn more about soils of all types from Home Garden Joy.

Why bother learning about soil?

Good soil grows great plants. Soil health is perhaps the most important thing to learn in the world of gardening. Soil nurtures, sustains, supports and provides everything plants need for their growth (except for sunlight of course).

Sure, you can grow plants in water solutions. Hydroponics fascinates many people. I can’t stand it. Give me dirt, soil, good old-fashioned mud, the teeming food web seething under the soil. It’s my kind of life.

Soil Test Guide

Why Get a Soil Test Done in the Fall?

Getting Your Soil Professionally Tested

Guide to Soil

Don’t Work Wet Soil

Soil for Container Vegetable Gardens

Working with Your Soil

Composting

Winter Composting: Is It Too Cold to Add to the Compost Pile?

Worm Composting

Trench Composting

How to Make Compost

 

Other Resources About Soil

What Is Soil? – US Department of Agriculture

Fundamental Concepts of Soil

Soil Organic Matter – Cornell University

The Secrets of Soil – Smithsonian Institution

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Jeanne
Jeanne

Jeanne Grunert is a certified Virginia Master Gardener and the author of several gardening books. Her garden articles, photographs, and interviews have been featured in The Herb Companion, Virginia Gardener, and Cultivate, the magazine of the National Farm Bureau. She is the founder of The Christian Herbalists group and a popular local lecturer on culinary herbs and herbs for health, raised bed gardening, and horticulture therapy.

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Filed Under: Home Garden Tips Tagged With: garden soil basics, soil

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  1. How to Bring House Plants Indoors for the Winter - Home Garden Joy says:
    July 8, 2019 at

    […] at this time. Insects that lay eggs in the soil can hatch once they come inside. By using sterile, bagged garden soil and repotting the plants, not only are you giving them better soil but you are preventing insects […]

  2. Composting Basics - Home Garden Joy says:
    July 16, 2019 at

    […] and more importantly, compost adds nutrients, improves soil structure, and adds beneficial microbes back into the soil. You see, nature never intended us to dump pounds […]

  3. Growing Onions from Sets - Home Garden Joy says:
    July 24, 2019 at

    […] did get the soil tested this year and the result was that in all of the raised beds, the compost mixture we’d added […]

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