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
Soil for Container Vegetable Gardens
Composting
Winter Composting: Is It Too Cold to Add to the Compost Pile?
Other Resources About Soil
What Is Soil? – US Department of Agriculture
Soil Organic Matter – Cornell University
The Secrets of Soil – Smithsonian Institution
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.
[…] 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 […]