Getting to know my soil on a detailed level

If you belong to social media gardening groups long enough you will see all manner of posts that go like this

"Can anybody tell me what's wrong with my (insert veggie name here)"

or
"why are my (insert veggie name here) dying/yellow/wilted/droopy/brittle/not producing/not flowering?"

In nearly ALL cases, it comes down to the only thing that matters and that's YOUR SOIL!! Your soil is the growing medium you have to work with and if you don't understand it, you will forever be on the struggle bus. (or you will get lucky some of the time)

Another common question in gardening groups is "What should I fill my raised bed/container with"

Here again, people will put all manner of things in the beds except living soil. Your growing medium is your plant's diet. Give them junk and you will get poor results. Give them a living soil and you can't help but have success. I don't grow plant, I grow soil. I build my own. I don't buy "garden soil" or bags of "dirt" This way I control the diet I feed my plants.

At a VERY minimum, you should do a soil structure test and a PH test. If you don't, you have no idea what your growing in. Your goals should be

Soil type: Loam

Soil PH: 6.5 - 6.7

Im including some images that hopefully make it easier to understand as well as a link to a soil calculator so you dont have to any math. https://www.agritechcenter.com.np/soil-calculator.html

















webpage

Where we used to live the local rock/dirt hauler got the rich soil out of a river bed.

They also made soil blends and probably similar to where you got your soil for $35.99 a trailer load.

The lessons I have learned here on the forum is that compost is really great stuff, though I already knew that.

Wood chips are the gardener friend as well as leaf mold and mushroom.

I would like to recommend Dr Bryant Redhawks Soil Series for other wanting to get to know their soil:

https://permies.com/wiki/redhawk-soil