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Getting Your Soil Ready For Gardening
from:The most important first step in starting your flower garden is to figure out where you want to do your planting and then getting your soil ready for your home flower gardening. If you decide to plant in a container, then you can pretty much create the soil conditions you need for the majority of plants, though there will always be some plants that will not be able to grow in your area because of temperature or sun exposure conditions.
If you choose to plant in your yard, you should first do a soil test, which you can pick up at many gardening supply stores. If your local store doesn't have a soil test kit, someone on the staff will be able to tell you where to get one.
A quick way to test what kind of soil you have is to pick up a handful from your yard and rub it back and forth in your hand. If it sticks together, that means that your soil is composed of a large quantity of clay. If it comes apart, there is a large presence of sand. Too much of either isn't good because clay doesn't drain well and roots find it hard to penetrate and sand doesn't retain nutrients well. A good soil has equal parts sand and clay and is called loam.
Once you've decided your garden spot, dig down into the soil around 8 inches to a foot and remove all rocks and extraneous materials. Break up clods and level the ground with a rake and add one or more inches of compost or manure, more if the soil is poor. Add peat moss or grass cuttings to increase water capacity (especially if the soil is sandy) and add lime is too acidic (most plants don't too well in very acidic soil).
Mix all the soil and organic matter together, turning it a few times. This is called tilling the soil. Again, apply the rake to level the bed. Add soil amendments like compost into the top six inches of soil and mix with a general purpose fertilizer like 10-20-10.
After you have dug up your garden, tilled the soil, and added amendments, you should wait a few weeks before you actually start planting so that the amendments have the time to seep into the soil and diffuse across the area. While you're waiting, figure out which plants you'd like to plant and what their requirements are. Figure out what kind of garden you'd like to have. What colors would you like to see. What fragrances would you like to smell?
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