Organic Vegetable Gardening – Soil Preparation

Soil conditioning and preparation is vital to very successful organic gardens. Organic fertilizers and soil conditioning materials are usually slow working in general, you should always mix your soil and organic gardening fertilizers three to four weeks ahead of time. Parts or “clumps”of unrotted organic materials can harm the seedling process, promote soil-borne diseases, and cause damping off to younger plants. Successful organic gardens usually start with an abundant amount of organic matter, and organic fertilizers, including animal manures, plant manures, mixed organic fertilizers and compost. Compost is basically a mix of dead plant material, dead leaves, grass clippings. All of these things provide a great amount of organic nutrients for organic gardening. Not only does adding organic fertilizers to your soil help condition it, it will improve its ability to hold water, and nutrients. Another benefit is to increase the microbiological activity, which in many ways can be very beneficial to plants by breaking down nutrients into more usable forms, and even create nutrients from things otherwise unusable by the plants or vegetables in your organic garden. This is the large reason we want to mix our soil and compost and organic fertilizers for our organic garden weeks early, as it gives time for the microbiological activity to break things down.