Here’s the dirt on dirt!

If you’re new to gardening or a seasoned veteran, the soil surrounding the roots of any plant is probably the most important factor involved in having awesome plants or vegetables and huge flowers.

You can dig a hole, plop your plant in it and call it done. You may get lucky and plants will take hold and eventually they will grow. If I were a betting man, I would say your odds are stacked against you though.

Here are my secrets to awesome success in planting your precious plants and ensuring good health is achieved by all.

Let’s talk about bushes, trees and evergreens first. It has been our mantra forever to recommend soil conditioner, (aged pine bark fines) to plant with any type of hardy plant in the landscape. The plants you choose must be able to grow in our typically hard pan clay soil. My recommendation is to dig the hole twice the width of any pot or root ball first. Throw that soil to the side, add to that soil some soil conditioner and some aged compost so there is approximately 1/3 each of native soil, aged compost and soil conditioner. This magical blend when used to plant in and around root balls yields outstanding results. You MUST use native soil in the mix and as a precautionary measurement, plant things a couple inches higher than surrounding soils.

I think we all have a tendency to over excavate when digging a hole. You can fill back in with soil if it’s too deep to raise plants up but ultimately you will get some settling. This couple inch buffer gives much needed drainage to your newly installed plant as well as gives some leeway to allow for settling. Mounding up plants or planting in a raised bed will ensure your plants do well.

Some of my competitors recommend, you remove all the clay soil and bring in fresh screened topsoil to plant in. This is the WORST thing you can do! By doing this, you have just created a clay pool or bathtub. What will happen when you water is the water will not percolate through the hard pan clay and you’ve literally just created a bog.

Wet roots equals rotting roots and rotting roots equals death to new plants.

Now onto the garden. Some of the advantages of growing a garden are producing healthy, full of vitamins and minerals vegetables and fruits. No salmonella, listeria or E coli scares occur when growing your own produce. You know what you put into your plants, and you can not get any fresher product than picking it off the plant when you need it.

I remember when my dad took me out to Oregon for the first time several decades ago. This land was amazing and plants grew everywhere. It just seemed everything was bigger than in Ohio. Straw bales were SO BIG only 2 bales could be put on a 48’ long flatbed truck. The cabbages were the size of beach balls! Nursery stock was planted at everyones homes and just as green as could be. Maples trees could grow to 12/15’ tall in 3-4 years where it would take twice as long to grow the same size tree here In Ohio.

The combination of great soil, adequate moisture and a little magic makes it happen, one of the growers told me. The scary thing is, he said New Zealand is where plants really grow quickly. I can NOT even imagine how quickly things grow in that country being amazed the difference between Ohio and Oregon and many people telling me the same sentiment.

So here is what I learned, the cabbage were huge because they kept giving these plants liquid anhydrous ammonia. Nitrogen which causes plants to explode and grow enormously huge. Its truly amazing to see acres of cabbage the size of beach balls. The bad thing though, is all the minerals had been depleted from the soil. The microbial activity was gone. The soil was essentially dead. So even though the cabbage were big and looked good, they really did not offer much nutritional value and most of the minerals had been depleted.

It’s my opinion, commercial farming, unless organically done, will yield the same result. We think we are being smart and eating more vegetables to become healthy when not much nutritional value exists. Again, I have no hard facts to substantiate this, this is just my observation.

So why am I telling you this? To simplify the difference between organics and chemical usage of fertilizers, chemicals are all about pushing power to the plant and making it produce while organics are all about making better soil which in turn will produce better plants...

There is a BIG difference between these two and the main difference is time. As Americans I think we all want to put a product on today and see results tomorrow. Organic growing is more about working with nature and

giving it time to work. Organic products seem more expensive initially at the beginning, but in the long run, you will use less and less products as the soil builds and achieve better results ultimately costing you less. You will also produce healthier plants especially if they are the ones you eat.

So how do we make better soils? Clean your garden out as plants slowly stop producing vegetables. Start to add compost to your gardens this fall. If you do not have a compost bin that you make your own, bagged or bulk composts are typically readily available. Here are some different types I like and have used in my garden and on my lawn:

By far the best natural fertilizer is Chicken manure. Nature’s Supreme Lawn and Garden Food is a great low odor, granulated product which gives a slow and steady release of food that won’t burn our plants. It has 7% calcium in the mix to help plants flourish. The nice thing is the granules make it easily spread with a spreader.

The Cow by Baccto is a blend of Peat and Composted Manure. Its odor free as well and provides a natural nutrient charge ideal for vegetable gardens.

Coast of Maine’s Lobster Compost. Lobster Compost is made with lobster shells, compost and sphagnum peat moss. It is a dark-brown, complex soil filled with everything your plants need for healthy growth. It drains well and is an ideal soil conditioner for existing beds that need reinvigorating. This product will help you produce the sweetest tomatoes you ever have had!

Leaf composts- leaves from trees are placed in long piles, as they break down, they are turned a few times. This “black gold” becomes a great compost full of nutrients which will really help build your soil structure.

Use any type of compost you can find to enrich your soil. Mushroom compost is great as well. Aged horse manure can be used. Anything aged will work!

Avoid fresh manures at all costs as they are too “hot” to use and could cause damage to your plants.

All the products above can be used in your garden or your lawns. The most interesting product I have come across is Fertilome’s Humic Granules.

Humates are highly compressed prehistoric matter consisting of plant and animal matter. This prehistoric organic matter has decomposed over thousands of centuries. It is derived from a freshwater source...

Humates are high in huMic acid and contain lots of valuable plant nutritional substances not found in chemical fertilizers such as trace minerals, organic matter, carbon, chlorophyll and protein, all necessary for the development of plant life. The carbon stimulates microorganism activity in the soil and breaks down nutrients they use and need. Humates chelate the nutrients locked up in the soil and break them down to a form that allows plants to use them easily.

My representative summed it up best. He said ,” Humic granules are like cotton candy for microbes in the lawn and garden”. It makes your fertilizers work better come spring when applied in the fall.

They will also correct iron deficiencies, help to retain moisture, make more nutrients available for plants as they need them and will also help the decomposition of organic matter (remove thatch ) in your lawn. If you have clay soil, it will help improve the soil and promote better drainage. Basically it helps to reduce water and fertilizer needs.

As for annuals (one season) flowers and houseplants, I use a well draining potting soil mix. By far I believe Happy Frog by fox farms potting mix is the best soil to use for transplanting, container gardens and seasonal areas of annuals.

Ultimate potting mix by fertilome is what we use on all our plants we produce in our greenhouses. It is a great all purpose well draining mix.

For flowers, fertilize them once every other time you water with a water soluble feed like our 20-20-20 fertilizer or use a slow release season long fertilizer like Dynamite or Osmocote. These two products feed up to 6-9 months with one application. It always amazes me what feeding your plants will do to them. A friend of ours doubled his feeding requirements by accident at his home. The results were astounding. A normal 2024” sun patient grew to an astonishing 42” size plant. I think he is going to need a backhoe to remove some of these plants after a hard killing freeze! These plants are huge and awesome. Talk about a head turner!

Fall is the time to get these products put on your gardens, annual flower beds and lawns. The long winter ahead will give them ample time to build your soil. Come spring all you will need to do is select what plants you want to grow and put them in the ground.