Thinking about planting new roses, but your soil is less than desirable? Shaping up your soil may take a couple of different steps, with the first thing being getting to know your soil. Once you understand what you’re working with you can take steps to create healthy soil. Some general considerations for all of your garden include:
Clean it up
Pick up any leaf litter, brush, twigs, branches, rocks, or other debris and get them all out of the way. Try to start with a nice, level, flat, clean area to garden in.
Add organic matter
Organic matter does good things for your soil – it improves structure that promotes drainage and water retention capacity. It feeds soil microbes and earthworms that help strengthen the plants resistance to attack, and releases nutrients into the soil. It contains acids that can make plant roots more permeable, improving their uptake of water and nutrients, and can dissolve minerals within the soil, leaving them available for plant roots. Healthy soil is approximately 45% minerals, 25% water, 25% air and 5% organic matter. Add organic materials to get your soil to have that 5% organic content.
Let it be
Ideally, soil should be prepared at least a couple of months ahead of planting and given 4 to 6 weeks to settle in.
If needed for drainage or accessibility, go UP
Sometimes, the effort or expense of modifying a soil to fit our needs is just too much. This is often the case in places with heavy clay soils that do not drain. These challenges make raised beds worthy of consideration. Click here for more information on creating raised beds.