How’s your dirt?

I realize this post would have been far more helpful back in March, but oh well. One of the most important part of gardening organically (or otherwise for that matter) is knowing your soil: what is has too much of, what it has too little of, what it has in just the right amounts.

We had our soil tested a few years ago when we first put in the garden, and, at that time, it needed lots more organic matter. We decided to test it again this spring, and here were our results:

As you can see, our organic matter now rates in the high category – whoo hoo! We still have some work to do in that area, but we’ve made progress. Our soil’s pH is very high (alkaline soil), so we’re going to mix in some peat and sulfur in hopes of moving the soil’s pH under 7.0. I’ve been reviewing these resources to interpret what the rest of our soil test results mean for our garden.

We had our soil tested from the Hamilton County Soil and Water Conservation District here locally. It was quite easy – I just dug up a few cup-fulls of soil and took it over to the HCSWCD’s office in Noblesville. They sent it off and emailed me with the test results within a week’s time. If you aren’t local, check with your local extension or Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS) office to have your soil tested.