The basis of every vegetable patch has already been created by nature: the soil in which your own tasty vegetables will thrive in the future. You should pay the greatest attention to the uppermost thirty centimeters, regardless of whether the soil in your garden is sandy or loamy. This is the humus or topsoil layer, the nutrient reservoir for your vegetable plants.
Good soil is loose and rich in nutrients
Methods to improve the substrate
For growing vegetables, the soil should have the following properties:
- easygoing and humorous
- nutritious
- slightly sandy
- water permeable.
Compost is the best way to improve the soil. The organic substance binds coarse grains of sand and loosens the clay particles that are stuck together on heavy soils.
These can also be loosened with sand. You should work in about two buckets per square meter when laying out the vegetable patch. Applied stone dust also counteracts soil compaction.
For sandy soils, use clay powder. It improves soil structure and increases nutrient capacity. Since the clay materials swell when wet, the water is held better in the ground.
tips
If you need more compost than you can produce yourself, you can get this valuable material at many recycling centers, garbage dumps or at the composting plant. Largely free from peat and produced locally, this "waste product" is ideal for improving the soil in the vegetable patch.