A good potting soil can be recognized by the fact that it has a crumbly and airy texture, stores water well and contains sufficient nutrients. If the soil is hard, plants will not grow optimally and the soil must be loosened.
Various garden tools are available for loosening potting soil
compacted soil
If the gardens are to be set up after the construction of new houses, one finds that the ground is as hard as concrete. Construction machines exerted a lot of pressure on the earth, compacting the ground. In addition, there is the different composition of the earth. Loamy or clayey soil stores a lot of water. Under high loads, it compacts particularly quickly. A lot has to be done to create a good garden soil here.
What is the effect of compacted soil?
Few soil organisms live in compacted soil because they cannot breathe in the compacted soil. Earthworms are rarely found here.
If plants are already growing in such soil, they will not root deep or only slightly and are therefore susceptible to drought.
Another disadvantage of heavily compacted soil is the risk of waterlogging. If it rains long and hard, the water cannot seep away, and mold processes can set in in standing water.
Loosen the compacted soil
If you want to create beautiful flower beds and high-yield vegetable beds, you should definitely loosen up your garden soil.
Loosening up in flowerpots and flower tubs is easy. Here you take a small hoe and loosen the soil. In larger buckets, compost can be incorporated immediately.
In larger beds, the soil must also be loosened with larger equipment. Here we offer:
- the spade
- the large-tine cultivator (several tines)
- the sow tooth (only one big tine)
- the small hand cultivator
- the digging fork
- the rose fork (only 2 tines) for loosening the root area of perennials
- various hoes, such as B. the garden hoe, the heart hoe, the planting hoe
When planting new beds, you can first dig up with a spade. However, the spade is used relatively deeply and the soil organisms are properly shaken up. There isn't much of that in a compacted ground, so digging can be done as well. Later, in a loose and humus-rich soil, a cultivator is more likely to be used and used to loosen the top layer of soil. This can also be used to incorporate the necessary compost.