I'm Ron Patterson with Utah State University Extension in Carbon County.
Today we're going to talk about soil.
In soil preparation for our gardens, the soil and the water are the most critical components
in growing a successful garden.
Here in the eastern part of Utah, we have some - some especially difficult soil challenges
in that we a have either a high pH - well, we do have a high pH - in both the soil and
the water, or we may even have some salty soils.
So it's always a good idea to have the soil tested before you try to have a garden and
make sure that that's going to be successful, at least in that way.
So what we'll do first is show you how to do a soil sample; you can take a soil sample
and send it up to the university.
A routine test up there is $14.00, it's a pretty cheap option to kind of figure out
what you're going to do with your soil; whether or not you can actually grow a garden where
you're thinking.
The easiest way to take a soil sample is to get a probe, just a tube basically, to shove
down into the ground, takes a core sample, you pull that out.
You can go and get one from the Extension office in your county if...if you need to.
But if you don't have access to a probe, or you don't want to drive in to the office,
you can use a shovel.
What you do...is take out a divot there, about a shovel depth, eight or ten inches deep...now
that I've got that out of the way I'll shave off the backside of that divot.
Okay, so now that we've got the backside of that divot pulled out, we want to make that
a fairly even width down our spade blade.
Peel that off to the side so that we've got a good consistent sample down the depth of
the soil; put that into a bucket.
Do that five or six more times, and then we just mix up the bucket, mix up the soil in
there.
You get a kit from the Extension office - has a bag and a box - you put your soil into the
bag.
Get that pretty well filled up - that's not full but get that filled up.
Put your box together.
Put your full bag in there, you might want to let that dry out just a little bit before
you put it in, give it a day or so to dry.
And then...close it off.
Send that up to the university, the instructions on where to send it and all that are right
on the box.
You can send that up, you can send your check in a separate envelope if you want; it'd be
a little bit cheaper for mailing.
So that's how you do a soil sample.
Do that in about five or six places around your garden, and as long as your soil's fairly
consistent within your garden area, you'll have a good analysis come back to you as far
as what you've got.
It'll tell you your pH, your salinity, the phosphorous, and the potassium and also the
texture.
So, soil sample's always a good first step if you're going to try to grow something.
Now once you've got your soil sample back and you realize that you've got a soil that's
good enough to grow something in - especially here in southeast Utah - we have some pretty
tough soils to deal with, and very, very low organic matter.
So it's always a good idea to add some composted organic matter.
You don't want to add uncomposted like wood chips or something like that, that hasn't
been composted because that'll tie up your nitrogen.
Once it's been composted though, it'll break down within the soil and help create a good
soil structure.
So...so basically you can get some horse manure, cow manure - not a bad idea to get that tested
too if you're afraid that you might have a little bit high salts in that - spread it
out.
Every year if you put a couple inches of compost on your garden, that will go a long ways towards
helping the soil structure and also organic matter tends to decrease the pH a little bit,
so you could actually lower the pH a little bit by adding a lot of organic matter.
So a couple of inches of organic matter will help...so you just spread that out...over
your garden...couple inches deep.
Now fertilizer is also a critical part of what we're doing in gardening, and so you
want to make sure that you add some fertilizer to your garden.
Because nitrogen is a very volatile element and it is used up, it eva- it volatilizes
into the air, it leaches down with the water, so we always assume that nitrogen is going
to have to be added to our...to our soil to have a good crop.
The rule of thumb on the - the fertilizer is - well, once you get your soil sample back,
you'll know on the...the phosphorous and potassium whether you need to add that or not - but
the rule of thumb for the nitrogen is about two pounds of nitrogen per thousand square
feet per year.
Now you have to kind of go through some math to figure that part out, because on the bag
it tells you how much nitrogen is in the fertilizer.
Like if it's a 20-20-20 fertilizer it's got 20% nitrogen, 20% phosphorous, 20% potassium.
So if we want to have a pound - let's say two pounds - of...of nitrogen per thousand
square feet, well to get two pounds of nitrogen we'd have to have ten pound of fertilizer.
So the...the math that you would do to come up with that is if you want to have two pounds
of nitrogen, 20% of the...of the bag is - is nitrogen, you divide two by point two, which
is 20%, and you come up with ten.
So you have to have ten pound of ni- of the...of the fertilizer to get two pound of nitrogen
on a thousand square feet.
So...generally speaking, your ni- your fertilizer will be approximately a pound of fertilizer
in a pint.
That will vary depending on the density of the nitrogen; ammonium sulfate is a little
heavier, some of these that are pulled a little bit will be a little bit lighter, so kind
of take that into account.
But about a pound to a pint will give you however many pounds you need, so if you need
ten, you'd need to have ten pints of fertilizer over a thousand square foot garden.
That'll get you your two pounds of nitrogen.
Now it's not a bad idea to spread that out over the year, so you may put half of it on
at the beginning of the season and then another half on as the crops are growing really good
and you water that down in.
So you don't want to necessarily put it all down at once, but you do want to get that
much down at least.
You could go up a little bit higher, depending on the crop, if it's a leafy vegetable crop
it could go a little higher; corn takes quite a bit of fertilizer.
So kind of depends on the crop, so if you want specifics you could go and look at some
fact sheets at the Extension website; there are fact sheets on all these different vegetables
and they have fertilizer recommendations on there.
So that's what you need to do for fertilizer and organic matter, and now we'll get into
working the soil up.
They say that gardening is good exercise and here's where part of the exercise can come
in: if you just have a small garden, say 400 square feet - a 20x20 size garden - it's probably
not worth your time to invest in - or your money - to invest in a...a tiller of some
sort.
It's pretty quick and easy - you just kind of turn up the soil, like that.
Get your organic matter turned down, you get it wet, with the organic matter in there,
and the worms will come and help to get that good and distributed - doesn't take a whole
lot.
So you could do a 400 square foot garden in an hour or less.
So that's one way of turning the soil.
You get a little bit bigger, or if you like to have your power tools, you could buy a
tiller - those little two-cycle engine type tillers will do a good job of stirring the
soil down about five, six inches, about as deep as they typically will go.
Or you could get a larger four-stroke engine tiller that can dig it down six to eight inches.
So basically you're just trying to get that organic matter in there.
Some...some philosophies are that you shouldn't ever dig up the soil, you shouldn't touch
it with the tiller, or with the spade, or...or with the garden fork like this...well that
kind of depends.
Because your...your soil type would make a difference in that, your climate would make
a big difference - if you're in a fairly high rainfall area with lots of organic matter,
that probably would work okay, but here, in southeastern Utah, we've got this heavy clay
soil and we need to add the organic matter down into it, so it's just a better...a better
management practice to turn the soil.
Keep in mind that when you till it up, you're going to lose some of your topsoil moisture,
so that's one thing to kind of think about - we don't have a lot of moisture around here.
So get it turned, get your crop planted, or if you wanted to turn it in the fall - get
that organic matter turned down in the fall and get your - let the winter moisture soak
down into the ground, then that's a pretty good way to do it as well.
Keep in mind with our spring winds here you can get a lot of erosion on bare soil, so
that's one way to turn...turn your garden, or you can use a tiller.
Sometimes you get a little bit of a clod build up there, you want to bust those down a little
bit, then rake your garden smooth.
Easiest way to do that is to kind of use your rake like a broom; you push and pull like
this it kind of gouges up and down, it's a little harder to keep it smooth.
So if you've got some clods in there, you want your soil to be moist, but not soggy.
If it's dry you'll have clods, and if it's wet, wet you'll have clods, so this breaks
up pretty good.
Now I've got a pretty good bed there to work with.
Do the same thing if we've tilled the ground; we can smooth it out with a rake.
Now if you've got a big area, that's a lot of raking to do, so if you're garden's a little
bit bigger, here's a little trick that I like to do - and I'll show you my ground-smoothing
method that I use on my big gardens.
All right, so what I do, is I just get a 4x4 pallet, put a little bit extra weight on it,
then I just get some of my exercise.
Get a pallet...smooth out the ground.
So here we have a good seed bed; we're ready to go plant our garden.