The Soil In Our Gardens
By Sandra Dinkins-Wilson, Fri Dec 9th
In our endeavor to create a beautiful flower garden, we mustfirst start with the soil. Soil is not just "dirt". It isinstead a composition of minerals, water, air, organic materialthat has decomposed and bacteria. All of these must be in theright proportions to grow the flowers and plants that create ourbeautiful flower garden.
We all know that our flowers and plants gather their requirednutrients for growth through their roots from the soil. Thismeans each of us, as the gardener, must be the steward of ourgarden soil. Our neglect and abuse can ruin the soil. Indeed, inmany parts of the country our farming and ranching soil has beenso depleted as to make growing crops require ever increasingamounts of synthetic chemical amendments.
If you should dig into your soil, you will see that it isdivided into topsoil and subsoil. The topsoil is where you willfind most of the organic material and living organisms. However,plants draw minerals from the subsoil and it is important to ourflower garden as well.
Soil differs in different parts of the country based upon thekind of minerals it is derived from and the size of theparticles that make up the soil. These can range from gravel toclay. For most flower gardening situations, we are usuallyconcerned
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