Understanding the Basics Makes Gardening Easier

Successful gardening comes from understanding basic principles, here are a scant few. Once these basic factors are understood gardeners start to see major improvements as they continue to develop lifelong gardening skills. Many plants can be started from seed right in our garden soils. Vegetable plants like beets, lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, beans, corn are all normally started by planting seeds directly in the garden soil. No transplanting is involved and this is the most economical method of producing these vegetables. Some of these varieties, normally planted from seed, can be purchased as transplants providing a "jump" on the season by about 2 weeks or more.

Soil conditions are especially important and an enormous improvement in growing plants occurs when ample amounts of organic matter are incorporated in marginal, clay soils like many home owners have in their yards and gardens in the Miami Valley. Our clay soils do not drain readily. Most of our soils get very 'hard' when they dry out when organic matter is not present to keep the soil structure "open" and well drained. Roots of the plants we are growing have trouble developing due to a lack of oxygen at the root level and difficulty penetrating clay soils when soils dry out.

Another situation that occurs frequently at the time of planting seeds and plants is that of planting too deeply. Many new gardeners feel that planting "good and deep" actually helps the plant because the roots will be "nice and deep" so they will get plenty of water and nutrients. This is one of the most detrimental things we can do to a seed or a plant, tomatoes are an exception. Planting tomatoes deep is beneficial since they develop additional roots along the stem. If anything, it is better to plant most plants slightly high. For seeds the rule of thumb is to cover the seed just twice the diameter of the seed. Lettuce seed, for example, is not too much bigger than pepper we use to season our food at the dinner table, so that is not very much soil cover. A bean or corn seed is larger but still we only want to cover the seed with a quarter to a half an inch of soil. Why is this? This situation relates to the paragraph above. The seed and plants need oxygen at the root level along with moisture to develop and grow. The organic matter aids in "opening" up the soil and letting oxygen get to the roots and also provides moisture storage, properties that clay and sandy soils do not have.

This same situation applies to plants like shrubs and trees and even annual and perennial plants. Trees and shrubs, being of a "woodier" structure, do not show the effects of poor soil conditions for many weeks or months while a more tender plant like a petunia or tomato can show these effects in a very short period of time. There is a saying that is so true- "spend $10.00 on the hole (or improving the soil) and $5.00 for the plant" and you will have more success with the plant performance. Good sources of organic matter are yard compost, Canadian sphagnum peat moss and Growers Secret(pine fines).

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