Get Your Beds Ready Now For A Fall Garden

If you plan on growing a fall and winter garden, now is the time to get your beds ready.

Most of us don’t have perfect soil, if that even exists. I think it’s important to add some compost to the soil after each crop.All crops, and weeds, too, deplete nutrients from the soil. Compost breathes life back into the soil. The best compost is the compost you make yourself from kitchen and garden scraps, lawn clippings and fallen leaves. Those scraps contain the organic matter and nutrients that were taken from the soil in the first place.

But it takes time and effort to make your own compost. You can buy compost. There are many good products available. One of the best, in my opinion, is leaf mold compost. Nature’s Way Resources of Conroe makes an excellent leaf mold compost. As the name implies, it’s made from tree leaves slowly broken down into a rich humus. It’s kind of expensive compared to other types of compost. But I prefer it to all others. You can usually find it in bags at Sutherlands in La Grange. You can also buy it in bulk directly from Nature’s Way Resources.

A fellow gardener from La Grange told me about a recent trip he took to Iceland. He was blown away by the lush gardens growing there in Iceland’s rich volcanic soil. Volcanic soils are made up of weathered lava and volcanic ash that have been deposited relatively recently. These materials are rich in key nutrients such as iron, calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium, phosphorous, sulfur, silicon and other trace elements. These minerals are also necessary for human health. If they’re not present in the soil, they won’t be present in the crops we eat.

These minerals have been depleted over time in the tiny pieces of ancient rock that make up our soil. Soil amendments such as lava sand, greensand, and Azomite improve the mineral content of our soils here in Texas. I’ve used all three of these products. Nature’s Way Resources makes a similar product called Remineralizer. I’m a big fan of it as well.

Finally, I think it’s vitally important to add some organic fertilizer to the beds before planting a new crop. According to conventional wisdom, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (N-P-K) are the most important nutrients for plant development. I think that’s oversimplified. Organic matter, minerals, fungal life and organisms like earthworms are equally important, I think.

But you still need N-P-K. For bed preparation, I recommend granular organic fertilizers like Medina Growin’ Green or Micro-Life Multi-Purpose. Growin’ Green is a poultry-based fertilizer, while MicroLife is made from nutrients derived from the ocean. Both work equally well. In my experience, Growin’ Green seems to act faster while it takes a little longer for MicroLife to break down in the soil.

A couple of other inexpensive soil amendments I like to use are ground cornmeal and dry molasses. You can buy both in 50 lb. sacks from most feed stores.

Cornmeal helps to control some fungal diseases in the soil. It’s also a quick and easy may to add organic matter to the soil that quickly breaks down. I apply it at a rate of 20 lbs. per 1,000 sq. ft.

Dry molasses is actually a grain by-product that has been sprayed with liquid molasses. It supercharges the microbiome of the soil, feeding beneficial microorganisms like soil bacteria. It also seems to keep fire ants away. Plus, there is a lot of anecdotal reports that molasses discourages the growth of nutgrass. I also apply it at a rate of 20 lbs. per 1,000 sq. ft.

Carbon is another incredible soil amendment. I recently read some research about the anthropogenic origins of the soil underlying the Amazon Rainforest in South America. This soil is known as Terra Preta. Researchers believe the ancient Amazon natives created this soil through a slash-and-burn technique. Essentially, they made charcoal.

There are a lot of charcoal-based soil amendments on the market, but they are all too expensive in my opinion. So I’m trying something different. I like to cook a lot on my Weber kettle grill, so I use quite a bit of charcoal. There’s always some little bits of charcoal and dust at the bottom of the bag. I’ve been saving these bits in a bucket. When the bucket gets full, I’m going to spread it throughout the garden.