To thrive, plants depend heavily on the soil you plant them in. Many people are not sure about the quality of their existing garden soil and what they should do about it. When deciding whether to alter soil in your garden beds or replace it all together, here’s our advice:
Garden soil that you can buy in bulk is very often not as good as the soil that you’ve got. Your soil is usually millions of years old, and it’s better than a lot of what you can buy. In recent years we uncovered that some of the people who make and supply bulk garden soil in Melbourne are using very low quality components. It is essentially garbage, made of raw chicken manure and road sweepings and various bits of rubbish that’s only a few weeks old and has not been decomposed down ready to be planted in. It can burn the roots of your plants and kill them (see video demonstrating this). It can also drastically reduce in volume once the natural process of decomposing is complete. We’ve seen people fill large planters and garden beds with this badly processed soil, and a year later the soil has halved in volume because it just rotted away.
Our preference is to use a high quality potting mix and mix it 50 50, half half, with the soil you’ve got. Your existing soil has got minerals and all sorts of good stuff in it. Generally around Melbourne, our soils are heavy in clay. By mixing a high quality potting mix through it, or some compost, you can improve the soil and actually make it better than anything that you could buy.
If you’re uncertain about whether the soil you have is going to be adequate to support your new plants, you can use our free Garden Design Service. As part of this we recommend you bring a cup of your existing soil to your appointment, so that Chris can see if it needs to be adjusted.
For more info on how to test your own garden soil and understand what you have, check out our page: What’s my soil type?
