AMENDING YOUR GARDEN SOIL - 101

This weekend I emptied all the old dirt from last summer's "dead" flowerpots and made some observations. Some soils had huge, fat worms. Some soils had NO worms at all. Some soil was lumpy, ooky, clay with not very many worms at all. Some "soil" was that potting stuff with the white styrofoam "pills" in it. NO WORMS WHATSOEVER in any pot that had this stuff in it. Which leads me to believe it ain't dirt at all!

My question is what to do with the old soil? Somewhere on another thread someone said throw it into the flowerbeds. So I targeted a little flowerbed after I scooped back the layer of partially decomped leaves that were placed on top as mulch for the winter.. Then I started wondering if I would be wasting my GOOD, newly harvested compost by mixing it with this "old" dirt. So I started separating the soils as best as I could, using the worms to guide me. If there were worms in what seemed to be viable soil, the worms got thrown into my new compost bed and the soil was kept. No worms meant it was trash soil/artificial potting stuff and it went aside. I found a huge container with nothing but sand, too. And then there were the containers with half soil on top of a layer of decomp leaves. This had a few worms, depending on the leaf decomp. Some was kept it if looked viable.

All in all, I threw a good bit of what seemed to be viable soil into that small bed. And, I supplemented and amended this with the newly harvested compost. I believe I did ok, but some help or comments on what and when to toss old soil into the flowerbeds for replanting/amending, and when to simply toss old soil into the trash would be appreciated.

Also, I've beenr reading about changing the yuckey, hard, clayey or otherwise unviable garden soil into something better by adding amendments. My amendment is coming strickly from my compost pile of decomped leaves, grass, coffee grinds and table scraps. Am I on the right track with simply working this into the existing bad flowerbed soil, adding as many worms as I can and letting them do the rest?

Please advise soonest, as I have two other bed to prepare for planting. I want to dig up invasive plants in them and begin changing the soil to something wonderful like the compost I harvested. I could plunge my arms down into it up to my elbows and pull them out clean! It's dark, rich, crumbly, like flaked coffee grinds!

Hurry with answers/comments, PLEASE!

P.S. my logic on the soil was that if the worms liked it, it was worth keeping...

Thanks.

Linda

Please advise soonest, as I have two other bed to prepare for planting. I want to dig up invasive plants in them and begin changing the soil to something wonderful like the compost I harvested. I could plunge my arms down into it up to my elbows and pull them out clean! It's dark, rich, crumbly, like flaked coffee grinds!

Hurry with answers/comments, PLEASE!

................will do.

This message was edited Apr 12, 2007 8:45 PM

You, again? ;--)

This message was edited Apr 12, 2007 8:45 PM

..........gymgurl - all your posts demand immediate response from DG’ers.

..............THAT was my humorous aside. –

- Sorry you missed et. LOL!

Gymgirl: per the other thread re: compost/vermicompost I'm totally confused. I was under the impression that you were just starting your first compost pile. But according to this post you are already harvesting some? How long did it take you to produce this batch of compost? And what is it with the worms???

Karen

Karen,
This IS my first pile. My DH has a huge pile of grass clippings and leaves out back that he dumps on. I'm starting another smaller one to learn how the DGers do it. What I harvested was a wheelbarrow-full of something I did completely by accident, with no rhyme or reason. Last summer I just started tossing some coffee grinds, eggshells, banana peels, and some leaves on a small patch of dirt in a corner of the yard. I sprinkled it periodically, but nothing else. It never got hot and eventually, it broke down over the course of the winter. There were some worms in the dirt. I just raked it up a few weeks ago, and sifted it through a wire screen. I decided whatever fell through that screen was the decomp, since there were no obvious banana peels or recognizable bits of veggie peels.

Now, I'm trying to built a "Formal" compost pile. Maybe I'm already doing it and just don't realize that I've "got it?"

I don't mean to be a bother. Just trying to understand where I am in this process. And, I did get the heat/no heat issue mixed up, cause I thought the worms were part of the process that involved heat.

This'll be my last post on this subject....

Gymgirl: ” This'll be my last post on this subject....”

Your last comment certainly sustains the original position. ( Post #3384238 )


Thank you, Gymgirl.





.............html edit, thank you.





This message was edited May 1, 2007 6:28 AM