My soil has geat texture but I think it's "dead"

Hi,

I installed a new raised bed that is between 3' deep at the rear and about 1' deep at the front. I'm pretty sure when the house was built the site was levelled and all topsoil was removed. So to make a long story short, I had about 6 yards of soil trucked in. I was never sure exactly what was in this but it obviously had manure and the mineral content seemed like a light sand. It was very light but it does turn to mud when wet.

As it turned out I was still way short on soil so I must have bought 100 bales of the Kellogs compost they sell at home centers. This product is mostly composted wood chips. It is very coarse. I also threw in some granite chips, perhaps 10% peat moss and a little manure.

When I dig a hole for a plant, the soil obviously has great texture in terms of compaction resistance but I think perhaps it does not have as much bacterial activity as it should. The soil in my lawn area, which is ten years old has a high clay content but it also has a crumbly feel to it whereas my raised bed soil lacks the crumbly feel. It feels almost like coarse potting soil with a high sand content. I do see a fair number worms however, but mostly just the very small red ones near the surface. I almost never see worms in the native soil.

Perhaps I have nothing to worry about but I have been reading up on soil health and besides mulching with compost I'm thinking I should add a fish emulsion to kick start some bacterial action. I can't make compost at home - not enough room for the amounts I need. I suppose I could treat the raised bed as a giant potted plant type enviroment but there really is no outlet for excess water and thus a high fertilizer useage may cause a salt buildup near the bottom.

Perhaps it just takes time - my roses were put in 5 years ago also using a soil replacement method augmented with manure and compost every year and it's the definition of perfect soil. I'm just wondering if I can kick start the process somehow.

Thanks

You're right about the patience. I've made raised beds (at both the current and previous homes) and the soil (triple mix from a landscaping company-- "loam", compost and sand) started to behave only after I did a winter rye cover, then added added quality compost and plenty of organic soil amendments such as alfalfa, soy meal, worm casts, kelp meal, sedge peat, and soft rock phosphate. By the second growing season the soil was getting nice.

Adding organic matter will help kick-start your soil. I would put a cover crop down as soon as possible, knock it down in the late summer, and plant your garden in the fall.

Aerated compost tea will help provide the live micro-organisms, if you can find good quality "live" compost as a tea starter. Sometimes commercial bagged compost is pretty useless-- often pasteurized (thus dead) and made from questionable feedstocks. If you can get some compost made from manure that has been properly composted, that'll provide the life your soil needs.

I doubt that the fish emulsion will give you better soil-- it won't provide the micro-organisms. It's really an organic amendment and it needs the microherd to make its nutrients available to the plants. And right now your herd is pretty small.

Good luck!

Alex...

Based on what you wrote, (and I may be all wet here) it sounds like you have too much organic matter sitting on TOP of native soil, which may need to be integrated with your soil by rototilling it in.

Can you do that easily enough, or is this a huge raised bed?

Just re-reading Alex's original post. He says the topsoil was removed, so I assume that the native soil is just subsoil, which won't do much good. If this is a new housing subdivision, the subsoil will be so compacted by 10-ton construction machinery that a rototiller would be pretty useless. Raised beds are the only solution if you want to grow anything.

I agree with JasperDale that the soil is high in OM-- but it's probably still dead. Look at what was added: commercial "soil" mix-- probably dead; commercial composted wood chips-- good for aeration and tilth, but no life; peat moss-- also dead.

Gotta get some of those teeny little critters to turn your raw materials into real soil!

Thanks guys,

Although it's a raised bed I went down and additional 3' near the rear of the bed where the large plants would be - probably more than they will ever need. Some of the native clay was incorporated if only by accident but even to this day it consists of little balls of clay that will not disperse easily (sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between a cat dropping and a clay ball). The native soil water drainage test here will result in zero drainage (in fact algae will appear in the hole even w/o adding more water).

The only decent quality compost I can get easily is the manure blend they sell at the home centers. I thought about spreading more of that over the beds but if it gets wet it turns to mud and from what I have read manure is not really the ideal compost.

My beds are mostly planted - the plants are doing fairly well and in time I'm sure things will turn out well. I'm going to limit my use of fast acting fertilizers because from what I can tell they tend to kill/alter the micro-organism balance.

In lieu of a home made compost tea would the worm tea they sell in the home centers be worth a shot?

Thanks

Bev,

You're statement -

I agree with JasperDale that the soil is high in OM-- but it's probably still dead. Look at what was added: commercial "soil" mix-- probably dead; commercial composted wood chips-- good for aeration and tilth, but no life; peat moss-- also dead.

reminded me that when I had 6 yards of "landscaping mix" delivered I remember that it was bone dry!

But just so people know - there are places that specialize in making compost and they will even pre-mix it with a mineral component/trace elements to your specification for use in perennial beds. I did not know about this before I did mine but be aware that the "compost" that is typically available at the rockeries is usually just ground up bark and it's generally way too fine and it's bone dry (unless it rained that day!).

Here's an example -

http://www.wheelerfarms.net/frame.htm

do you have anywhere you can just go in the woods or a ditch and get some live native soil in a bucket? seems like if you just seed what you have it should go wild. That is a tough question though- I can't think of any other way, unless you get friendly with another gardener and get some dirt or compost.

In answer to your question about pre-mixed worm tea, I can't see how that stuff works at all. Its a high-profit scam, if you ask me. First, the stuff is very dilute, so you have to buy a ton of it to cover even a small garden. Second, it has been sitting in a bottle on the store shelf for a long time. Any aerobic bacteria / micro-organisms will be long dead. The ones left will be those that can survive anaerobic environments-- not the kind you want.

But, you can make your own compost / worm casting tea very easily. There are probably a dozen threads on DG explaining how, but really all you need is some water (no chlorine) and some worm castings and/or good quality compost. I add alfalfa and kelp to my tea, along with a bit of organic blackstrap molasses, put in the aquarium bubbler, and within a day I've brewed up a batch of the "good bugs".

It's too bad the compost industry is unregulated. In Canada the compost producers have created an industry group and are trying to self-regulate. It's a start, but the compost world is still caveat emptor.

On the positive side, there's a company here in Southwestern Ontario Canada that is marketing a super high-test compost with rock powders added, made with specialty windrow turners and very exacting methods / specs. It's pricey, but it is out there.