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Recycling the Soil

How does the saying go? The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. These words of wisdom certainly apply to my plans to begin work on the Garden Home Retreat. While I may have hoped for a start in early winter, Mother Nature had another date in mind. Rain, snow and cold temperatures pushed back the ?big dig? to the first week of March.

One of the principles of the Garden Home Retreat is to recycle and reuse. This applies to everything including the soil. So before the excavation of the basement started, I wanted to be sure the top 6 to 8 inches of ground was scraped off and stock piled for use in the garden later. Having been a cow pasture at one time, this top layer is humus rich and definitely worth taking the extra step to save it.

When it comes time to incorporate the soil into the garden it will be amended with a combination of Pro-Mix Ultimate Organic Mix, cow manure, river sand and Hydrocks. Hydrocks is a product I've been using in bed preparation to enhance soil structure. It consists of pellets of fired clay that can be added either to heavy soil to improve drainage or sandy soil to help retain moisture. At first, it seemed counter productive to add clay to clay soil, but it works!

I suppose I have all those years prepping garden beds to thank for the idea of saving the top layer of soil. Digging out flower borders and putting back the existing soil in an amended form has taught me that using native soil with a few additions cuts down on expenses and provides the best growing conditions for the plants in the garden.