Get your garden started | part 3: fix your soil

The best gardens are full of shit

This garden guide is the third in an 8-part series I will be releasing over the next month. It covers the essentials of starting a successful garden. The 8 guides will be available to all paying subscribers and members of the Wild Garden club, and there will be some previews and sneak peeks for free subscribers. Want to access all my garden guides, tours and recipes? Click the button below to upgrade your membership.

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Hello and welcome back to the How to get your garden started series that I will be sharing with you over the next four weeks. This is a simple, pared-back series that covers the topics that I think are essential when starting a garden. Think of it as a bit of a primer - a guide to the fundamental starting points to get you motivated and started in your garden this autumn.

If you’re just joining us, you can catch up on parts one and two here:

Get your garden started | Part 1: the basics

Get your garden started | Part 2: the right tools

If you want to access the full 8 parts in this series, you can upgrade your subscription to paid by clicking the button below. It’s also worth noting that if you subscribe now, the price of your subscription will always stay the same - it’ll never increase - even if the subscription fees do go up in the future :)

Now, onto part three - fixing the ‘gutless’ rubble formerly known as ‘most Australian soil’…

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Note: If you have been following along for a while, the start of this newsletter will be familiar to you. I have previously shared a comprehensive guide to improving and understanding your soil, and I wanted to share it again as part of this series as it really is vital for a healthy garden. Read it again if you’d like a refresh, otherwise, make sure to scroll down to the ‘nuts and bolts’ section at the end of the newsletter, because I have added a whole new bunch of information on how you can practically apply this advice to your own garden, so you can get started on fixing your soil with my easy, step-by-step guide. I hope you like it!

Get your garden started | part three

Your garden is only ever as good as the soil it grows in.

Good soil is fundamental to a healthy garden. And putting your effort into soil improvement is the best way to ensure you will have a successful garden.

Like, a lot of effort.

Like way more effort than you probably think.

In some parts of the world this isn't necessary, I admit. On the side of some Italian volcano the soil is rich, crumbling and full of goodness. In the remaining untouched jungles of the world, the soil is soft, fragrant and full of organic matter. And, to be fair, no matter where you are, if you are growing plants that are native to your area you may not have to be as rigorous about soil improvement.

But most veggies, herbs, trees and flowers will do a lot better if you make healthy soil a primary goal in your garden. Basically - and I'm not exaggerating - you need to get obsessed with your soil. Trust me.

To begin your journey of stinky soil improvement, it can help to think about two aspects of your soil that you want to get right: its nutrient contents and its structure.

Let's start with structure first.

Improving soil structure

Soil structure is all about the particles that make up your soil, their relative sizes, and how they contribute to the soils texture, workability, heaviness and how easily it drains.

Broadly speaking, it can help to think about soil structure in terms of two extremes - extremely sandy soil and extremely clay-based soil. There are actually a lot of different kinds of soils (loamy soil, silty soil etc), but for the purposes of getting started on improving your soil, thinking in terms of sand versus clay will work.

Clay-based soil

Heavy clay soil is made of fine clay particles. These are good at capturing water and holding onto nutrients, meaning clay-based soil is often richer than sandy soil. On the flip side, these small particles mean that clay soil often doesn't drain easily - it can get muddy, dense and stodgy (not to mention very heavy) when wet. In summer it can harden and be very difficult to dig. Plants with delicate roots can struggle to thrive in clay soil, because their roots aren't strong enough to push deeply down into the soil. You can check if you have clay soil by heading outside and grabbing a fistful of damp soil. If you can roll it into a ball and it holds it shape even when crushed, it likely contains a large amount of clay.

Sandy soil

Sandy soil is made of bigger particles of sand. Their large size means water can drain easily through sandy soil. In some cases, this is a plus, because the soil is unlikely to get waterlogged over winter (waterlogged soils can cause plants' roots to rot, so free-draining soil is often a good thing). But it also means that in summer a sandy garden bed will dry out very quickly. A dry, sandy garden bed can eventually become hydrophobic, where any water you try to give the soil will simply pool on the surface, or trickle off, without being absorbed. This is why one of the biggest challenges for a gardener with a sandy garden is getting the soil to hold onto water.

The big particles in sandy soil also mean that nutrients can wash easily through the soil, which is one reason why I don't recommend liquid fertilizers for gardens with sandy soil - when you water the garden, or when it rains, the liquid fertilizer will simply wash away and little will remain in the soil to feed your plants. Sandy soils tend to be less nutrient-dense than other soils, so you will need to amend them with manures and composts more often to ensure your plants are getting enough food.

While clay-based soil will hold its form well, sandy soils do not (you might notice that in a dry and sandy garden, the holes you try to dig will cave in right away). You can check if you have sandy soil by grabbing a fistful of dry soil. If it runs straight through your hands like sand through an hourglass, you likely have highly sandy soil.

Goldilocks soil (aka ‘Friable’ soil)

If sandy soil and heavy clay soil lie at two extremes of a spectrum, what we want to achieve is soil somewhere in the middle. We want some sand in our soil (to help it drain easily and to prevent it from getting too dense and heavy), but we also want some clay in our soil (to help the soil absorb and retain water and nutrients). The ideal soil contains enough clay that it can be squeezed into a ball with your fist, but is also light enough that it will crumble apart when you try to squish it. This kind of soil structure is called 'friable soil'; it has a crumbly texture, almost like shortbread dough, and it's what all gardeners want.