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Get the Dirt on Your Dirt
Good soil is the key to creating a beautiful and healthy garden. By determining the relative acidity of your soil (i.e.,
its pH balance), you can make informed decisions about what plants to buy, how to fertilize, etc. There are some
plants, like blueberries and figs, that flourish best in fairly extreme pH conditions, either acidic (blueberries) or basic
(figs). Virginia Tech offers low-cost soil testing with a simple mail-in kit that is available at the Agriculture Office
at Building 14 of the Municipal Center, some libraries and the HRAREC center on Diamond Springs Road. For much less
than commercial kits, you will receive a soil analysis with more information than you even want to know. That
said, most of the wonderful home gardeners I know rarely check their soil for specific needs, realizing instead that a well-adjusted,
fertile soil will allow almost any plant to flourish. If your property is like most in this area, you are coping
with a thick clay almost totally lacking in any organic material - terrible to drain, heavy to dig, already over-used
from generations of agriculture. Start the make-over by adding compost, shredded leaves, manure - whatever you have,
just start the process. Dig it in, do it again. This year, every year. Need help getting started with
composting? Hike over to www.composting101.com . Between composting and recycling, you will watch your trash "footprint" disappear. Speaking of recycling,
if you are carefully shredding documents, you may want to add the paper to your compost. (There's
some debate about the types of inks that are used - but I note that, in our house, much of the stuff we shred and use in the
compost and chicken coop has very little print on it. Am I the only person who prints out web articles carelessly only
to discover an extra page of paper with just the website footer printed on it?)
Know Your Site
One of the first steps to becoming a fabulous gardener involves taking the time to get to know your own property, whether
it's many acres of land or a simple apartment balcony. If you want to know what to grow, you need to know where
you are growing. Which areas of your garden will always be in sun? In shade? Where is your southern
exposure? Which direction do the winter storms and frigid winds come from? Do you have any protection (trees, buildings)
to help block that exposure? Where are the wet pockets that just dont' drain after rains?
There
is a simple, but important, landscape concept called "microclimate". It's likely that your property
contains more than one "planting zone". For instance, the north-facing, very exposed side of our house is
a chilly zone 7. Very little sun, no wind protection in winter. Slow to warm up in the spring. Great for
cold-loving plants like the Arctic Kiwi (Actinidia kolomitka). On the balmy southern side
of the house, where plants bake in the sun all summer with no shade but rest in warm protection during the winter, I grow
loquats, bananas and other heat-loving fruits. This is also my area for growing artichokes (ah! fresh artichokes!).
The only way to know your different gardening opportunities is to spend time outdoors, in your own beloved space,
just walking around and perhaps taking some notes.
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Begin keeping a weather/garden
diary.
Find a ready made journal or create one from a weekly planning calendar or dated journal.
(I use the Weather Wizard's 5-Year Weather Diary and swear by it, but it seems to have sold out all over the planet.)
You'll want to know the high and low temperatures, precipitation, unusual weather phenomena... and what was going on in
your gardens and yard. For instance, after years of keeping one of these journals, I know that certain garden events
have taken place within 72 hours of the exact same date for ten years. If the Chinese Chestnuts come into bloom, the
Japanese Beetles will show up within a day. When the Magnolia Stellata blooms, a freeze will promptly follow.
I was berating myself for the spring garden jobs left undone this year - to be made up for now - but when I opened the diary
and checked, it reminded me that for weeks last year we could hardly go outside for the smoke from regional swamp fires.
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