{"id":6812,"date":"2014-10-22T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2014-10-22T16:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/?p=6812"},"modified":"2014-10-17T09:55:22","modified_gmt":"2014-10-17T13:55:22","slug":"prep-garden-soil-in-the-fall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/2014\/10\/22\/prep-garden-soil-in-the-fall\/","title":{"rendered":"Prep Garden Soil In The Fall"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_6814\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/DSC_0098.jpg\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6814\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-6814 \" alt=\"Pine bark amendment at a nursery\" src=\"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/DSC_0098-300x198.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"198\" srcset=\"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/DSC_0098-300x198.jpg 300w, https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/DSC_0098-1024x678.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-6814\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pine bark amendment at a nursery<\/p><\/div>\n<p><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Often, spring arrives with too many gardening chores to handle. Some work can be shifted\u00a0to the fall.\u00a0Since a\u00a0garden is only as good as its soil, fall is a good time to till your garden or to\u00a0construct new beds. Add soil amendments\u00a0such as\u00a0deciduous leaves and pine needles which nature is providing for free. Till amendments into the soil with a shovel, multi-tined garden fork, or rototiller.<\/p>\n<p>You may add organic nitrogen sources such as blood meal, animal manures (either packaged or fresh from a nearby farm). Fresh manure may be too hot to use in the spring, but will lose its hot urea\u00a0properties over the winter. Incorporate digested (decayed) compost pile(s) into your garden soil. Soil microbes do most of the work decaying the organic additives over\u00a0winter.<\/p>\n<p>Shredded leaves, eggshells, coffee grounds, and fruit peels are all great soil additives;\u00a0most will\u00a0break down before spring planting season arrives. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Caveat:<\/span>\u00a0huge\u00a0quantities of undigested materials\u00a0can rob the garden plants\u00a0of nitrogen next summer. In such cases, you\u00a0may need to add lots more fertilizer to feed both the garden plants and soil microbes.<\/p>\n<p>The final step before spring is test the garden soil at a state soil lab operated by\u00a0your state\u00a0land grant university. Some full-service garden centers may also provide soil testing.\u00a0Collect the soil sample before the lab&#8217;s\u00a0mad spring rush begins. The local county or area Extension agent will interpret the diagnostic\u00a0results for you.<\/p>\n<p>The amended soil\u00a0will be\u00a0a lot easier to plant into next spring. Fall tilling also buries weeds and weed seeds\u00a0to reduce\u00a0this chore\u00a0next summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 Often, spring arrives with too many gardening chores to handle. Some work can be shifted\u00a0to the fall.\u00a0Since a\u00a0garden is only as good as its soil, fall is a good time to till your garden or to\u00a0construct new beds. Add soil amendments\u00a0such as\u00a0deciduous leaves and pine needles which nature is providing for free. Till amendments [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[605,665,9,1158,202,847,1031,630,905],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6812"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6812"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6867,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6812\/revisions\/6867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}