How to Amend Raised Garden Beds

you know you're supposed to amend your raised beds but what does that really mean and organic matter well what's that all about hi i'm gardner scott a master gardener who discusses everything gardening so that you can become a better gardener today i'll answer those questions and show you how i amend my raised beds [Music] good soil is the key to a successful garden and if you spend just a little time improving your soil you'll save a lot of time dealing with pests and diseases because a good soil makes a plant stronger and stronger plants can better fight off all those pests and disease and the key to developing good soil is organic matter good soil is packed with nutrients the better your soil the better your plants the better your harvests and those nutrients come from the organic matter that's in the soil it's a relationship between soil microorganisms and that organic matter those organisms the bacteria and the fungi will eat the organic material and they break it down into nutrients that plants can absorb so when we talk about organic matter or organic material just what are we talking about well we're talking about anything that was alive i recommend you try to use the things that are growing in your landscape and in your garden to incorporate into your soil it's the plants that have died and now they're going back into the soil so things like leaves grass straw right off the top those are some of the organic materials that you can add to your soil but it also includes peat moss and manure anything that is plant-based can be put into the soil and be considered an amendment it's important to make that distinction when we put something into our soil that is an amendment we're amending the soil now we can put all of these same organic materials on top of the soil without mixing it in but when it's on top of the soil it's a mulch so what i'm focusing on today is the organic matter that i'm going to be mixing into the soil amending the soil in these raised beds it's early fall in my garden and i think this is the ideal time to amend the soil in your raised beds i've already had an early freeze so my summer plants the tomatoes the peppers the squashes they were all killed by the freeze and i've pulled them out of some of the beds and now they're ready to be amended to improve the soil i still have other plants growing and when those plants start to fade i'll amend those beds as well but rather than do everything in one day i like to take it as the beds are ready so a couple of these beds are ready for amending i can spend a little bit of time today putting the organic matter into the soil and not worry about this becoming a major effort to prepare i've gathered all the organic material that i'm going to be using to amend the soil in this bed i'll be using compost straw leaves grass and sphagnum peat moss i really like a blend of materials when i want to improve the soil i could use just a single organic material i could just use the straw that's already in place but the straw is limited in the nutrients i could use just the peat moss and peat moss is great for improving the structure of the soil but it too doesn't have a lot of nutrients the same with the grass and the leaves they have some nutrients but they're very limited by itself compost is about the best you can go it should have a wide range of nutrients that would be available for the plants after those microorganisms have continued to break it down but by using a wide variety of organic materials i feel like i'm really improving the structure of the soil because they're different size materials and i'm getting a lot of different nutrients even more than just the compost by itself amending your soil does not need to cost much at all if you use leaves and grass from your landscape along with compost that you've made yourself well then amending the soil costs nothing now i did purchase the compost just because i don't have enough to amend all of these beds and i bought the peat moss as well you might have access to coco core they do the same thing the idea is just to get as many different types of organic material for your beds free is best but if you can't get it for free it's okay to buy it to begin i'm going to put all this organic material on top of the soil now i already have some leaves and some grass and some straw in place because that's what i primarily mulch with and one of the reasons i like that as a mulch in my vegetable garden is because at the end of the season like right now i can turn all of that back into the soil and it adds all of the organic material i'm looking for i'll begin with some grass now this is just bagged grass it's still relatively fresh nice and green and i'm just going to spread it all over the surface it doesn't matter if it's freshly mown grass if it's old dry grass it doesn't matter if it clumps up a little bit it's just organic material we're adding to the soil next i'll add a few bags of compost now again your own compost is really the best option but if you don't have compost feel free to buy it and then spread it on as you learn more about soil and develop your own recipe for amending your beds each year you might want to consider adding some inorganic materials if you're growing in a very compost rich bed or a soilless mix you might want to add some rock dust to incorporate minerals that might otherwise be lacking but i've got native soil blended into this bed and that native soil's got plenty of minerals so i don't need to work worry about the rock dust at all if you know that the soil is very deficient in certain nutrients you can add fertilizer and i'll often add a nitrogen phosphorus and potassium blended fertilizer in the first year to get the soils boosted the organic material will take care of those nutrients as time goes on this year i am adding some vermiculite because i know my basic soil is pretty dense it's even difficult just to poke my finger in to see the moisture level so to help the structure of the soil i'm adding some vermiculite this not only improves drainage but as the organic materials break down the vermiculite will still be in place so that the soil isn't as dense as it otherwise would be i don't often recommend adding vermiculite or perlite to garden beds because it just adds an extra expense that organic matter usually takes care of but in this case i'm going to go ahead and use it next i'm going to dump on some leaves and grass that have been all mixed together now i got this from my neighbor because i don't have a lot of trees in my landscape and i don't have a lawn to mow this is a great option go around your neighborhood and see what your neighbors have that you might be able to use and if they've got leaves and grass that are already mixed together because they mowed them up when the trees started dropping the leaves it's great as an amendment for your beds you might have noticed some pine needles mixed into the grass and the leaves i'm not worried about that at all that's just more organic material to mix into the soil the needles really won't make this any more acidic they'll take a little longer to break down but they're still adding some really good mineral components to this blend now i'm adding some peat moss and i'll just spread this on the surface as well now in the united states and in canada peat moss is sustainable this may not be the best choice for you depending on where you live cocoa core may be a better option for me peat works well it helps improve the soil structure as i said before it doesn't have a lot of nutrients it's readily available it's inexpensive and it works now peat moss is hydrophobic which means when it's wet it stays wet but once it gets dry it's really hard to get it wet again so i'll usually come out and all wet soak my peat moss as much as possible before i use it just so it spreads a little bit better and i don't have to worry about it repelling water once it becomes part of this blend so far i've been adding a little bit of this a little bit of that because this is what i have available if i had manures i'd be adding the aged manure right now a cow manure a horse manure alpaca manure rabbit manure it's all good worm castings are also good but typically you have to buy that and i don't think it's worth the expense because the worms will find this bed and they'll fill it with their own castings i tend to prefer to use my own worm castings for my indoor grows as part of the potting mix for my seedlings but all of those are options you can use and you're probably wondering well how much it's a little bit of this and a little bit of that you should aim for 25 so as i mix this in i'm aiming to amend the top 12 inches of soil so each year i'm going to add 25 of that 12 inches so i like to have 3 inches of organic material on top before i work it in that's a good target you could use more you could use less depending on what you have available but that 25 of the volume is really what you should aim for and now comes the part that is much more physical it's been relatively easy just spreading everything on the surface now we need to work it in and i'm trying to get down 12 inches i'm going to start with a spade this is almost 12 inches so if i can get this spade all the way in lift it and turn it then i can get this material incorporated down to that depth and that's what i'm going to continue doing pushing the spade in see it's physical lifting turning and mixing it in and i'll continue doing this throughout the whole bed it does take a little bit of work but i'm only doing this in the fall this intensely so once a year to spend some time i'm okay with that now the soil is relatively dry there was organic material in here but it's essentially all gone it's decomposed so i'm back to the bare soil i don't want to destroy the structure of that soil if i can avoid it so that's why i'm turning it by just a spade full at a time i'm not a big fan of tillers because if you do this with an electric or a gas tiller you're really breaking apart the structure of the soil and so i'm trying to improve the soil not tear it apart there's a lot of good organic material now mixed in with this soil but we're not done yet there's another important step i like to add if you take a moment to think about it as we turn the soil well we put a lot of organic material down to that 12 inch layer but we brought a lot of that soil that is nutrient poor back up to the surface so now i like to add a thin layer of compost grass and just some more organics and now i'll come back with my garden fork and turn everything at about the six inch level just to kind of mix the nutrients up try to break apart some of these dirt clods and make this soil as loose as possible at this point with as much organic material spread throughout as i can get to protect the soil at this point from the sun and weather and also to help hold in moisture so that those soil microorganisms can get to work i'll cover all this with a good layer of straw mulch and then i give the entire bed a really good soaking now i have a lot of really windy weather and this straw will blow around so as i get some more leaves to add i'll add some more leaves as a mulch that helps keep the straw in place and i'll continue watering this bed on a regular basis because we're feeding the organisms within the soil and they also need water so i want to try to keep this bed as evenly moist as possible until i start planting again and it's going to be for me about seven months before i plant in this bed again i have a pretty long winter that's why i'm doing this in the fall because now all of this material has seven months to break down seven months to fill this soil with the nutrients that the plants will need when i put them in in spring when those plants go in they're going to love this soil because i took the time to add the organic material mix it in and fully amend this bed as i said at the beginning soil is key to the success of your garden so i encourage that you learn as much about soil as you can and to help you with that and to continue on your gardening journey i suggest you watch one of these gardener scott videos i'm gardener scott enjoy gardening [Music] you

Channel: Gardener Scott

Views: 153,007

Keywords: gardener scott, gardner scott, raised beds, soil amendment, raised bed gardening, soil health, soil amendments for vegetable garden, soil amendments, amend soil, amending soil in raised beds, how to amend soil, how to amend raised garden bed, how to amend garden soil, how to amend garden beds, how to amend garden bed soil, how to amend garden soil in fall, how to amend garden soil for vegetables, how to amend your garden soil, how to amend a raised bed garden

Id: -23-33XwC4M

Length: 17min 20sec (1040 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 27 2020