Prepare Your Garden Soil for Spring

Now that spring is in full force, many of our garden beds could use a refresh. While diligent cleanup in the fall may have left you a nice blank slate to work with, our winter wreaks havoc on even the tidiest gardens. This can affect your soil quality, which in turn affects the success of this year’s garden. So, how do you correct your soil and get it in shape for spring? Here’s what you need to know.

The Effects of Winter on Your Soil

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, you may be wondering how bad the effects of winter could really be. After all, here in Powell River, our winters are relatively mild compared to the rest of Canada! While this may be true, our warmer winter climate means our winters tend to be wet, rainy, and slushy. These conditions cause a lot of our soil nutrients to get washed away throughout the cold season, leaving us with depleted, acidic soil. These conditions are less-than-ideal for growing many of our favourite plants—but luckily, we can fix them!

Spring Cleaning

The first step, once the soil has reached a nice and workable temperature, is to clear away any debris leftover from the winter. If you haven’t yet cut your spent perennial leaves back, take a clean, sharp pair of pruners and leave just the blunt ends sticking out from the soil. Once your garden beds are clean and clear, it’s much easier to visualize your garden layout for the year. This layout is important to keep in mind as you work through the rest of your spring soil prep.

Soil Testing

Annual soil testing is so important, and yet not enough people stay on top of it! Without soil testing, it’s impossible to get an accurate sense of your soil pH balance until your plants tell you themselves—for better or worse. The wrong pH can make or break your garden, so test multiple areas of your garden beds to learn what you’re dealing with.

Once you’re aware of the acidity levels in different areas of your garden, you can plan around them. You may decide to work with the higher acidity in certain areas by planting acidity-loving plants, like blueberry shrubs. However, some areas may benefit from soil amendments, which can help you change the pH in certain areas to create better conditions for other plants.

Soil Amendments

If you’re not familiar with them, soil amendments are products that help you compensate for less-than-ideal soil conditions. Amendments are a broad category of products, and they don’t all work the same way.

Some amendments create chemical changes in the soil, for example, changing the pH balance over time. It’s important to be careful with these products and add them slowly over time, as the results will take a while to show. It’s best to gradually amend a bed over several years if you’re trying to change the pH levels drastically.

Other amendments create physical changes that are instantly noticeable, like improving drainage in slow-draining soils. These kinds of amendments are much safer to use liberally, as you can test how effective they are as you go.

Some examples of common soil amendments we use in Powell River include:

Garden lime: This product increases soil alkalinity. It’s essential to use lime according to the package instructions for it to give you the desired results.
Coarse Sand: Sand improves drainage in the heavy-clay soils that are common in our region.
Humus: Humus is organic matter that enriches soil nutrient content and aids in regulating water retention. (This can be anything organic; from compost, to pine needles, to seaweed.) You can’t have enough of this! We recommend adding at least 1-2 inches of compost to your garden beds each year.

Fertilizer

There are two main categories of fertilizers for plants: organic and synthetic. Organic fertilizers offer steady nutrition for your plants over the long-term, and synthetics are concentrated, fast-acting formulas—sort of like an energy drink for your plants.

Both types have pros and cons, but many people in our area gravitate towards organic fertilizers as they tend to be more environmentally-friendly. Organic fertilizers are forms of humus; compost, kelp meal, peat, and so on. While it’s ideal to start with beds that are already very humus-rich, some organic fertilizers offer benefits that are a little more specific to your different plants. For instance, some organic fertilizers, like blood meal, are known to help feed nitrogen-loving vegetables like corn, tomatoes, and squash.

If you grow a lot of flowering annuals, you may need to incorporate some synthetic fertilizers to keep them looking as bright as they did when you brought them home. Many annuals are grown using these powerful synthetic formulas and may not perform very well without them. There are some ways to minimize their impact on the environment. For example, you can keep your annuals in containers and recycle the water runoff to reduce the amount that enters the water table.

Preparing your soil for spring takes a little bit of effort, but we can help make the process as efficient as possible. Our outdoor nursery is open, and our team is trained to keep a safe distance to discuss your gardening needs with you. Chat with us about the current state of your garden, and we can help you determine the steps you need to take to get your soil spring-ready. We’re happy to set you up with the products you’ll need for a successful season!