![]() ![]() ![]() And the reason you want to dig down, let's say, about 2 or 3 feet, is to get a sense of the relative depth of each of these and their texture, and that's going to vary according to your location.ĬOSTA: The next thing you want to do is find out what you're going to grow there, and then you can decide what nutrients, minerals, and ecosystems you need to encourage to make your particular garden thrive. You have the subsoil, and then you have the third layer. For most gardeners who do shrubs, flowers, and vegetables, you need 10 to 12 inches of topsoil. So the next thing you need to do is dig deep enough to find out where the 3 layers of soil are. ![]() It comes in 5 different flavors: clay, sand, silt, limestone, and peat, and these are going to vary depending on where you live. So does soil, I mean stardust, come in different flavors?ĬOSTA: Yep. Like a hearty balanced meal that lasts you all day and keeps you healthy for a lifetime.ĬURWOOD: All right. So think of the organic matter that you need to add to your soil as good nutritious solid food. Those organisms release nutrients that are required for healthy plant growth. And it's teeming with millions of organisms. Now, organic gardening on the other hand aims to enrich the soil, and it recognizes that the soil is actually a complex ecosystem like a swamp or a forest. Think of those fertilizers as the human equivalent of caffeine: you might get a quick fix from coffee, but your body is depleted of energy and nutrients and you have no fuel left over for the long haul. The chemical gardener uses soil simply as a means to anchor all those plant roots to artificial fertilizers. Soil, in my opinion, is the basic raw material of the gardener's art. We are all stardust," he writes, "in fact, everything is stardust."ĬOSTA: Now, what did you want to know about pH, Steve?ĬURWOOD: Well, I mean, if I shouldn't be worrying about my pH right away, I mean, what should I be thinking about?ĬOSTA: Well, once you figured out where the sun hit your property, you need to figure out what the plants are going to go into. Our own sun is too young and too cool to manufacture any element heavier than helium. All we can say is it doesn't come from here. For instance, in his chapter called "Stardust," he writes, "The truth is, we really don't know the first thing about dirt. It reads like 100 Years of Solitude meets Scientific American.ĬURWOOD: In other words, pH is the first 2 letters of philosophy.ĬOSTA: You got it. Logan recently wrote Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth. John the Divine in Manhattan and he's an arborist. Now, somebody who's done a lot of thinking and philosophizing about the soil is Bill Logan. We really need to understand a little bit about Earth history before a pH test is going to make any sense. Now the first thing everybody asks these days is, what about my pH levels? And I tell them, forget about those soil-testing kits and let's look at the big picture first. But before we plunk down those expensive plattes of flowers and vegetables in the ground, what about the dirt?ĬOSTA: Very good question, Steve. Hi, Evelyn.ĬURWOOD: Last time we talked about figuring out where to get started in our gardens. Evelyn heads Garden Services in Brooklyn, New York. CURWOOD: It's time now once again to turn to the green garden spot with organic gardener Evelyn Tully Costa. ![]()
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