Tuesday, February 21, 2017

SOIL CONDITIONING- PART 2


For those having clay & sandy soil, this is not an end to you. You still can do something to make them fertile. In my opinion, either you plant in raised bed method or do soil conditioning.

 Raised bed is much easier, but you have to invest on buying good soil mix. Or.. buy separate materials for your soil mix & start DIY them. DIY is much cheaper than buying a ready-mix. For long term use of your garden raised-beds, I personally suggest you don’t add any fibers in the soil mix to avoid “uncontrolled” decompositions of the fibers & this will make your soil acidity decrease & later you will having issues with soil fungus etc.. BUT, for pot/ planter box, you can add fibers in it, & no issues of having them.

So, just use standard soil mix: burnt soil, sand & organic fertaliser (or compose if you can get it). It is a laborious work to do your soil mix & frankly, mixing them manually makes me backache! Don’t believe me? You better try your own! Since we have constant request of soil mix from customers, Mizi bought a small mixer to help him. We at IPlant Page sell our soil mix at RM1.80/ kg.


So, once you get your soil mix ready, you just fill up your raised bed with the soil, let it rest for a week or two & you can start planting what you like. To encourage higher activity of soil microbes, keep using organic fertalisers & your MOL.. these 2 are perfect match !
As time flies, your basal soil condition under your raised bed will eventually “alive”. The soil microbes activities in your raised bed will go down & slowly will start to make them fertile. This will takes about a year or more… depending on what you supplies to your soil.


Now the soil conditioning. It is one of methods to make them become a better soil.






It just an easy methods where you only need to identify a spot/ corner on where you are going to plant & focus to that area only.

To condition your soil, you only need organic fertaliser or compose, and MOL. That’s all!

What you do is to dig that area about feet or two & throw your organic fertaliser & pour your MOL. Addition of organic fertiliser & MOL every week or 2 will slowly condition your soil. It will be ready in as early as 3 months or more depending on your effort to keep adding organic fertaliser & MOL to the soil.

OR, if you don’t want to do the job, just plant your garden with plants compatible with your soil type, keep feeding your plants with all sorts of fertalisers or MOL, & eventually, your garden soil will slowly become “alive” and able to plant anything you like after that..


So peeps, the choice is yours! Happy gardening!

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