Improving soil quality without spending a fortune?

Evening all

I've just moved house and have inherited a garden which is pretty sparse. They've had very narrow beds down both sides, so the first thing we want to do is reduce the amount of grass in favour of some deeper and more shapely borders! The house is victorian, so I guess there's been a garden here for a long time.

I'm guessing that part of this will entail improving the quality of the soil... The borders seem to be full of pebbles and flint, along with bits of bark chippings, possibly from some previous garden design. The garden is quite long (70 foot but that includes decking and shed), so I'm hoping there will be a solution that's not too expensive to cover it all!

Do you have to add something like compost, or can you mix in something like plant food or fertilizer granules? If it is a case of adding in compost... is there a cheaper way than buying it bag by bag at the garden center?

Perhaps I'm even asking two questions- how to improve the soil texture and how to increase nutrients.

Thanks in advance

 

Well rotted manure. Helps if you can get a trailer load from a farm - which is probably a lot easier if you are in the countryside, rather than the middle of London!

Other options include Spent Hops and Spent Mushroom compost - which you may be able to get a bulk load of

 

First of all, do we know that the soil is worn out? The woodchip on the borders suggests to me that it was mulched last year, which in turn suggests that someone looked after it.

Does the grass grow well, or is there loads of bare patches etc.

If it does need anything, then well rotted manure is a good plan, or any 'bulky organic matter' (compost etc) will sort it out.

You don't have to buy it by the back at the garden centre. If you need loads, you can buy it in bulk online from various sources. Last time I looked for some you could get it for about £90 per tonne, delivered. That works out quite a bit cheaper than buying it by the bag.

Best thing to do is work out how much you really do need. There's no point buying a tonne if you only need a couple of bags. There are online calculators to tell you how much you need, but personally I'd go with my gut instinct. If the soil is dark in colour and is fairly soft as you crumble a bit in your hands, but is a bit gritty, then its probably good. If it crumbles to fine dust that just blows away in the breeze, then it is well and truly depleted (that's what my new garden is currently like ).

Another thing to consider if cost is an issue (as it is for most of us I guess), when planting up a new area, if you buy just a few bags of rotted manure, then when you dig a hole for the new plant, make it twice as big as the pot. Then you can fill it with the manure, and plant into that. Then you can just top dress the area as you go along, while the plants are in their own little pocket of good soil. The trouble with this plan though is that if large areas of poor soil are left bare, then the whole bed will dry out very quickly. If you get plenty of plants in, they will shade the soil so it doesn't dry out as quickly, so your plants will do better. Those plants will constantly be sending out new roots, which then die off naturally, and are replaced with more new roots, so the plants themselves will gradually build up the organic content in the soil.

 

Ah... Uh oh.

The beds *were* covered in bark- but I took this all off as I thought it was put there mainly for design as the people before us weren't really garden people... It was really chunky bark, like that at kids playgrounds. I mean, I knew it did good things for moisture retention and weed suppression... but... Oops. I've never really been a fan of bark in beds.

Either way, thanks for all the good tips! The grass seems to be doing ok, so perhaps the nutrient level isn't too bad. I'm going to look into the option for a bulk delivery of manure (we're in Hertford Kristen, so should be some!), but also take your advice Clueless to consider whether we actually need that much. I was thinking that we'd need something to add to the new beds, and also in preparation for a few fruit trees that are coming soon

If we don't go for this, then it'll just be a job of adding some compost to each new plant, as you suggest.

Thanks again!

 

If you want to improve the quality of soil without spending a fortune,you have to visit this site....

 

Hi all, thanks for the advice.

I ended up buying 4 big bags of garden-center well-rotted manure for £12 and it actually went really far- still have a little bit left and I've done almost everything with it that I was hoping to, i.e. adding it to each plant individually

Glad I didn't get a truck-load!

Thanks again