What is amended topsoil

Spring is approaching, and gardening season is almost here. This guide is also helpful for amending existing soil in your garden.

Even if you had great success in previous years, the soil does lose nutrients over time and requires some TLC. To amend the topsoil you purchased or any existing garden soil, it needs to be tested first to establish a baseline.

Most garden centres sell test kits that measure pH, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium levels. While there are other macronutrients, micronutrients, salinity, and sodicity that can affect soil quality, these basic test kits provide a good starting point for residential use.

While the optimal nutrient and pH levels vary by plants, climates, and other factors, the ranges provided by these kits will be good enough for general purposes. Another critical aspect is texture, determined by the ratio of silt, sand, and clay in the soil. To figure out the texture of your soil, follow this simple jar test. Once a baseline is established, you will know what to correct. They also make sure the soil is weed-free. If you are going to plant something woodsy, such as azaleas or ferns, you need to add lots of soil amendment because these plants like a porous soil full of organic matter, like the leaf litter found on a forest floor.

You may also want to add lots of amendment in a very sandy soil because organic amendments help hold onto water and fertilizer that otherwise would wash right through the sand.

In an average clay soil you may want to add sand to keep the surface from caking, and you certainly want to add organic amendments and gypsum, a powdery white mineral that helps keep a clay soil from getting too heavy and dense. Gypsum physically separates the soil particles. They even have a special soil mix for those who want to grow cactus and succulents, which will quickly rot in a normal clay soil. You must till it into the soil with a power rotary tiller, which can be rented.

That even goes for topsoil. Keep in mind that the deeper your layer of good soil, the more volume your plants roots will have to grow into, draw nutrients from, and store water in. Our general guideline is from 2" - 6" in depth for planting turf. The closer to 6" your depth is, the healthier and more resilient your turf will be. Keep in mind that your added soil will settle over time. Begin with your end goal in mind. Moisture - Amended topsoil is shipped as dry as the seasonal conditions allow.

We aim for this so that the soil will be easier to handle as you work with it. Because of this you will want to be sure to soak the soil well after you have planted your seed or sod. Some differences between certified organic standards and nutrient dense standards are as follows. Certified organic standards are a list of practices that a grower must NOT perform. Example, no herbicides, no pesticides, no fungicides, no chemicals, etc. With this standard it is possible, even probable, for a pink tomato to be presented at market with a respectable label.

Nutrient dense standards are an outcome based standard. A grower's product must meet a threshhold standard for mineral content nutritional value in order to carry this label. If the food was grown with natural or organic rules and yet has little nutritional value, it is considered poor quality. Nutrient dense standards are often based on food nutritional values from the 's, before our nation's soils began depleting.

For more on this subject see our article "Organic vs Nutrient dense, Both And. Nutrient Dense refers to the nutritional quality of a particular food. For example if results of laboratory testing show that the mineral content along with other key items reaches levels that are determined and fixed standards, then the food is said to be a nutrient dense food. We make our best effort to provide you, our customer, with a garden soil that will make your project successful.

Each soil blend is intended to be used in a general area of gardening for best results. That said, many gardeners have trade secrets that they love to employ with great tact and care. This can be done only if you have the right knowledge and secondly if you are able to hire the right soil direct service providers. There are many brick and mortar based topsoil delivery professionals who could help when there is a need to purchase amended top soil. However, the kind of crop that you are growing on the soil would also be a deciding factor.

For example, soil amendments for vegetable garden will be different when compared to growing crops, or other types of vegetation. Therefore there is a need to keep these factors in mind when buying.