Several ways to make the soil on your site soft and fertile. Simple and useful tips. Which soil loosening agent to choose depending on the type of soil on the site How to fluff up the soil in the garden in spring

Many people, including me, used to think that making the soil fertile and loose was as easy as adding mineral fertilizers and adding sand or clay if necessary. dug up - it resulted in fertility. I always didn't like it - that's all

It’s the same as buying vitamins at a pharmacy and starting to eat them - at best, they will go through transit, since they are not absorbed. They can also cause harm by introducing an imbalance in metabolism.

Fertility consists of more than just fertilizers. Fertile soil contains:

all necessary nutrients in a form and ratio that is assimilated by the plant;
air;
moisture

How to make the soil exactly like this?

Let's look at the trees, shrubs of parks and forests. No one ever thought of sprinkling the ground around them with mineral water, and even burying it all. Leaf and coniferous litter cover the ground from year to year; the previous layer decomposes, fertilizing. replenishing wasted food. When this foliage, as well as coniferous litter, rots, and the grass cover (roots, stems) decomposes, humus is formed every year, which contains nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and microelements, and all this is absorbed by the plants.

How humus or humus is formed - bacteria work, in the upper layer they are aerobic, and worms also help - they will turn organic remains into food for the earthly inhabitants of parks and forests. Moreover, due to the enrichment of these residues, passages from worms, weed roots, other vegetation, insects, microorganisms, the soil will become loose. porous, accessible to air and water.

I wish we could stop using mineral fertilizers, try to protect our gardens from soil infertility, diseases, pests, simply by increasing the immunity of our wards. Then you won’t have to use chemical fertilizers, and this will improve our immunity and improve our health!

How then can we increase fertility, make the soil loose and alive?

Think. we need to try to do as nature does - bring plant remains into the surface layer, carefully embedding them to a depth of 5-7 centimeters with a hoe and similar tools, or simply leaving them on the surface. You don’t have to loosen anything - microorganisms and worms will do their job: we fed them - from these organic residues that they passed through themselves, they manage to make humus, the most fertile loose layer, it is very small, but effective for growing our pets.

At the same time, moisture absorption and breathability will increase.

There is one more very important thing: if we dig up our humus soil layer now, we will destroy its living inhabitants, the looseness will disappear, and the excess air entering at the same time will transform the humus into mineral salts, which will become unavailable for plant nutrition. That's it. That is, we ourselves destroy looseness and fertility with our own hands. Such soil is lifeless.

From all of the above, it is logical to assume: we do not dig the ground, but only embed superficial organic materials into it. If you water them with an infusion (five days old) of nettle and dandelion, the process of decomposition of organic matter will accelerate. It is advised to add EM preparations (effective microorganisms) there, but I have not tried this. I mulch all my plantings, that is, I cover the ground with weeded grass. Immunity increases - diseases are avoided!

I wrote this article and thought: man is somewhat akin to the rest of the animal world, he also processes food, turning it into organic residues. And when disasters and cataclysms happen on earth, doesn’t this happen in retaliation for the fact that a person organizes the same terrorist attacks on underground inhabitants. As it comes back, it will respond.

You can watch a video on how to make the soil fertile.

Happy owners of dacha acres know well that it is impossible to obtain rich land on a plot without effort. This requires a lot of work. But before you begin the transformation, it is important to determine its initial state. This determines which additives to use and in what quantities. How to make the soil loose and fertile will be discussed in our article.

How to make the soil loose and fertile

Ideally, the natural soil from the site can be taken to an agricultural laboratory, where a full analysis will be done. Its results will show exactly how to optimize the soil in your garden. Unfortunately, such testing is not available to most owners. No problem! Some characteristics can be determined independently, for example, mechanical composition. It is responsible for air and moisture content. You can recognize it yourself if you moisten a small amount of earth with water and form a ball out of it. As a result:

the figurine crumbles, which means the soil is sandy;
the ball can be rolled into a cord and formed into a ring - the soil is considered clayey.

In the first case, additives are needed to retain moisture. You can loosen heavy soil using coarse sand or bottom peat. Any type of soil will need nutritional supplements; the best ones are organic fertilizers.

Fertilization with manure

Animal waste products contain a full range of substances necessary for plants. This is why adding organic fertilizers makes the soil fertile. Any type of manure – cow, pig or horse – is applied to garden and garden crops. Attention! It is important to follow these rules:

Fresh fertilizers can only be applied in the fall to empty areas, where there are no plantings, for example, in a vegetable garden. Manure in this form is an aggressive substance that is dangerous for plants. Therefore, it must be added to the soil in advance, 5–6 months before planting. During this time, it will be converted to a safe state, and nutrients will become available to plants. The additive not only serves as a top dressing, but also acts as a leavening agent for the garden soil.
Rotted fertilizers can be used in the spring, during planting.

horse – 5–6 kg;
cow - 4–5 kg.

The amount of rotted manure is reduced by half. Pig manure is not recommended to be applied fresh, even in the fall, due to the high content of aggressive nitrogen in ammonia form. The fertilizer must be kept for at least a year until it completely rots. It is better to mix it with horse or cow milk or put it in compost.

Mulching with grass clippings

Can be used from early spring to late autumn. This type of soil fertilization is classified as MDU - slow-acting fertilizers. The use of mulch allows you to:

Make the soil loose and soft in the garden and garden.
Retain moisture by reducing evaporation.
Provide constant feeding thanks to the gradual decomposition of the mulch.

Grass clippings are an effective loosening agent for heavy clay soils.

Planting plants with long roots

Proponents of organic farming recommend improving soil quality with the help of green manure. Plants are sown whose roots contain nodule bacteria that capture and fix nitrogen from the air. Thus, a natural, environmentally friendly fertilizer is obtained. Thanks to the powerful root system, green manure makes the soil crumbly and aerates it. This is especially important for heavy or peaty soils. To improve the structure and fertility of the soil, leguminous plants are most often used, for example, lupine, peas, alfalfa, vetch or beans. Even if your site has fertile soil, it needs to be improved periodically. To make the chernozem loose, it is also sown with green manure. This is more environmentally friendly than adding bulk additives and digging.

Green manure

Improving the soil is not a one-time event. You need to maintain optimal condition regularly. To do this, it is not necessary to purchase expensive fertilizers. You can use plant material that is available at each site:

mowed lawn grass;
weeded weeds;
clipped shoots;
wilted flowers, etc.

It's essentially garden waste, but can be turned into an effective fertilizer. Experienced gardeners offer useful tips on preparing green fertilizers. Here is one of them:

a large capacity container, for example a barrel, is filled two-thirds with crushed plant residues;
fill with water to the top;
leave for a week and a half, stirring daily.

Before feeding, the resulting concentrated solution is filtered and diluted in a ratio of 1:10.

other methods

To improve the structure of heavy soil, the easiest way is to use coarse-grained washed river sand. To make light soil from medium loam, you will need 21 kg/m2. This is about one and a half buckets with a volume of 10 liters. The sand is evenly distributed over the surface and dug to a depth of 20–25 cm, to the full bayonet of a shovel. When preparing a plant mixture for seedlings, sand is almost always used. It is mixed with peat and compost to obtain a light nutrient substrate. Fertilizers that contain calcium are good leavening agents:

slaked lime;
dolomite flour;
ash.

They are added to acidic soils to neutralize the pH level. Sometimes soil optimization on a site is a lengthy and costly process. It’s easier to take fertile soil from manufacturers who mix all the necessary components in advance.

Whether to improve the soil on the site yourself or add a ready-made mixture is up to everyone to decide for themselves. It depends on your financial capabilities and the amount of work.

Ecology of consumption. Manor: Fertile soil is made so simply that it is very difficult to believe in this simplicity, so we are still looking for the magic fertilizer...

Nowadays, for most people, fertile soil is a utopia. A purely consumer approach to growing plants destroys the fertile layer of soil. Most agronomists think that fertile soil is soil of a certain chemical composition. This idea is fundamentally wrong, and it is precisely this that leads to the destruction of the soil.

Everyone knows that the fertile layer of the soil is relatively small and is located on the surface of the earth. If you dig a two-meter hole in the ground, you can see with the naked eye that there is no fertile soil at the bottom, although if we assume that the fertility of the soil is determined by its chemical composition, then at such a depth it should, on the contrary, be more fertile, because plants don't get here.

Everyone also knows that For normal development of plants, the soil in which they grow must be loose. Here the agronomists took us to the WRONG WHERE AGAIN and told us that for this we need to dig it up regularly. When we dig up the soil, we first make earth out of it, then sand and finally dust. And then we breathe it all.

Another mistake is that how we plant plants. Different plants consume and produce different micronutrients. If different plants grow in a garden bed, they work for each other and require virtually no care. And if the entire garden bed is filled with plants of the same species, then they begin to fight among themselves for a place in the sun. As a result, from a lack of microelements we get sick plants. We try to cure them with chemistry, again on the advice of agronomists, and we enter a VICIOUS CIRCLE.

So, should we all go beat the agronomists for giving us false information? Of course, you can go, but this will not solve the problem. A more reasonable action is to figure out for yourself what determines soil fertility. It's worth it - if we manage to copy Nature's behavior- after all, now only it makes the soil fertile, then you will no longer need to bend your back in the garden - everything will grow there on its own. Tempting? Go ahead.

FERTIL SOIL IS A LIVING ORGANISM, and not just a set of chemical elements. The fact that it contains many trace elements is a side effect of its “vitality”. In order to increase the fertility of the soil, it is necessary to increase its “vitality”, and the necessary microelements come to the living soil themselves. Don't believe it? There is no mysticism here, but only the exact laws of Nature.

Firstly, fertile soil is not land. The earth is an integral part of it, but it is only a frame on which a fertile layer is formed.

Let's figure it out first how to make the soil loose. It's simple - you need to plant annual plants with long roots in it several times in a row. When their long roots die, there will be passages left, due to which the soil will be loose.

Now let's figure it out where to get microelements that plants need. There are no problems here either - you just need to avoid leaving the beds bare under the scorching rays of the sun. Partially weed out the weeds, and partially leave them, and throw the weeded weeds right there in the garden bed. Plus, plant plants mixed with each other, and not in separate beds.

The last problem is where to get water. You might be surprised, but there is no problem here either. You just need to cover the seedlings of our plants with a fifteen-centimeter layer of straw, foliage or pine needles. This layer is called MULCH.

Most people who use mulch think that it only retains moisture. In fact, it also produces moisture. At the top and bottom of the mulch, the air temperature is different; due to this difference, dew falls on the mulch, which is so necessary for plants.

Dew falls not only in the mulch, but also in the passages left by the roots of old plants, i.e. annual plants with long roots provide double benefits.

That's the whole technique of soil fertility. As you can see, THERE IS NOTHING COMPLEX HERE. Fertile soil is made so simply that it is very difficult to believe in this simplicity, so we are still looking for the magic fertilizer that will make our soil fertile. But the truth is that there is no such fertilizer and cannot be. published

How to make the soil loose and fertile

the figurine crumbles, which means the soil is sandy;
the ball can be rolled into a cord and formed into a ring - the soil is considered clayey.

Fertilization with manure

Fresh fertilizers can only be applied in the fall to empty areas, where there are no plantings, for example, in a vegetable garden. Manure in this form is an aggressive substance that is dangerous for plants. Therefore, it must be added to the soil in advance, 5–6 months before planting. During this time, it will be converted to a safe state, and nutrients will become available to plants. The additive not only serves as a top dressing, but also acts as a leavening agent for the garden soil.
Rotted fertilizers can be used in the spring, during planting.

horse – 5–6 kg;
cow - 4–5 kg.

Mulching with grass clippings

Can be used from early spring to late autumn. This type of soil fertilization is classified as MDU - slow-acting fertilizers. The use of mulch allows you to:

Make the soil loose and soft in the garden and garden.
Retain moisture by reducing evaporation.
Provide constant feeding thanks to the gradual decomposition of the mulch.

Grass clippings are an effective loosening agent for heavy clay soils.

Planting plants with long roots

Green manure

mowed lawn grass;
weeded weeds;
clipped shoots;
wilted flowers, etc.

It's essentially garden waste, but can be turned into an effective fertilizer. Experienced gardeners offer useful tips on preparing green fertilizers. Here is one of them:

a large capacity container, for example a barrel, is filled two-thirds with crushed plant residues;
fill with water to the top;
leave for a week and a half, stirring daily.

Before feeding, the resulting concentrated solution is filtered and diluted in a ratio of 1:10.

other methods

slaked lime;
dolomite flour;
ash.

Whether to improve the soil on the site yourself or add a ready-made mixture is up to everyone to decide for themselves. It depends on your financial capabilities and the amount of work.

The presence of loose, fertile soil on a plot is one of the main conditions for obtaining a rich harvest. It is important to understand that “loose” soil is well-structured, porous soil. To have such qualities, you should not always rely on natural processes; it is better to use some fairly simple techniques from experienced gardeners. With these little tricks, the soil in the garden will always be loose.

Soil structure

Soil structure is its ability to break down into small pieces. Well-structured soil easily breaks down into small grains measuring 0.25-10 mm. The same definition applies to the concept of “loose soil”.

Soil structure includes 4 main components:

mineral base (50−60%);
organic matter (10%);
air (15−25%);
water (25−35%).

Loose soil is porous, it allows moisture and air to pass through well, so plants take root and develop better. Light loamy soils have almost ideal performance.

To check the condition of the soil in your area, it is enough to conduct a small test: take a small lump of dry earth in a shovel, toss it, catch it again with a shovel, and then examine the size of the parts into which the soil has crumbled. If they are more than 10-15 mm, then most likely the site has heavy, poorly structured clay soil, which requires some correction of the composition by the gardener.

Lineup changes

To transform clay soil into loose soil, you will need river sand, which must be evenly distributed over the surface. For 1 m² you will need 24 kg (about 15 l) of sand. After this, the soil should be dug up to a depth of 20–25 cm.

It would be useful to attract “helpers” to the site - earthworms, which in the course of their life activities loosen the soil well. In order for these invertebrates to settle on the site, it is enough to place a small compost heap on the territory or mulch the plants with organic materials (for example, rotted compost or dried mowed grass). You can also prepare a special infusion:

place the roots, stems and leaves of dandelions with a total weight of 1 kg into a container;
fill them with 10 liters of water;
leave to infuse for 10-14 days;
strain;
dilute with water in a ratio of 1:10.

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This infusion should be watered over the soil, avoiding beds with beets and cabbage.

Manure and humus are not only excellent fertilizers, but also soil loosening agents. Fresh manure should be applied 6 months before planting. For example, this can be done in the fall after digging, distributing fertilizers over empty areas. The rotted product can be applied in the spring.

Fertilizer rate per 1 m²:

cow - fresh 4−5 kg, rotted 2−2.5 kg;
horse - fresh 5−6 kg, rotted 2.5−3 kg.

Humus, consisting of peat and rotted manure, can be further enriched with nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers. This will significantly increase the effectiveness of humus both as a top dressing and as a leavening agent.

Humus needs to be distributed over the surface (20 kg will be needed per 1 m²). Then clay soil should be dug up, going 15-20 cm deep, and sandy soil, going 30 cm deep.

Another effective and at the same time safe method is mulching the soil with mowed grass. Mulching will retain moisture in the soil and protect it from the formation of compactions and crusts after watering and precipitation.

You should start mulching heavy clay soil in June, when it warms up well. The cut grass needs to be dried a little and then laid out in a layer of 7-8 cm. In the fall, the mulch should be dug up along with the soil, which will lead to the formation of humus.

You can also make fertilizer from grass clippings. Other plant material is also suitable for this purpose - leaves, flowers, weeds, tops. To prepare fertilizer, you need:

fill 2/3 of the barrel with chopped plant material;
fill with water (to the top of the barrel);
cover the barrel with film, making several holes in it for gas exchange;
leave to infuse for 7-10 days, stirring daily.

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The resulting mixture must be filtered and diluted with water in a ratio of 1:10. After this, you can water the beds. The solution will quickly be absorbed by plants, protect their roots from pests and diseases, and also reduce the acidity of the soil and make the soil softer.