Sprouts in the City Episode 4

Making sure your garden is ready for the spring is one of the most important parts of gardening. The main reason this is important is we are trying to maximize the amount of nutrients our plants can pull from the soil as they grow. If they always have what they need then they will grow healthily and produce delicious fruits. Because I am trying to avoid adding chemical fertilizers to my soil I know I have to replenish the soil before the plants go in. I do that through adding compost, worm castings or other organic fertilizer. I have my own compost so that’s what I like to add, but when I started my garden and didn’t have compost, I purchased manure and worm casting from the garden store. So the first step is mix and replenish your soil.

The next way that we make sure the plants have all of the nutrients that they need is through crop rotation. It’s important whether you grow your plants in pots or in the ground. In the same way that humans breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide, plants take chemicals from the ground and release chemicals back into the soil. If you rotate your crops, you can capitalize on this process by using the chemicals the plants naturally release to fertilize plants who need to take in that chemical. The general rule of thumb is one up, one down. This means if one year you grow an above ground plant (like a tomato), the next season you grow a root vegetable (like beets). If you do this your soil will stay healthy with a proper chemical balance for years, rather than becoming nutrient deficient.