Poor Soil Quality or Nutrient Deficiency

Fill a quart mason jar one-third full with garden soil (remove debris), add water to near the top with a tablespoon of dish soap or Calgon as a dispersing agent, shake vigorously, and set on a level surface. Sand settles in 1 minute, silt in 2 hours, clay in 48 hours. Measure each layer to…

Dig a hole 12 inches deep and 12 inches wide. Fill it completely with water and let it drain to saturate the surrounding soil. Immediately refill, measure the water depth with a ruler, then measure again after 15 minutes. Multiply the drop by 4 to get your drainage rate in inches per hour.

Observe which weed species dominate your garden area. Dominant populations of specific weeds are indicators of underlying soil conditions: white clover signals low nitrogen, sheep sorrel and moss indicate acidic soil, dandelions and broadleaf plantain point to compaction, lambsquarters and…

Collect soil from 4-5 inches deep. Place 2 tablespoons in a bowl and add 1/2 cup white vinegar — if it fizzes, the soil is alkaline. In a separate bowl, moisten 2 tablespoons of fresh soil with distilled water, then add 1/2 cup baking soda — if it fizzes, the soil is acidic. No reaction to either…

Collect soil from 6-8 spots across your garden at 6-8 inches deep, mix in a bucket, and submit 1-2 cups to your county cooperative extension service or a soil testing laboratory. Results typically include pH, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, micronutrients, organic matter percentage, and specific…

Mix 2-4 inches of compost, aged manure, or shredded leaves into the top 6-12 inches of garden soil each year before planting. This single practice improves almost every soil problem simultaneously.

Construct raised beds (at least 10-12 inches deep) and fill with a quality mix of topsoil, compost, and perlite or vermiculite. This creates an ideal growing medium from scratch, completely bypassing problem native soil.

Apply garden lime (calcium carbonate) to raise pH in acidic soil, or elemental sulfur to lower pH in alkaline soil. Most vegetables grow best at pH 6.0-7.0. Apply at the rate recommended by a soil test and work into the top several inches of soil.

Use specific organic amendments to address identified deficiencies: blood meal or feather meal for nitrogen, bone meal or rock phosphate for phosphorus, greensand or kelp meal for potassium. Apply at package rates and work into the soil before planting.

Sow cover crops like crimson clover, winter rye, hairy vetch, or buckwheat in fallow garden beds during the off-season. Cut or till them into the soil 2-3 weeks before planting your next crop.

Chop red cabbage and boil in distilled water (2 cups each) for 10 minutes. Strain and cool the purple liquid. Add 2 teaspoons of garden soil to a jar with a few inches of cabbage water, stir, and wait 30 minutes. The color tells you the pH range: red/pink means strongly acidic, purple means mildly…

Dig up a handful of soil from 4-6 inches deep and smell it. Healthy, biologically active soil has a pleasant, earthy aroma. Sour, rotten-egg, or sewage smells indicate waterlogged, anaerobic conditions. No smell at all suggests very low microbial activity.

Purchase a home soil test kit (Rapitest/Luster Leaf, MySoil, or similar) that uses chemical color comparators to test pH, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Mix soil samples with the provided capsules and water, then compare the resulting colors against the included chart.

Learn to read your plants. The key diagnostic principle is where symptoms appear first: older (lower) leaves indicate mobile nutrient deficiency (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium), while younger (upper) leaves indicate immobile nutrients (calcium, iron, sulfur, manganese).

When soil is moist (spring or fall, not frozen or baked dry), mark a 12x12 inch square, dig out the soil to 12 inches deep onto a tarp, and hand-sort through it counting every earthworm. Per the USDA NRCS, 10 or more per cubic foot indicates good soil health.

Take a golf-ball-sized handful of soil, add water drop by drop until it has the consistency of putty, and squeeze it into a ball. If it falls apart, the soil is sand-dominant. If it holds, squeeze it between thumb and forefinger to push out a flat ribbon. Sand-dominant soil ribbons less than 1…