There are three basic types of garden soil: Sandy, Clay and Loam.

The following procedure will quickly help you identify what type of garden soil you have:

If you wet it and grab a handful and try to knead it into a ball and it feels gritty and crumbly, then it is sandy which has no water holding abilities, lacks nutrients, and will dry out quickly.Clay on the other hand rolls easily into a ball, and it’s smooth with fine dense particles which retains too much water and is difficult to cultivate in wet weather. Even worse, in hot weather it becomes very hard.

Loam is ideal for a great variety of plants; it is a combination of sand, silt and clay. It holds and drains water well so that air can reach the roots, and retains nutrients so is ideal for most gardens.

Sandy garden soil is made up of particles of rock with large spaces in between, allowing water and nutrients to drain away often before plants can absorb them. Adding fine compost or manure will do wonders to improve it, also helping to stabilize pH levels. Just dig well in to encourage suitable insect populations, and retain moisture. If you can make your own compost using household scraps and other waste in a bin like a Gourmet Composter Bin you will find it’s cheaper and better than buying it.

The particles in garden soil which is predominantly clay are small and flat and tightly packed together. When wet, the clay is sticky and hard to work and because it drains slowly it can remain waterlogged for months. To improve the condition you need to dig into and turn it over till it’s nice and loose, get some liquid lime and spray it on to help break the clay up so the soil can breathe and drain water. The next step is to add quality coarse compost or animal manure and dig well in to about a foot, it could take a while but you will eventually get something to resemble the loam you desire.

pH Soil Tester

Garden soil can be classed as acidic with a pH range of 1-7, neutral with a pH of 7 or alkaline with a pH of 7-14. You can buy an inexpensive test kit from your nursery or hardware store to do your own test. Nutrients in the garden soil are most readily available to plants at a neutral range of around 6-7 so you should aim to get your garden soil to this level.

To make the garden soil less acidic (though some plants such as azaleas thrive on this kind of dirt) add lime, limestone, or wood ash. If you need to make it less alkaline then add sulfur or naturally organic materials such as conifer needles, sawdust or peat moss. Take care with the amounts used to ensure you change the conditions slowly, over a couple of seasons.

Compost will help neutralize the pH and add nutrients to your garden soil at the same time.