Central Oregon Gardening Articles

VALUE YOUR CENTRAL OREGON SOIL   

Growing your own food and gardening in general is more popular than ever.  The benefits to home grown food include the benefit of better health, saving money and good recreation.

The ability of a home owner to grow food and enjoying gardening success has much to do with your property’s soil quality.  Some Central Oregon home sites are built on ground with marginal soil depth and soil quality. More and more home shoppers are checking out the soil factor of their real estate search. It pays to do everything possible to improve the soil on your little piece of paradise.

So what can we do to improve our soil?

Improving soil on property in Central Oregon should address soil depth, maintaining what you have, soil testing and amending your soil.

ADEQUATE SOIL DEPTH

   Minimum soil depth for growing food or landscapes is 8 to 10 inches. We deliver lots of fresh Mcpheeters Turf and people ask us about needed soil depth. Our Standard answer is, “you need to be able to sink a standard spade shovel into the ground” that is usually 8 inches or so.

Most trees need at minimum many multiples of these numbers for strong root growth.

 The fact of life in Central Oregon is many of us have shallow soils on top

of lava rock so you might set an objective to add some organic matter annually to keep building your soil depth.

TAKE CARE OF THE QUALITY YOU HAVE

Dirt, compost and soil additives are not cheap any more. These investments  will be damaged by careless acts such as throwing paint

and solvents out on your yard.  Try to limit over compaction of your lawn and garden areas.  Central Oregon sandy soils continue to

be active and build improved soil structure with proper aeration and moisture levels.  Our Lawns and garden plots in Central Oregon

will compact over the winter naturally. Turning your soil and aeration of your lawn will assure your soils will stay active biologically. 

However, when turning or roto-tilling garden plots do not drive your top soil too deep and waste the hopefully better soil on top. 

Mechanical aeration of lawns is the single best tool for the best lawn on the block.  More holes the better !

SOIL PH BASICS

Many Central Oregon soils we see tend to age towards the Alkaline side. 

It is easy to forget what is high, low, sweet or sour, right!

Although most of us can remember that a soil sample with a ph of 6.5 to 7 is good.

I picture alkaline soil like an ancient high desert crusty alkaline lake bed.

I picture acidic soils in the low altitude forests of the Oregon coast.

High ph numbers 7.5 – 14 are alkaline

Low ph numbers 6 – 1 are acidic

In our opinion extensive time and effort over your soils ph is not usually worth the heart burn !  

If you inclined to in fact go through the ph drill please look up the OSU ec 628 Soil Sampling reprint article at our topsoil products pages on our website.

Amending Central Oregon soils with quality organic materials and proper application of fertilizers that are formulated Specifically for Central Oregon will adjusts ph problems.

Beware most box store fertilizers are not formulated for Central Oregon.

Think about it, large distributors main concern are big metro areas are in the Willamette Valley.   Valley soils are much more acidic than Central Oregon soils thus the fertilizer formulas are quite different and some of even the most well known brands can be very wrong for your soil, lawn and garden.

Do not expect immediate reversals in ph.  Soil ph corrections can take months.

If you are lucky enough to have slightly acidic Central Oregon soil and feel you want to raise the ph over time most folks apply lime, bone meal or ash products.

If you have soil that is leaning towards the alkaline side most often the application of compost, peat moss, fine bark , sulfur and gypsum will slowly lower your soils ph.

 There are a couple no brainer amendments for

Central Oregonians that want to do the right thing for their soil and are concern about PH.  In our opinion those include

addition of quality multi textured Compost, Gypsum and locally formulated fertilizers with sulfur as  Mcpheeters Turfs line.

A SOIL TEST

WE ALL CAN DO

 Use a clear lidded jar.  A mayonnaise jar works well for this soil test.

Fill the jar a bit over half full with water.

Gather approximately two cups of your garden soil.

 Take a bit here and a bit there as to represent a fair average of your garden plot

And fill jar with in a few inches of top of jar.

Screw the lid on securely, shake well and let stand overnight.

Actually after an hour or so you should see the bottom layer developing.  This is the sand layer made up of sand and rock particles. 

In the morning your Central Oregon Soil Test will show 2 main layers.

The main layers will be sand at the bottom and organics at the top.

Some Central Oregon soils will have the presents of a smaller silt or clay layer on top of the sand layer.

The test enables you to see for yourself your soil structure.

Take a close look at the bottom sand layer. A substantial percentage of larger rock particles may be a concern for soil that has too much gravel content.

The main advantage with this test is the ability for you to determine the organic material ratio in your soil.  Organic content in Central Oregon Gardens is favorable.

Most Central Oregon Gardening soils will benefit from 25 to 50 percent organic matter.  Remember that 50 percent is an unusually high percentage in balanced soil.

Central Oregons sandy soils can handle and benefit from lots of organic mater but one should not attempt to amend over 50 percent. 

Please keep in mind that as fun and revealing this simple test is your soils various particle layers are not this way in your garden.  

The test by flooding the soil with un -natural amounts of water separates everything.  Layering in your gardening soil is NOT

desirable.  Always mix soil amendments into your soil.  Ground Mulches like bark or even compost can be put pure on top but NOT in

the root zone.  An illustration of long term problems from layering is layers under a lawn.  In the old days in Bend it was popular for

folks to apply several inches of old steer or horse manure, then they layered dirt on top and planted.  The result was great for

several years .  After years of water going down and then sideways into the manure layer the soil structure and root zone started

separating. As a result many lawns were failing because of shallow roots.  The lawns roots liked it so much just a few inches under

ground they did not go deeper. So NO layering in the root zone .

ADD INGREDIENTS AND BUILD SOIL

Soil texture improvements solve lots of problems!

We are big advocates for both natural and commercial fertilizers for lawns and gardens yet, they can only do so much. The key to better

performing Central Oregon Soils in our opinion is soil TEXTURE.  This season when you add to your garden plot consider more than one additive with different particle sizes.

  Consider an occasional investment of bulk organic materials. Remember the advantages of soil texture and do not rely on any one

soil amendment.  Use many varied sources of organic soil additives like quality compost, peat moss, gypsum, pumice, well composted manure or our multi blended GARDEN MIX.

Think of your garden plot as a compost pile.  Compost piles only compost when they are stirred occasionally.  Like a compost pile if your

ground keeps getting compacted and structure is not diverse in particle size it will go stale.  Great Central Oregon Soils have varied

texture, they hold oxygen, moisture, nutrients and they are alive.  We look far and wide for every type of quality soil amendment available on the west coast. 

By products from forests and agricultural sources not only add NPK value to your dirt they add texture.

  Instant Landscaping Company has blended a five way soil amendment called

“ GARDEN MIX ” which many of our friends rely on to build their soils.

If in doubt with soil amendments purchase Soil Rich Topsoil. 

This pre amended top soil is can be used as is for  all local outdoor lawns and garden projects.

 Instant Landscaping Company makes and distributes  SOIL RICH TOPSOIL .

SOIL RICH is comprised of the best local topsoil plus 50 percent GARDEN MIX

Warm regards, 

Tim Larocco, Instant Landscaping Company.