Determining What Kind Of Soil You Have

Knowing your soil is key to having a good garden. It's what provides essential water and nutrients to your plants and makes all the difference between a struggling garden and a lush, healthy garden.

If your soil has problems, you'll need to take steps to improve it (see "Improving Your Soil"). And if it's already good, you can make it even better.

Know Your Soil Structure

Ideal soil is a lot like what you find in a bag of potting soil—black, loose, and moist, but also crumbly. However, most gardeners aren't blessed with such perfect soil and have to focus on improving what they have.

To find out what your soil texture is, get out there at a time when the soil is moderately moist. Dig a hole a foot or two deep, if you can. You may hit tree roots or stone, depending on your soil conditions.

• If the soil you retrieve from the hole forms a tight clump and becomes slick when wet, it's heavy clay soil.
• If it crumbles in your hand even when fairly moist, it's probably sandy or stony soil.
• If it roughly holds its shape when gently squeezed in your palm, it's the ideal—loam.

Know Your Drainage

It's also useful to know how well your soil drains. Moisture-loving plants are best suited to slower-draining soils while drought-tolerant plants thrive better in quickly draining soils.

To test your soil for drainage, dig an 18-inch hole and fill it with water.

• If it drains within 30 minutes, you have well drained soil—the ideal.
• If it holds water 10 minutes or less, you have sandy, fast-draining soil.
• If it holds water more than 50 minutes, you have slow-draining soil.

Know Your pH

It's important to know if your soil is acidic (has a low pH), neutral, or alkaline (has a high pH). Test kits are available at garden centers or you can use a pH meter, which gives you a reading instantly.

• Neutral soil has a pH of 6.0 to 7.5. This is the most desirable soil to have since the widest variety of plants thrives in it.
• Acid soils have a pH below 6.0. Some plants do best in acid soils, such as hollies, hydrangeas, azaleas, rhododendrons, and others.
• Alkaline soils have a pH above 7.5. A handful of plants do best in alkaline soils, such as baby's breath.

You can alter the pH of the soil slightly, but only slightly. Add lime to acidic soil to "sweeten" it, that is, raise the pH. Add garden sulfur to alkaline soils to acidify them, that is, lower the pH.