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Foreword - This is not a textbook or a "complete" book of soils. It is simply a practical discussion of good garden soil—call it "Gardener's Loam"—how to get it, how to retain it and, of equal importance, how to make it produce maximum results for you and your plants.

I don't believe a truly complete book of soils will ever be written; the subject is too vast and complex. It would be no exaggeration to say that a hundred thick volumes would be needed to fully dis­cuss soils

1. General View - Without soils, no life could exist on earth. The lowly bacterial cell and the massive pachyderm both owe their being to this basic stuff of life. A bird in flight, a mole burrowing beneath your lawn, borers eating blindly into the heart of a great oak-all are linked by their common dependency on the elements of existence they draw from the soil.

2. The pH - One of the principal influences for good or bad in soil is its pH. This used to be the province of scientists and chemistry students, but over the past few years it has become part of the home gardener's everyday world. In many, many cases, pH is the key to proper plant growth, and a pH reading can tell you much about what is going on beneath the surface of your garden.

3. Soil Tests - The pH test is not the only one. Your soil's structure, organic composition, mineral (nutrient) content—all can be tested by vari­ous methods, with home kits or professional equipment. My prin­cipal objection to the use of most "all-purpose" home garden soil test kits is that the readings they give mean very little unless interpreted by someone who is experienced in the techniques of testing.

4. About Nutrients - Nitrogen, phosphorus and potash are the "big three" of the many nutrient elements needed in the soil by plants for proper growth. These three are listed by numbers in that order on every package or bag of fertilizer (thus a 5-10-5 fertilizer product contains 5 per cent nitrogen, 10 per cent phosphorus and 5 per cent potash or potassium).

5. Soil Fertilizers - A common illusion about fertilizers is that they are direct nutri­ents which must be promptly absorbed or they will be lost (either leached out of the soil by rain, or locked up in some insoluble, un­usable form). The fact is that instead of being used directly to any extent, most of the nutrients in fertilizer compounds are quickly blotted up by soil organisms such as bacteria, fungi, protozoa and actinomyces. Gardener's Loam contains billions upon billions of such organisms which occupy the soil mass so completely that very little in the way of soluble plant food can escape them.

6. Organic Garden - Perhaps the greatest controversy in the gardening field during the past two decades has enveloped the relative merits of chemical nutri­ents and organic nutrients. The arguments have been so confusing for gardeners—even for those who are scientifically trained—that a thorough discussion of both "organic" and "inorganic" viewpoints is indispensable to any consideration of soils.

7. Organic Matter - From the time plants first ventured out of the protecting waters of the sea, there has existed a kinship of soil, organic matter and plant life which has continued down through the ages. Even before the first feeble formation of land began, the processes of soil devel­opment were well under way. For millions of years, mineral elements had been accumulating: sand and gravel flaked away from rocks high in silicates; wind, water and frost disintegrated various oxides into clay, and sedimentary layers lifted above the seabed and gave up their lime.

8. Composting - The compost pile or heap is the time-honored place for all organic refuse, the real gardener's source of humus for incorporation into the soil. The important thing to remember about composting is that it is a biological process, one that involves bacteria, fungi and other soil organisms. These organisms require food to do their work, which means you must supply the same elements that are needed by higher plants. The one difference is that these organisms do not have chlo­rophyll and are not able to manufacture their own energy foods such as sugars and starches.

9. Microorganisms - Someone has said, and not too inaccurately, that soil management is nothing more nor less than the care and feeding of bacteria. Kill them off and what is left is no longer a true soil but an inert mass of rock debris contaminated with remains of dead plants and animals— wastes that without organic breakdown must remain permanently fixed in their sterile grave. Although they have an almost split-second life span, microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi (including mycor-rhizae), actinomyces, rotifers, and protozoa are all vital to the reduc­tion of organic and mineral wastes into plant nutrients, thus recy­cling the elements of existence from one generation to the next.

10. Earthworm - Contributions of various kinds are made to garden soils by "organisms" other than fungi and bacteria. I refer to creatures that live at least part of their lives in soil and are large enough to be seen with the naked eye. Most of them are outright garden or lawn enemies and are discussed (with recommended control measures) in Chapter Fifteen. The earthworm, however, defies such simple classi­fication. Is it a "good guy" or a "bad guy"? I shall try to bring an answer—or at least a better understanding—out of the fog of con­troversies, misinformation and half-truths that surround the earth­worm today as they have for many years

11. Water & Air - Plant life is intimately bound to water. Air is equally vital in the soil as well as, of course, above ground. In fact, these two are part­ners; they operate harmoniously in the soil to the advantage of plants growing therein. But water—or rather, the lack of it—is gen­erally more troublesome.

No part of the United States, whether fog-shrouded islands off the coast of Maine, a Midwestern prairie or a seashore spot in Cali­fornia, has escaped periods of drought during which not enough rain fell to maintain plant life. Most sections of the country can expect droughts like this about one year in four.

12. Digging - How unfortunate that the term "in good tilth" is passing out of common use! Today it is seldom used to describe a state of well-being in soil—a "oneness" of mellow loam and the gardener's care lavished upon it.

In its place we now use more specific terms which accurately but unpoetically describe some fraction of soil condition—texture, struc­ture, aeration and permeability.

13. Soil Mixtures - Pick up any British gardening publication of the past two decades and chances are you will see something about John Innes Composts. Developed between 1934 and 1939 at the John Innes Horticultural Institution, these special mixtures of soil ingredients have been pretty well standardized as growing mediums for seedlings and pot plants. So sacred are they to gardeners in England (where the mix­tures are sold pre-packaged) that I suspect my comments about them will earn me a disapproving look or two.

14. Plant Diseases - I wish I could draw a clear-cut, one-solution picture of plant diseases; if only organocultists were right and all soil-borne diseases of plants—caused by bacteria, viruses and fungi—could be elim­inated simply by not using chemical (inorganic) fertilizers! Unfor­tunately, the answer is not that simple.

Feeding practices do have definite effects on many diseases— sometimes causing them and sometimes preventing them. In the U.S.D.A. Yearbook of Agriculture for 1953, Dr. George L. McNew cites a most interesting example of confused effects.

15. Soil Insects - Any natural, uncultivated field or forest soil without insects living in it would probably be poor. However, a carefully tended Garden­er's Loam without insects and other harmful pests (or at least a minimum population of them) is not only possible but desirable.

Discovery of chlorinated hydrocarbons of high potency (be­ginning with D.D.T. during World War II) gave us weapons of amazing efficiency to use against harmful soil-inhabiting pests.

16. Weeds - Weeds belong in a discussion of soils for several reasons. For one, modern chemical weed controls introduce problems of toxic residues, which may produce either short- or long-term injury to desirable plants as well as weeds. For another, deep-rooted weeds such as bindweed, Canada thistle and nut grass often make a soil unusable for gardening until they can be exterminated. Third, the amazing longevity of certain weed seeds in soils is a factor in gardening.

Appendix

1. Soil Preferences - Since practically no scientific work has been done to establish standards and limits of plant tolerances for acid or alkaline soils, most of the figures on pH range are based on observations by many authorities. The ranges presented here are not hard and fast read­ings which must be followed to the exact fraction given

2. Foliage - An examination of plant foliage often reveals whether the soil contains all food elements needed for good growth, and whether the plant is absorbing these elements properly. Plant scientists do this with leaf tests, actually checking concentration of various elements in the leaf itself.

Although not quite as accurate, leaf color tells a great deal about the way roots are taking up food elements from soil.

3. Topdressing - Many lawn materials are sold by the cubic yard, so the gardener needs to know how far a cubic yard will go. Loose quantities of topsoil, compost and manure usually fluff up during shipment, so will cover more area for a given amount. Sand, ground limestone and washed steam cinders, on the other hand, pack down in transit and do not gain in bulk. This is why two sets of figures are given.

4. Soil Samples - Many lawn materials are sold by the cubic yard, so the gardener needs to ......

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