To produce a healthy, productive garden you’ll need loamy soil. It should crumble easily in your hands, not too much clay aspect, not too much sandy quality. Clay-like soil retains too much moisture and doesn’t allow proper drainage. Sandy soil doesn’t provide adequate support and drains too well, as well as lacking needed nutrients.
Good fertilizer and the right amount of water are needed to produce loamy soil.
Know what type of soil you’re starting with before you add anything. Testing kits are inexpensive and can tell you what kind of soil you have. pH levels and nutrient levels will be tested. Most vegetables are best suited in a pH range of 6.0-6.5, but some favor acidic soils and other prefer alkaline earth.
To adjust the pH you can add sulfur or lime. Those nutrients can be supplied by adding fertilizer. You should adjust the soil pH several months before planting. In some locations you will do this after harvest time, before the first snowfall.
Three weeks before planting, if you have created a compost pile, add the material to the topsoil. This allows the soil time to naturally leach the needed nutrients into the soil before you plant. The process can be hurried along by tilling it into the top few inches. You can also enrich your soil by adding artificial or organic fertilizer (such as NPK 8-8-8). Do this right before planting. In most cases 20 pounds per thousand square feet is sufficient.
Unlike most herbs and some other plants, vegetable plants love lots of water. Like nearly any plant, most shouldn’t sit continuously in a bed of water. That will lead to root rot. But a continuously moist soil will provide the water needed to power the biochemical reactions that plants carry out to grow and support themselves.
Water is essential to your plants. It is used to transport nutrients throughout the plant, participate in photosynthesis, and give rigidity and firmness to cell structures. For most gardens, one inch of water per week is sufficient (about 65 gallons per 100 square feet). This may cary slightly depending on your soil type. You may need to supplement if natural rain activity doesn’t supply that amount from April through September.
Fortunately, it’s easy to supply.
If applied in moderate temperatures, watering vegetable plants from above doesn’t wilt them, unlike flowering plants. There is still common considerations to apply. Allow leaves and topsoil to dry before nighttime temperatures settle in by watering early in the day. This is one way to prevent fungus. Building an inexpensive, simple drip irrigation system is another way to accomplish the same goal. Rubber tubing that leaches water should be placed near the plant in order to supply water to the roots.
Then, only occasional water is needed to keep leaves clean and their pores open. Don’t water when it’s very hot, though. That defeats the purpose, since it causes the pores in the leaves to open, and they evaporate more moisture than you supplied. It can also cause burns when water droplets act like small magnifying glasses.