Step 1: Taking a Soil Sample

According to Gardening for Dummies, my instructors at the pruning and soil class I attended Thursday night, and www.thegardenshed.net, a good first step when planting a garden is taking a soil sample and having it professionally analyzed.

Many gardeners fight year after year with problem spots and plants in their garden. They try different nutrients, additives, and techniques hoping to get their garden to grow. A good way to avoid this frustration is to send your soil away for analysis. A professional analysis, like the one I've sent away for from Waters Agricultural Laboratory, will cost you less than $20 and provide you with specific information on what your garden needs more or less of. Save yourself the insanity of years of failing plants!

The truth is that all regions are different so my garden in central Maryland may need quite different additives than your garden.

To take a soil sample:

1. Dig a small hole down 4" - 6". Make sure to use a clean and dry shovel


2. Scrape out about 1 - 2 cups of soil and put them in a zip lock bag. Be sure to remove any extraneous stuff (leaves, worms, grass, etc). If you want, you can take samples from different places in your yard and mix them together. Or, if you're going to do different things (vegetable garden vs. lawn) in different areas of your yard, you may want to get one test for each functional area.



3. Pick out a soil testing laboratory (see the last page of this pub) and mail your sample, along with their order form, to it.

Class: Pruning and Soil

I just got back from the first class in the Spring Garden Preparation Master Gardener Seminar Series offered by the Maryland Cooperative Extension. Six classes, two hours each taught by master gardeners, $58 total.

I learned about pruning for one hour, following by an hour about how to take care of your soil (nutrients, mulching, preparing for planting, etc.). To the uninitiated, I admit this may sound boring. But it wasn't. It was

AWESOME!

Totally awesome.

Did I mention that they talked about all the super cool tools I'll need to use this spring? Mmmm. . . tools are delicious.

First things first -- I need to order a soil test to find out the Ph level of my soil, as well as advice for any additives that I may need to add to my lawn and garden. Frederick County, MD soil is typically a little acidic and clayish, so I will probably need to add lime.

Welcome to A Garden Geek

I'm just an average geek. I like computers, sci-fi, and telling my wife about a cool algorithm I tried out at work until her ears start to bleed and she cries, "no, no, please make it stop."

Lately, though, I've been feeling the need to do something that is very different from the world of abstractions that is my work and, for the most part, my hobbies. I mean, how many linux transcoding media servers can a man set up until he asks himself, "what is the point?"

I want to do something more fundamental -- something I know nothing about and will probably not be very good at.

Thus, I am going to turn our back yard into a fantastic garden. I will grow vegetables, I will plant bushes, I will create beautiful walkways. Well, at least I'll try.

"A Garden Geek" is a chronicle of my journey. I plan to start with:

• laying some mulch around my trees and shrubs
• creating some nice edging around those mulch islands
• creating walking paths
• creating a vegetable garden within a raised bed.

Just a few weeks until I need to start planting, so I best get started.