Gift for the Garden

Host: Gary Bachman, Ornamental Horticulture Specialist

Transcription:

Fall is the time to give your garden a gift today on Southern Gardening.

Our gardens and landscapes work really hard to give us so much in terms of beauty and bounty. So sometimes it’s nice for gardeners to take a step and give something back to the landscape. The fall season is a really good time to build up the garden soil for next year.

Amending your garden soil with organic matter is probably the best gift you could give. Microorganisms are added back and the life of the soil is improved. Organic matter breaks up a heavy clay soil and increases drainage, while in sandy soils the drainage is slowed down. And while not actually a fertilizer, organic matter does contain needed essential plant nutrients. A really special and thoughtful gift would be vermicompost. Vermicompost is produced by earthworms in bins that efficiently break down organic wastes, producing what really can be called “black gold”. Amending garden soil with small quantities of vermicompost produces very healthy soil growing environments.

Coffee grounds have been getting a lot of attention especially on Internet gardening sites. What could be easier than taking the morning coffee grounds and spreading around the garden. If you don’t drink as many cups of coffee as I do each day, many coffee shops generally will give you spent grounds as a way to recycle these wastes.

So don’t worry about finding the perfect box and ribbon when giving the gift of organic matter to your garden, a bucket and shovel will be just fine. I’m horticulturist Gary Bachman for Southern Gardening.