Watch the video, Homestead Hangout: Secrets of Good Soil, on YouTube.

One of the most important secrets to growing great vegetables is good soil. I have to admit, when I first started gardening I thought this sounded boring. I was focused on seeds and those beautiful seed catalog images.

In this first episode of my video series I fill you in on the secrets of good soil and how you can save yourself time and disappointment by starting off right - from the ground up!

Why is good soil important?

After years of trial and error I’ve learned that to get a bountiful garden, you gotta nurture your soil. That’s because you don’t actually feed your plants, you feed the soil. In turn, the soil feeds the plants. Using natural, organic materials is safer and easier to use, and makes for delicious plants!

So what makes good soil?

Good soil has texture that is crumbly but will hold together easily when squeezed. Good soil looks like chocolate cake mix, and is sometimes called black gold. There’s three important ingredients in good garden soil: sand, compost, mulch.

Sand adds good drainage. Compost (especially mixed sources like horse and vegetable compost) adds good microorganisms that are readily available. Mulch adds structure and breaks down more slowly than compost, adding nutrients over time.

Where do you find good soil?

Not all dirt makes good vegetable garden soil. Where I live the ground is really rocky, and not conducive to vegetable gardening. That’s why we decided to go with raised garden beds. To find the best soil we called around to local companies that sell bulk materials and asked other homesteaders in our area for tips. We were fortunate to find a nursery that takes pride in mixing an excellent product. They are one county north of us, so we needed to pay an extra hauling fee, but it was worth it to us.

A good garden soil can be a great addition to your natural soil, or in our case, a good ingredient in our raised beds. In a future post I’ll explain what we use for a raised bed growing mix.