Get your garden growing!

This is going to feel like a bit of product placement, but bear with me!

Recently, I was making a return visit to Heronswood and wondering through the vegetable garden area when I heard a group debating what chemical fertiliser products must have been used to have everything growing so well in winter.

Feed the Soil - Not the Plants

Fertilisers are something that most of you will have a strong opinion on, whether you're in favour or against, however it's a term that can cause some confusion.

The first thing I want to clear up is that a fertiliser is anything that you add to the soil specifically to provide one or more nutrients essential to plant growth.  It can be an organic or an inorganic compound and can be natural or synthetic in origin.

Soil Fertility and Organic Matter

Soil quality is the capacity of a soil to accept, store and recycle water, minerals and energy for optimum growth and it's ability to preserve a healthy environment.

The capacity of each soil differs depending on the processes which formed the soil, the weathering etc it has been subjected to since and of course any agricultural practices etc that have taken place on it.  The texture, structure, chemical properties and organic matter content of a soil all of an affect on it's quality.