A poor gardener always blames his... soil?

[Pelligri]

Greetings all,

I have been having some trouble with my whole garden for the past two years. I am just preparing the garden for this year's attempt, but thought I would look in here to see if I can avoid any obvious mistakes... I would be grateful for any advice.

I start most things off under cover in commerical potting soil and have never had any problems there. Potting into the ground is rarely a problem either, everything seems fine at this stage across my crops. Problems seem to develop when things come to fruition. My tomatoes go from green to bown and rotten; sweetcorn never reach full size; butternut squash wither and die as soon as squashes form; beetroot, celery, and most salads seem to bolt, and both potatoes and celeriac produce good foliage but few and tiny tubers. Wierdly, the courgettes and runner beans seem to do just fine year after year.

Watering, weeding and snail hunting hunting have generally been good, but it was my carrots that led me to believe there is something amiss in the soil. I grew my carrots in two inches of commercial compost on top of garden soil. The carrots grew lovely in the top two inches, but as soon as they hit my native soil they bent at a right angle (as if to try and stay in the nice topsoil) and shrivelled away to nothing. I have attached glamour shot.

The garden gets good light and is sheltered from the worst of the wind. I am on heavy, chalky soil and digging the garden has revealed lead lined electrical wire, the remains of a gas oven, a motorcycle chassis and the remains of much household rubbish, all carefully sifted out and removed with lots of organic compost (store bought) added in return.

Does anyone have any experience of a similar situation?

With best wishes,
P

[JustGrowVeg]

Hi Pelligri,

I haven't had any experience with the problems that you are having, but i would suggest getting a soil test kit. They vary in price depending on what they test for and what degree of accuracy they are. You'll probably be able to pick one up from your local garden centre, or a browse on the net will show many results! As you've found household rubbish and other items it could be that your patch has been contaminated. Espesially if the lead has been in the soil for many years.

I'm not an expert on this, I'm sure someone else will be able to help you more, but I would buy a soil test kit and see how it goes from there

[Husker]

Hi Pelligri. I agree on the soil sample. The things I might add would be to make sure there are no live electrical lines or any other type of utilities and then dig as deep as you can to start breaking up the hard soil, mixing in compost as you do. The pic of the carrots kind of tells me you may have what we call hard pan, a layer of soil that plants can't get their roots through. When they hit it the roots just turn and grow horizontally instead of down into the soil where they want to be. By breaking this up the plants can have a stronger, deeper root system and thus a healthier plant, especially if the fertilizer is right. One tip that I learned when I worked on the farm is that as big as the part of a plant that we see above ground, the root system wants to be just as big or bigger. It's kind of a general rule and may not always be practical but it gives us something towork toward. Oh, and try to do some of the deep digging in the fall so that the moister you get in the winter can get down deep where freezing and thawing can mellow out the soil even more. Your local garden center can maybe give you more ideas on what to add to help keep the soil from getting compacted. Sorry to be so long winded but hope it helps a little. Good luck