Nearly all soils, except peaty soils, are improved by adding organic matter, such as garden compost, grass clipping, or a green manure. It improves the moisture-holding abilities of free-raining soils such as chalky, stony, and sandy soil. It opens up heavy clay soils by improving its structure and allowing water to drain away.

Organic matter can either be incorporated into the soil by digging up the soil and mixing it in. It can also be mulched, meaning that it is laid on the surface of the soil and left for earthworms to complete the task. Mulching is less strenuous than digging, but cannot tackle underlying problems such as soil compaction. Digging up the soil helps in several ways.  It opens up compacted soil, aerates it, and improves overall drainage. While trying to improve your soil, you are most likely to be removing perennial weed roots and at the same time incorporating bulky organic matter.

For most soils, single digging will suffice as a once only treatment. If you have hard compacted soil, you may need to double dig to break it up. This involves digging over and removing the topsoil, prior to digging down another spades depth, breaking up the hard pan soil, and adding organic matter. Double digging is time consuming and hard work, but you should only need to do it once.

While you can improve your soil most of the year, the best time to dig is in the late fall as the soil is drying out from spring. In fall, you can even leave large clods of earth on the surface for the frost, snow, and rain to break it down. By the time spring arrives, the clods will form a layer of crumbly soil. On light, sandy solid, wait until spring before digging, since a hard crust sometimes forms on the surface over winter.

If you follow these simple steps, you will have a good soil to plant your flowers or vegetables when planting season finally arrives. You will be able to enjoy your bench picnic table and outside grilling. Just a few tips from yard and garden rescue.com.

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