Keith Reid - Improving Your Soil: A Practical Guide to Soil Management for the Serious Home Gardener

Editing is a daunting task, but I have appreciated editor Tracy C. Read and copy editor Susan Dickinsons deft touch and gentle correction. It has made the book much more readable.

Writing is, by its nature, a solitary activity, so friends, both old and new, who took me away for a little while to reenergize and reconnect with the outside world are golden. Thanks to Dave and Marg and Wilco and Beth.

Finally, the most important thanks go to my wife, Jan, for her constant support and encouragement. Not only did she put up with my disappearing to the computer downstairs for hours on end (often when there was housework to be done), but she provided the first critique on the manuscript. She even tried to cure me of writing run-on sentences (although some things not even love can cure completely). This book is for you, dear, and now that it is done, I promise to help more around our own garden!

Soil scientists have been studying soil since the beginnings of scientific agriculture in the mid-1800s but we have barely begun to understand the intricate interplay between the air, water and minerals that make up soil. Each new discovery seems to create as many questions as answers.

This book is designed to help you manage your soil better so that you can grow a more bountiful garden by putting the right fixes in the right places. Soil does not exist in isolation. Unless it was delivered by a dump truck, the soil in your garden is a product of the parent material that was deposited thousands of years ago interacting with the cycles of rainfall, seasonal freezing and thawing and the plants that grew in soil. Over time, the plants influenced the soil, which in turn modified the environment for the plants.

My goal in writing this book is to demystify soil and offer practical methods that will allow you to grow a better garden. But I also hope this book will open your eyes to the many wonders of what goes on under your feet.

If you think life in the soil has come to a standstill, however, you are wrong. The soil may be frozen (although probably not, if the snow cover is deep), but there is still liquid water in tiny pores and thin films. Microbes in this water are sluggish but not completely dormant. They continue to consume organic carbon in the soil and respire it as carbon dioxide. This carbon dioxide dissolves in the soil water, making it slightly acidic and helping dissolve soil minerals.

Along the pathway where youve cleared the snow (or anywhere the snow has blown off the soil surface), the environment is much different. Without the insulating blanket of snow, the temperature of the ground is much colder and more of the water in the soil freezes. If there is a long period of consistently cold temperatures, a strange thing happens. A layer of ice develops at the bottom of the layer of frozen soil. As water freezes, the amount available in liquid form is reduced, which has the same effect as drying the soil, so more water flows into this area. Since the temperature is now cold enough to freeze the water, it accumulates into a lens of almost pure ice, an inch or so thick. If the cold weather persists, multiple lenses can develop at progressively greater depths. The ice lenses push up the soil above them, which collapses back to its original level with the spring thaw. This is the frost heave that can push fence posts or perennial plants out of the ground.