An example of a slope.
Improving Your
Garden Soil STORY AND PHOTO BY WILBUR L. BLUHM, OREGON | Reprinted with permission from Tall Talk, 2002
What can you do to improve your garden soil?
The question is as old as gardening itself.
From the time man first tilled the soil and planted
seeds he has tried to improve the performance of the
plants he grew. Most basic has been improvement of
the soil.
Early settlers on the eastern shores of North
America received a good lesson when planting seeds
and growing plants. Native Americans showed them
that by placing a fish in a planting hole the plants would
grow faster and yield better. At the time no one knew
what the fish in the hole did, but it worked. They didn’t
know the fish carcass provided nitrogen, phosphorus,
potassium, calcium, sulfur, and other essential plant
nutrients, often deficient in many rain-soaked soils.
Our knowledge of soils and plant nutrition and
growth has come a long way during the past four
centuries since the fish-in-the-hole lesson.
44 AIS Bulletin Fall 2018