Home Gardening Tips: Using Peat Moss
As a kid I actually had dreams of having my own vegetable garden and growing all the veggies I love the most. I guess growing up on a farm will do that to you.
Not that I had any clue how to start a garden, that was Dads job, although as I got older I became part of the weed gang.
Once Jenny and I had a plot to grow in we wanted a vegetable garden. We soon found out our backyard was made of concrete. Okay it was dense clay but when I first tried to put my shovel into it I was sure it was cement.
We soon learned why our lawn wasn’t the best in the neighbourhood but I’ll discuss our lawn in another post. Today I’m all about peat moss.
I am thinking the previous owners had experienced just how dense our property is as they didn’t bother digging gardens. Instead the choose to build raised beds and fill them with good top soil.
Putting Some Organic Matter In Our Soil
Growing up I learned that Dad spent a lot of time preparing our vegetable garden for the seeds. He added a lot of stuff to the garden, including loads of manure in the fall.
He had been vegetable gardening in that garden long before I was around and we had great soil. Our little garden on the other hand needed some help and fast.
We had to loosen the soil and add nutrients back into the soil. So we bought some top soil and peat moss.
Today we create compost to add to the soil and seldom need to buy top soil. It’s only when we take on a big project that we can’t supply enough compost for the task.
We actually had a Sphagnum peat moss bog just about 5 miles from our farm but back then I had no idea what peat moss was but once we started gardening as adults we learned that it is a natural, organic soil conditioner.
Peat Moss: A Few Useful Points:
- Peat moss will help aerate the roots for better growth.
- Peat moss will sandy soil by giving it a bit of body.
- Peat moss will hold water and save on that water bill.
When Creating New Garden Beds
- Mark The New Garden Area: When we plan a new garden we use something as simple as the good old garden hose to mark the area we plan to dig up.
- Reuse or Recycle That Sod: Don’t throw away the sod you did up. We use it to patch up other areas or we put into our compost bin and recycle it into some great top soil for the gardens.
- Let The Digging Begin: After the sod’s been removed we dig and turn over the garden to at least a foot deep and remove any rocks and other things we don’t want. We actually found three big flower pots while digging up our garden for the first time, very strange.
- Amend The Soil With Peat Moss And Compost: After digging up the new garden we add enough peat moss to loosen the clay soil so that it’s useable and also add an inch or two of compost or top soil. We continue to add compost throughout the season and re-dig it all again once the growing season is done for the year.
Note: I read, somewhere online, that I should dig a hole and fill it with water to see how long it would take to drain. Well the hole I dug in our first garden took about two days to drain.
However, after amending the soil and testing another hole it had gone from taking a couple of days to a little more than a half hour to drain. What a huge difference a little peat moss made to our clay soil.
2012 Garden Will Be Double The Size
Each year we increase the size of our garden. It started out about 4×4 feet the first year and 4×16 feet the second year. This year we have doubled that size.
We didn’t get it completed before the weather stopped us but we did get it dug up and turned over. Come spring we will do that again and add more peat moss and compost.
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- Putting Your Vegetable Garden To Sleep For The Winter (hbb2obm.com)
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