Affordable Soil Tests; Cold Frames = 12-month Gardening

Soil profile courtesy of soils.usda.gov

Any master gardener will tell you: test your soil before you plant! Until you know what nutrients (or eek - heavy metals) are lurking in your dirt, it's a waste of money to invest in starts, or even seeds. In germ-phobic societies like ours, we forget that dirt (well, actually I should say soil) is not something to be scrubbed off the surface of the earth but a living ecosystem; a teaspoon of healthy soil contains (cue Carl Sagan voice) billions of organisms. But until we discover how to create a human-nemotode psychic uplink, the only way of knowing what (or who?) is in your dirt is a soil test. Soil tests can be a little pricey, and the process of collecting soil samples is straightforward but a little inconvenient. We can't fix the latter, but the former is less of a problem than you might think; the wonderful Homegrown Evolution reports that UMASS offers soil tests for under $10. Though you can get a free PH test from the Kemper Center for Home Gardening or Missouri Ag, that won't tell you anything about what nutrients are present and accounted for or what you need to remediate. Things change from year to year as well, depending on how well you mulch and compost, and what you plant in the ground. As Homegrown Evolution says, longstanding gardeners get into the routine of "test the soil, amend according to the recommendations and grow. Lather, rinse, repeat."

Another great tip from Homegrown Evolution: Franchi Seeds. Looking at the lovely greens they offer makes me want to set up a forty-foot-long raised bed just for lettuces. In fact, their pretty greens are the reason why I may be trottin' down to Home Depot (and the ReStore) this weekend to get supplies for cold frames, so that we can have fresh greens in the dead of winter. Cold Frames are as easy to build as a raised bed (well, unless you decide to go the expensive but even simpler route and buy a prefab raised bed frame!). See below for a quick video primer on building your own cold frames. --Stefene Russell