It is sometimes said: "Don't feed your plants, feed your soil". This is a truth that is true as a double-decker. Last year I wrote an Ebook about how the vegetable garden soil is constructed. You can download the Ebook for free via this link . In this article, however, I look at it much more practically and try to explain step by step what you can do. Healthy soil is the foundation for healthy plants. When your vegetable garden soil is in top shape, you will need fewer pesticides. "When you make your vegetable garden soil healthier with good soil preparation, you make yourself healthier" (Frank Tozer, respected gardener). Organic soil is rich in humus. Humus is the end product of soil life that gets to work with leaves, cut grass, wood chips, ... etc. It is the black gold from your vegetable garden and retains moisture well but is still loose because there is also sufficient air in your soil. As if there is glue in your vegetable garden soil (don't do that, add glue :) ). After good soil preparation, your soil is full of useful minerals, which ensure very strong plants. A good vegetable garden soil interacts with living creatures in your soil, earthworms, fungi and good bacteria that are the fitness enthusiasts of your vegetable garden. They keep your vegetable garden in top shape and also keep the acidity (Ph) of your vegetable garden in balance. So, gardening enthusiasts, how you can tell if your garden soil is in top shape and what you can do to get it in top shape, you can read below.

How to determine the health of your vegetable garden soil

What is in a healthy soil?

There are about 17 elements in your vegetable garden soil that are very important. Nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (also called Potassium) are the primary nutrients or macronutrients. This is because plants absorb the most of these 3 vegetable delicacies in quantity. When you buy fertilizers, these 3 macronutrients are also stated most clearly on the packaging. In addition, you have calcium, magnesium and sulfur. These 3 nutrients are also called secondary nutrients and are also very important for many plants. Finally, you also have the micronutrients such as boron, copper, iron, manganese, zinc, cobalt that are not absorbed by all plants and often have very specific functions. Cobalt, for example, is only used by legumes to bring nitrogen into the soil. Crop rotation is therefore also done for a reason. In addition to the nutrients that are very important in your vegetable garden soil, there is something that you should definitely test when preparing your soil, namely the acidity of your soil, expressed in pH. If the pH value is too high or too low in your vegetable garden, your vegetables and fruits can feel sick and can't swallow a bite. Of course, your plants don't have a throat, but you get the idea.

Test your vegetable garden soil when preparing the soil

You can have your soil tested by a soil science service in your region. I did it once when I took a new piece of land into use in 2015. That is very interesting. A soil science service can provide very detailed information. For example, I also had my soil tested for heavy metals. Below is a summary of my vegetable garden soil, at that time a sandbox without humus and organic material. I had this test done by the Belgian Soil Service. There is probably also a service in the Netherlands that can do this. A basic test costs about 80 euros, depending on how much you want to test (heavy metals for example) there may be some extra. You have to take a soil sample at 6 locations, put it in a bag and send it. Two weeks later you get the result in the mail. There are also self-test kits with which you can determine the NPK (nitrogen -phosphorus -potassium) and pH value in your vegetable garden fairly accurately during your soil preparation. A box with 10 tests will cost you between 20 and 50 euros. Moestuinweetjes has requested a sample test kit from various companies. A nice theme for a video on Moestuin TV to compare those testers. We can then also include the best ones in our webshop . If you want to read more about acidity in the vegetable garden you can follow this link. You can adjust your acidity with compost (to make the soil more acidic) or with seaweed lime (to make the soil less acidic) The best time to test your soil is in the fall or spring, just before adding soil amendments or fertilizers. Important: Nutritional values, acidity, amount of minerals, humus or carbon values ​​can be approached very scientifically and mathematically. You can also use your common sense, look at your vegetable garden what happens in your vegetable garden and work on feeling. I will give you what I know about soil preparation and fertilization.

Soil preparation and adding fertilizers, how to proceed

How a vegetable garden soil works, you can read in the Ebook that I wrote: My Organic Vegetable Garden . In this article I want to look step by step at what we need to do for a vegetable garden that is full of healthy home-grown vegetables.

The basics of soil preparation: Improve soil structure, add soil improver with organic matter that becomes humus...

In a sandbox and on a block of clay it is not good gardening. In the sandbox the water simply flows straight through the ground and a lot of nutrients are washed away. On a block of clay the water remains standing and your plants rot away. In order to arrive at a vegetable garden soil in which we can grow well, we must first tackle the structure and create a system that converts soil life organic material into humus. Humus is the bite-sized food for your plants with a lot of nutrition in it. Certainly the micronutrients that are more difficult to provide with organic NPK fertilizer granules are in humus. Humus is the decomposition of organic material (twigs, leaves, plant remains, animal manure, dead animals, ...) and contains nutrition that you cannot buy in a box.

compost or manure provides organic material that becomes humus

A soil with a lot of organic material is full of soil life (worms, small animals, good fungi and good bacteria) that produce humus on a conveyor belt. What comes after an earthworm is pure humus, what a fungus converts into humus is gastronomy for your vegetables. If you see a lot of earthworms in your potato bed, for example, when turning or planting, then dream of big, fat potatoes . Your soil is full of humus and nutrients and, very importantly, humus retains a lot of moisture, which can be very useful in periods of drought.

When do your soil preparation with what and when?

You can do your soil preparation in the fall and in the early spring. In the fall, you mainly use organic material that is very intense in composition, such as fresh manure or fresh compost . The intensity of, for example, chicken manure will be weakened by rain and wind during the winter. The straw from manure will decompose in the soil during the winter. Pieces of banana or wood chips from your compost that have not yet fully decomposed from your compost still have plenty of time to decompose. You can of course also use tarred compost in the fall. The compost that we offer in our web shop with Moestuinweetjes is largely decomposed and a bite-sized chunk for your soil life and also your vegetables. You can immediately incorporate decomposed compost with a vegetable spade in the fall and you can also use this bite-sized vegetable garden delicacy in the spring. Fresh compost and fresh manure that you add steaming in the fall are best left on the ground in a thick layer. When the decomposition process in your soil has to continue, that process also takes nutrients from your soil and that is not the intention. A blanket of compost or manure for the winter is great. Some gardeners lay a layer of 10-20 cm thick. The soil life nibbles at your manure or compost and converts everything into nutrients for your vegetables. In the spring you can then work the layer of manure or compost that has become much thinner, with a pitchfork or vegetable spade .

It is better to feed your vegetable garden soil even more with organic fertilizer granules in the spring or when planting out

With what you learned above, you already have the following in your soil: air (work in compost or manure), water (humus and organic material retain moisture better in your soil), soil life (as long as soil animals have organic material on their menu, air and moisture, they will stay in your soil) and humus (the black gold for strong plants, digested organic material that is a delicacy for beautiful strong plants with green leaves, strong roots and beautiful fruits). With this soil preparation you can go to war, the vegetable garden season can begin. You can use everything you read for all the beds. You can take on the world. But you are not there yet. A wise man once said to me: "If you think you are there, you are gone". That is true in everything that you want to grow. A relationship, a family, a company, ... The moment that you lean back and say: "I am there, now the rest of the growth will happen automatically" ... very dangerous. We still have to do crop protection, we have to keep weeds under control, we also have to be alert in drought and in the greenhouse or tunnel greenhouse to water on time. But our passion for vegetable gardening pushes us in that direction. That last visit in screen light to the young lettuce plants or clearing a small piece to plant sweet potatoes tomorrow, ... that is wonderful.

Fertilizers in the vegetable garden during soil preparation

The manure and compost that are now in the ground will do all your crops a favour. The basis is there. If you, like me, do crop rotation , then you can think about what else is needed per bed to optimally feed the vegetables that you want to grow on that specific bed. Good news, in the legume bed you have little work. The fresh manure and compost from the autumn and the digested compost and manure that you added in the spring are more than enough to grow. You don't have to do anything extra. But in the other beds you can, and in some cases, you should add extra nutrients. Before we start talking about fertilizers: I work with organic fertilizers and recommend small amounts. Over-fertilizing is not necessary, especially if your base ( compost /manure) is good. Always check the packaging for the recommended amount that the manufacturer recommends. Know that this is often a bit exaggerated and does not take into account the nutrition that is already present in your vegetable garden soil. In the case of exhausted soils after the cultivation of, for example, cabbage crops, pumpkin , potatoes and tomatoes, it is better to use the manufacturer's recommended amount. My 4 most popular fertilizers:

• seaweed lime
• universal organic fertilizer granules for vegetable garden
• Organic fertilizer granules for tomatoes and fruit crops
• Magnesium sulfate

The classics, Epsom salt and seaweed lime

What should not be missing when preparing the soil are two products that can be very useful. Every vegetable benefits from bitter salt, also called epsom salt or magnesium sulphate . What it is and what it does you can read here in an article I wrote: Epsom salt, magnesium sulphate, or Epsom salt – The dirt cheap secret . You can apply bitter salt in its pure form during soil preparation at 50-100 grams per m² where you are going to sow. For crops that you plant out, I usually put a soup spoon in the planting hole that I mix well with the soil before planting out. So I make my planting hole a little larger than the root ball on my plant and work the bitter salt in a bit with a shovel. Then we have seaweed lime , which of course contains calcium, but also magnesium and many micronutrients that will get your soil in top shape. Lime also helps against clubroot, a disease in cabbage varieties and ensures strong cell walls in your plant and therefore also prevents blossom end rot in tomatoes, peppers and paprika 's. 80 grams per square meter (two handfuls if you have average sized hands) and your soil is in top shape. If you suffer from a very high pH (value of acidity) in your garden, avoid too much lime . Above 7.0 I would not add seaweed lime . More about acidity in your vegetable garden, in this article: pH acidity in the vegetable garden

How do I apply organic fertilizer granules, lime and Epsom salts in soil preparation?

We add compost and manure before we have worked the soil 25 ( Wooden fork ) to 50 cm (double digging) with a digging fork or a vegetable spade . But I do not add the organic fertilizer granules that we work in before digging but between and turning or digging and rake it finely. I only use the digging fork , so I only work the top 25 cm of my vegetable garden soil. I proceed as follows.

• Spreading mushroom compost, compost or manure over my beds. If I do this before the winter, I leave it all winter until March. If I only spread my compost and manure (in that case digested) over my beds in March, then I go straight to the next step.
• I take my Spade fork and turn the soil well (see video). The compost is now not only well spread in length and width, but also in depth. However, the soil is in lumps and air pockets so I still have to make it fine.
• But before I make the soil fine, I add the organic fertilizer granules. 40 to 200 grams per m2 according to the cultivation.
• Then I roughly work everything with a hook rake or crowbar and work everything fine with a cultivator with 3 or 5 teeth or a fine rake depending on the crop. You understand that the bed for sowing carrots is a bit finer than the bed where I am going to grow pumpkin .

Liquid manure and fertilizer granules

I use both, know that liquid manure is on average faster absorbable than manure pellets but also washes out faster in your garden. In October, applying liquid manure for fruit crops in your garden shed or greenhouse for your tomatoes is a waste of time and money, in full bloom and fruiting it is a brilliant idea. Sounds logical, doesn't it. Manure pellets have a slower effect and often take a few weeks before they are sufficiently broken down and absorbable for your plants. I would also add manure pellets in the spring or when planting out.

Extra fertilizer granules for potatoes

In addition to the compost and manure that are full of organic material and hopefully also wriggling earthworms and other soil animals, good fungi and bacteria, I add a large amount of organic fertilizer granules for potatoes that will improve your potato harvest. This way you get the best result from the vegetable garden space that you have available.

Give cabbage crops extra fertilizer granules

You can give the cabbages more compost and more manure than your other beds because most cabbages are big gluttons and take a lot of energy to develop their cabbage. So you can give an extra nitrogenous organic fertilizer when planting. The universal organic fertilizer pellets for the vegetable garden are very good for all cabbage crops. If you have some cow manure pellets separately, you can also work them into your soil preparation. Even though cabbages like a lot of nutrition, do not overdo it and look carefully at the packaging. Too much fertilizer can cause diseases and poor formation of your cabbage.

Give leafy vegetables an extra boost

If you have used a lot of compost or manure, there is already a lot of organic material in the soil that contains nutrients, but a small amount of universal organic fertilizer granules for the vegetable garden will make your leafy vegetables grow even better. I use 0 to 100 grams of granules per m² depending on how much compost I have been able to apply. Be careful when you fertilize your leafy vegetables that you do not apply too much because an excess of nitrogen converts into nitrates in the plant and that is not the intention.

Add fertilizer granules to fruit crops when preparing the soil

Fruit crops are very diverse. You have monster pumpkins that weigh more than 100 kilos and exhaust your entire soil and then you also have peppers that require very little nutrition. The trick is to dose. I use organic fertilizer granules for tomatoes, fruit crops and greenhouse plants . For fruit crops, the bitter salt (also called epsom salt or magnesium sulphate ) that I mentioned earlier is also very important for plants with a beautiful deep green leaf. Deep green leaf gives an optimal photosynthesis, a process that converts sun into sugar (simply explained). That sugar ensures the best tomatoes. For fruit crops I also add 50% of the fertilizer granules, lime and bitter salt to my soil preparation and I add 50% in the planting hole directly to the roots of the plant.

Additional fertilizers for root crops

• Carrots and parsnips do not benefit from nitrogen, on the contrary. The carrots get a lot of leaves but little root. In addition, your root gets hairs that search for nutrients more shallowly. And that is not what we want. The root must go deep and grow long. What you can add is a handful of phosphorus (40 grams) per 0.5 running meter of carrots in your well-worked soil. Phosphorus is available in the form of bone meal .
• Beetroot : Beets are good eaters and benefit from 60 grams of universal organic fertilizer granules per m² when preparing the soil. If you grow Beetroot and eat it young, the shape of a ping pong ball, then you do not need to fertilize. If you want large beets, fertilize it again 1 month before harvesting with Vinassekali , then you will get thick tubers.
• fennel : you can start fennel in the same way as beetroot with 60 grams