{"id":315,"date":"2016-03-23T20:25:26","date_gmt":"2016-03-24T00:25:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ninebyeighteen.com\/?p=315"},"modified":"2016-03-23T20:32:32","modified_gmt":"2016-03-24T00:32:32","slug":"soil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ninebyeighteen.com\/?p=315","title":{"rendered":"Soil"},"content":{"rendered":"<body><p><\/p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-317\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ninebyeighteen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Mar23_16_progress1.jpg?resize=695%2C573&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Mar23_16_progress1\" width=\"695\" height=\"573\" loading=\"lazy\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ninebyeighteen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Mar23_16_progress1.jpg?resize=1024%2C844&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ninebyeighteen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Mar23_16_progress1.jpg?resize=300%2C247&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ninebyeighteen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Mar23_16_progress1.jpg?resize=768%2C633&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ninebyeighteen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Mar23_16_progress1.jpg?resize=1100%2C907&amp;ssl=1 1100w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ninebyeighteen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Mar23_16_progress1.jpg?w=1376&amp;ssl=1 1376w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 695px) 100vw, 695px\" \/>Every garden is only as successful as its <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gardening.cornell.edu\/factsheets\/misc\/soilbasics.html\">soil<\/a>. Healthy, rich soil is the foundation of a productive garden. Today, I prepared\u00a0part of my garden plot for spring planting. The city provides its\u00a0community gardens with free compost in the spring, but the compost it typically delivered in April, which is still a few weeks away. That compost comes from leaf collections in the fall and spring and therefore is almost entirely \u201cbrown matter\u201d, so it lacks organic components, which I\u00a0dug in today in the form of, yes, aged chicken poop. I like to use chicken \u201cstuff\u201d, as it is easy to use, cheap and organic. But, yes, it smells a little. At least according to\u00a0my husband, who likes to complain about the smell when he fixes his bikes in the basement next to our garden supplies. I dug the matter under my soil and was careful to turn only about 6-8 inches of the top soil, which is plenty for my crops. I garden in the city and when our community garden was established, it was all filled up with new top soil. Since I amend it year after year and have a lot of help in the form of tons of\u00a0earthworms, I can be sure that my top soil is in good shape. But I am not sure what lies underneath and do not care to find out. I have my soil <a href=\"http:\/\/soiltest.umass.edu\">tested<\/a> from time to time, every three to four years, to make sure it is free of heavy metals and also to see if it lacks\u00a0any nutrients. Ready to plant peas!\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every garden is only as successful as its soil. Healthy, rich soil is the foundation of a productive garden. Today, I prepared\u00a0part of my garden plot for spring planting. The&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,22,21,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-in-the-garden","category-planting","category-techniques"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s7mi2j-soil","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ninebyeighteen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ninebyeighteen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ninebyeighteen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ninebyeighteen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ninebyeighteen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ninebyeighteen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":319,"href":"https:\/\/www.ninebyeighteen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions\/319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ninebyeighteen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ninebyeighteen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ninebyeighteen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}