How Does the Soil Affect Your Flowers?
The type of soil in your flower beds and its characteristics affect your plants in many ways.
- Soil texture and organic matter impact drainage and fertility.
- Soil pH affects nutrient availability.
Flowering plants are typically a little more easy-going about the soil they’re in than vegetables, but it still impacts growth. Therefore, it’s essential to know some basics about your soil.
What is Soil Texture, and Why Is it Important?
Soil texture is the sand, silt, and clay ratio that makes up the uppermost soil layer known as topsoil. Ideally, you want your flower bed soil to be a blend of all three, which is commonly known as loam. Loam soils drain well while holding onto a suitable amount of water and nutrients.
Soils with too much clay don’t drain well. The water stays trapped between the soil particles, and the ground stays too wet. One of the benefits of clay, though, is it also holds onto nutrients well.
Soils with too much sand have the opposite characteristics of clay. They don’t hold onto water or nutrients but drain very quickly.
What Is Soil Organic Matter, and Why Is it Important?
Soil organic matter is made up of decomposing or fully decomposed plant and animal matter. It helps improve the soil’s water retention, holds onto nutrients to improve soil fertility, and helps the soil resist pH changes.
Why Is Soil pH Important?
Knowing your soil’s pH is important because the pH influences the availability of soil nutrients. If the pH value is too low or too high, nutrients become unavailable for plant uptake or become available in toxic amounts.
Most plants like soil pH values between 6.0 and 7.0 because this range has the best nutrient availability.
Testing the Soil to Determine its Characteristics
The easiest way to determine your soil’s characteristics is to collect a sample and have it professionally analyzed for a small fee. But if you’re the DIY type, you can determine soil texture and pH yourself.
- You can roughly gauge the soil texture in your flower beds by feeling it. When wet, sandy soil feels gritty, and soils with high clay feel sticky and smooth. Soil organic matter and pH aren’t as easy to determine.
- Soil pH meters are available, or you can purchase simple test kits to determine the soil pH.
Amending the Soil Before Planting
The following amendments help improve the texture, organic-matter content, water-holding capacity, soil pH, and fertility.
- If your soil is high in sand or clay, add finished compost or fully decomposed cow manure to increase the organic matter.
- If your soil is acidic, add lime to raise the soil pH.
- If your soil is alkaline, you can add sulfur products to lower the soil pH.
- If your soil is deficient in nutrients, add the recommended amount of fertilizer based on your soil test results.
