April 7th ~ Spring Gardening and Soil Preparation

Soil Test Collecting

April has hit and those of us who are really excited and itching to get outdoors are thinking about the best ways to get the garden going for the 2021 growing season!  

I'm always excited for this time of year because I love working in the garden to grow my own produce and enjoying the fruits of the labor all summer long.  

Even more exciting?!?!  When a school program gets on board to start school gardens and teach young youth the joys of working hard to produce their own food.  It teaches a lot of pride and satisfaction to young kids when they see what they can accomplish with a little sweat and dirt under the fingernails!

This spring, Pomona Elementary has decided to revive their ailing garden beds and start a combined 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade school garden for the remainder of the school year.  Last week, I had the pleasure of visiting the kids on a sunny Friday afternoon and starting the conversation about gardening!

Combined Classes Learning About Starting a Garden!

We started by asking some simple questions aiming towards specific needs for a good garden.  Kids came up with things like good location, water access, sunlight, attention to maintaining, and good soils.  All great things to think about!  This helped us identify positive and negatives about our current garden bed situation at Pomona and what we needed to tackle before planting could begin. 

The kids were right on target, the first thing we needed to tackle was the soil situation!  Currently, the 7 raised garden beds were all growing grass turf and many needed not only weeding but a fill up with new soil base as well.  But we also wanted to keep as much of the original garden soil in the beds as we could (since is was originally a good base).  This meant the kids needed to complete some soil testing to determine what we had nutrient wise and what we needed to add to have a great garden base!

Soil Layers

Soil is made up of a combination of sand, silt, clay, organic matter, water, and air.  The ideal soil has been said to contain:

• 45% Minerals (In-organics/never alive)
  
• 20% Clay, 40% Silt, 40% Sand
• 5% Organic Matter (Alive/once alive)
• Things like roots, leaves, microbes, fungi, poo-poo, etc.
• 25% Water
• 25% Air

Additional things needed in smaller amounts include substances like Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Salts, pH Levels, and Micro-Minerals (Like Copper and Iron).

Soil testing is the best way to measure the amounts of these listed things in our soils.  Soil testing is basically a measurement of how healthy (Or not) our current soil is.  Soil testing can help us know what our soils may be lacking in and can point us to the best mix to amend our soils with.

Differences in Soils

A soil amendment is simply adding any material to our soils that improves its growing potential.  An amendment can help us grow bigger and healthier plants, something all the kids were excited to do! 

Taking a soil test is pretty easy, and the kids were excited to get their hands dirty!

They split into groups and were each given a raised bed, a trowel, and a bag to collect soil in.  

Soil Collection! (We used recycled gift
bags for our soil collection reservoirs)

Soil samples are taken as follows:

1. Remove the top layer of organic matter (grass and roots in our beds).
2. Dig down in a V shape about 6 inches and place a shovel or 2 fulls into your bag. These are also called Core Samples. 
   
3. Repeat in 4 other sections. I usually recommend the 4 corners and center. 
4. After all 5 cuts are made and soil collected into 1 bag, remove any organics, large rocks, non-soils that might have still made it into the collection bag. 
5. Stir and mix remaining soil.
6. From mix, place 1-3 cups of the soil mix in a Ziploc or Testing Lab provided soil bag for mailing. 

7. 

   Taking a Soil Core Sample

   Label, fill out Lab submission form, and mail to your soil lab for testing! 
   

Soil testing results return in about a week with both current soil analysis and amendment suggestions if needed. 

The kids had an awesome time collecting their samples!  They worked together as teams to each take a core, remove organics, and place their final samples into a test bag for the lab. 

We ended up finding a few new worm buddies as well!  The kids were super excited because they knew worms were a good sign that the soil we already had was somewhat healthy! 

The teachers were excited too!  They were happy the kids were burning off energy before afternoon classes! 

We ended up submitting 2 different samples to the lab since all the beds were pretty similar in soil composition.  As of today we are still awaiting our results, but already making plans for weeding, additional soil, and blueprinting layouts for the plants students want to raise! 

Final Remarks before Getting Dirty!

Future plans are to plant some items with short growing seasons so students can harvest at least once before school ends.  A group of volunteers will work together over the summer to raise the longer growing items.  Hopes are that this garden will be a continuing enterprise in the years to come! 

If you are looking into getting your soils tested this spring, give us a call at 970-249-3935 for more info.  You can also visit our webpage TRA Extension to learn more about gardening in Colorado.  

The lab used for this classes soil testing was Ward's Laboratory. You can access their website and soil testing resources by clicking HERE!

Another great opportunity for garden enthusiasts is to sign up for 2021 Colorado Grow & Give. Grow & Give was created to address food insecurity in Colorado by connecting backyard and community gardens to food donation sites across the state.

You can now volunteer for Grow & Give 2021 by heading to https://growgive.extension.colostate.edu/ for sign up!

Thanks for catching up with me and remember to Keep On STEMing!