SOIL PREPARATION

Last night I was talking to a friend of mine who lives in Hobart, Tasmania, and, of course, we got onto our vegetable gardens. Her summer is finished there and she has pulled everything out and is ready to put in autumn and winter things. But she wasn't sure what to do with her soil for a quick fix before the next planting.

This is the situation we all find ourselves in between seasons - impatience to get on with the next crop but knowing we should build the soil to get the best out of those new plants. This is not a post about leaving some of everything to go to seed or about having a look at nature to help you plan or about how you should have made everything into compost during summer so you don't have to buy stuff. This is a list of a few things that I know are excellent products, suitable for our soils and worthy of a place in our vegetable gardens. (Sorry Pattie for being hypocritical and for writing that comment on your post recently!)Ideally of course we wouldn't buy in anything and I feel totally inadequate when I do but there is no point growing pathetic vegetables either so be generous to your garden and it will be generous to you.

Blood and Bone : not all are made equal. I only use Manutec - the most expensive but the only one I know of that is pure 100% blood and bone - you can tell when you feel it and see it.
Bought compost: does not have all the microorganisms of home-made but adds organic matter to your soil. I only buy it from SA Composters (composts all garden refuse from the Marion Council area). There are several grades from the very fine, 100% organic, which I use for seed-raising, to a slightly coarser one that I buy by the cubic metre for digging into the garden and then there is a coarse one for mulch, which I have never bought. You can get a big trailer load for $32 from Lonsdale or have it delivered, if you want enough.
Minerals: these are things that come from rocks, generally. I use Alroc - crushed basalt, granite and all sorts of others that I can't remember. It adds all the things that may be missing from organic matter.This is available from The Norwood Garden Centre and their other shop at Fullarton, and no doubt elsewhere.
Mushroom compost: something I haven't had for a while but which is good to alternate with the SA Composters compost. It is a bit alkaline, evidently, but since I use so much organic matter in my soil, it all evens itself out and it is lovely stuff, I think.You can easily get this by the trailer load or have it delivered.
Pellets: There are lots of brands of pelletised manures and all sorts of things and generally I avoid them because of all the processing. However,they are good for adding annually to pots. The only one I would recommend is Neutrog's because it is made here for our soils, unlike some that have lime added for people in the eastern states (and maybe in the Adelaide hills too) who have acidic soil.
Bagged manures: Peter Cundall reckons they are the go but I pick up large, used bags, full of raw manure from the side of the road around some of the farms in the hills and bring them home and use them in my compost heap.

Here is what I would do when the summer crops are finished if I didn't have any choice but to buy some of the above:

Into a wheelbarrow full of SA Composters stuff or mushroom compost (or a mixture of both) add
1/2 cup Alroc and a large cup of blood and bone. Mix well with your hands so you can feel the warmth and texture and you can smell life, in the mix. Peter Cundall would also add 1/2 bag composted manure but as I said I always have some of my own available (oh really? No, you know what I mean!). Tip this on and spread out to cover a couple of square metres. Fork in. Water well, before planting anything. Coming into cooler weather I don't use any mulch because I want all the winter sun to warm the soil - I won't be doing this for a couple of weeks yet. Or, I do it now and don't plant out yet. All my early seedlings are being potted up until the heat is well and truly over....I need to do another few posts about some of these things.

Comments and posts by others about all this are welcome. There are many, many views and this is just one that is particularly suitable for those who live on city-sized blocks in Australia without the space or maybe the desire or fitness to be as hard-core as some others.

Here is some further information I thought I would add after reading Patrick's comment.

I totally agree with you, Patrick. But Australia has the oldest, most eroded and depleted soils in the world. That is why our country is so flat - time has weathered us down. Compared to Europe and the USA we are a total desert. Remember 7500 BC when everyone was sowing crops all over the world? Why didn't the Aborigines start in Australia? They probably tried and found that the soil wasn't good enough! After all, they lived here for 40,000 years before white people came. This is what the first settlers to Australia found too when all their crops failed and they literally nearly died of starvation. I like to sow green manure, make my own compost etc etc because here, especially in South Australia, we have to do something - always trying to keep up the fertility! We are a country of about 23 million people on a land mass the size of the USA and many times larger than the whole of Europe. Nearly all live in a few cities and towns around the coast. Why? The soil and the climate are not conducive to making a living for many people in the outback. Only around the coast and in certain fertile pockets can crops be grown or animals fed. This post was written for people local to me, it was not meant to be advice for the whole world! Funny how Australians know a lot about the rest of the world but the rest of the world knows nothing about us...Stay tuned for more history and geography lessons!