BBC Gardeners' World

Sprung from the EARTH

“The soil in our x gardens is just as complicated as the human body and should be treated with the same respect”

Soil matters. Get your soil right and, as night follows day, your plants will be right too. The old adage is a wise one: feed your soil not your plants. The converse is true. It does not matter how much you feed your plants or how much money you spend on them, if the soil is not in good heart then they will never prosper.

But, although that sounds good, what does it actually mean? Most gardeners sort of know what to look for in ‘good’ soil but very few could actually describe what makes it good, because it is a fiendishly complicated subject that makes the average brain surgeon look clumsy. But over and above the unimaginably complex relationship between the soil and the

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