Is Your Garden Soil Sufficient Or Do You Need To Buy Topsoil?

By Author: Robert Deans
Total Articles: 246
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When you're thinking about your garden, you assume that the soil in the garden is going to be sufficient to give good results, and focus on the more exciting aspects. Which plants should we use? Shall we plant trees? Or even a summer house? It is, however, incredibly important to consider your topsoil in detail before proceeding with making your decisions on the exciting things.

If the topsoil is not up to scratch, you could waste a considerable amount of time and money, if the plants you select do not survive . In many gardens across the nation the topsoil just isn't of a sufficient quality to grow plants, flowers or shrubs so it really is important to look at this before buying anything. Sometimes the standard of the topsoil isn't even suited to laying turf.

How you can recognise good quality topsoil

Check the colour of the soil - it should be a shade of dark brown or even moving towards black

If you were to smell the topsoil, if it's a good quality there needs to be a faint sweet aroma

Try dampening a little handful. With the dampened soil inside your ...
... hand, squeeze your hand shut, and then reopen. If the ball of soil breaks apart fairly easily then you have a loamy topsoil which can be excellent for growing most kinds of flowers and plants. If there is an excess of clay within your topsoil then your soil will stick together in a ball. And topsoil containing too much sand for the majority of plants will feel gritty to touch.

One more test to check the quality of your topsoil is the pH test. Any good garden centre or DIY store will stock pH testing kits. The perfect pH for a thriving garden is between 6.6 and 7.3.

For a beautiful looking garden it is important to look out for a few things to make sure that the topsoil you've got in your garden is suitable for growing plants and flowers. Make sure that:

Your topsoil doesn't have too much clay

Your topsoil doesn't have too much sand

Your topsoil has a pH which is between 6.6 and 7.3

If you follow these simple guidelines you can make sure you've got the most suitable topsoil before you plan your garden and planting schemes. If you take these small steps to determine the quality of your topsoil you can make sure you don't waste your money and timein the long run.

This article was written and distributed on behalf of Boughton Loam & Turf Management, experts in Topsoil. For more information ,please visit gardentopsoildirect.co.uk