I would just put some of the soil on top of the leaves. It would help them break down. Then put the rest of the soil down in the spring.

If I were you, I'd put the garden soil down now, simply because it's tough to tell what's in the bag. Sometimes, what is sold as garden soil is little more than partially composted shredded wood. If the garden soil you bought has a lot of organic matter in it, leaving it in the bags over winter could cause it to go anaerobic.

It's Miracle Grow Garden Soil, which is supposed to be pretty good, I think, and the bags I've opened smell like there's composted manure mixed in.

I guess I'd better get most of it down. Thanks for the good advice.

Since you opened them the store won't take them back. If you check you'll see that they also have Miracle Gro fertilizer in them. If you put the soil down now, chances are by spring all the chemicals will have leached out and you will have good stuff remaining. Still, covering with leaves is what Mother Nature does to her soil. That's what I would do with the new stuff, too.

Buying soil is never necessary unless you have a problem with your drainage. Usually adding soil messes up your drainage and causes more problems. Creating good soil from bad is so simple that it usually evades us. Mother Nature revitalizes her soil every year by covering it up with leaves in the fall. During the cooler temperatures, evaporation slows considerably and the soil remains moist under the leaf cover. With the lower soil temperatures, the summer time microbes go dormant and the winter time microbes become active. It is the winter time microbes that restore the soil.

If you want to help the process along, scatter 1 pound of compost over a 100 square foot area. When you finish youÂll be saying, "thatÂs hardly anything. I should add more." You may add as much as your wallet will allow, after all this is a hobby, but you donÂt have to add any more. Then cover the soil and compost with leaves or mulch until spring. If it does not rain or snow for a month, water your soil as if it were growing, because it is, underground. Water for about an hour.

If you really want to boost your soilÂs health, in addition to the compost, and at the same time, scatter 1 pound of ordinary corn meal per 100 square feet. This is the same stuff you buy in the grocery store. If you want to save a lot of money, buy a bag of corn meal at the feed store. They might try to sell you corn gluten meal, but that is six times more expensive. All you need is ordinary corn meal. It should cost well under $10 per 50-pound bag. Cracked corn will work, too, but you might expect a few corn plants to sprout. They are easily clipped off or pulled out.

Now how do you keep your soil from getting like that again?
1. Keep it moist either with rain or irrigation. In the summer it should get an inch of rain or irrigation per week. In the winter that should be an inch per month. These are minimums.
2. Never use chemical fungicides on it. They kill the beneficial fungi that make your soil good. Other bad chems for the fungi include baking soda, sulfur, and sulfated fertilizers.
3. Never let water stand for days on your soil. If you have low spots, raise them with more soil or cut in drainage troughs.

I recently bought a 50 lb bag of elemental sulfur to try to lower the pH of my soil. The pH was tested by the extension office and it came out at 7.8. I put down a few pounds on top of the subsoil but I haven't yet applied any to the topsoil.

You say that sulfur is bad for the fungi. That would seem to militate against using sulfur to lower the pH. Do you have a suggestion for other methods of lowering the pH?

I also have humic acid and I've been applying that to the subsoil and topsoil.

No matter what the ads may try to tell you good garden soil cannot be bought. Since you have some of this "stuff" spread it over your garden now and add more organic matter to that.
While adding sulfur will kill soil fungi adding some to lower soil pH is not going to affect what might be in your soil that much. With a soil pH of 7.8 you will not have much soil fungi working anyway since they much prefer soils with a much lower soil pH.

Idaho--I don't think you'll have much luck in lowering the pH by spreading the sulfur on the surface. Soil sulfur works best when it's incorporated into the soil. If I were you, I would concentrate my efforts on individual plants that are chlorotic (yellow leaves and usually green veins). Drill holes with a bulb augur around the drip line and add some sulfur to within a few inches of the surface, then cover with soil.

Your best bet for larger areas is to try to increase the amount of organic matter in the soil. The organic matter will help bring the pH closer to neutral and will also have a buffering effect.

Alkaline soils are common in the intermountain west, and it's usually a losing battle to try to significantly lower the pH. Somebody on the Rocky Mountain Gardening forum used to say that it is much easier to try to grow plants that are adapted to our soil than to try to adapt our soil to the plants we're trying to grow.

By the way, adding iron isn't likely to help much. Your soil probably has plenty of iron, but it's in a form that can't be used by the plants. With a pH that high, you need to use EDDHA chelated iron. EDTA chelated iron is more commonly available and also much less expensive, but isn't likely to be much help. You can also use a foliar spray, but that is short lived and can cause leaf burning. It's almost guaranteed to burn if the daytime highs are above 80.

Thank you everyone. I'm new to all this but have leared a lot on this forum -- I'll put the soil down asap (it has since frozen in the bags outside) and cover it over with leaves. And I guess I won't spend money on Miracle Grow soil in the future.

It seems to me from what I read that leaves are just about the most valuable resource a gardener can have. I have lots more in and around the woods nearby -- just a matter of getting them out and shredding them with the mower...

Thanks again.

D C Hall and B P Green, thanks for the detailed information. I'm learning about soil from these sorts of posts.

At this point, I'm still pondering how to lower the pH. Sulfur would seem to be a fungicide.

Regarding humic acid; when I mentioned its use, B P Green spoke of iron. My understanding of humic acid comes mainly from the wikipedia entry on the matter.

Humic acid gets sold by a locally based nursery as a way to improve lawns. I have been using it for years and it seems to be a benign way to improve lawn health.

The wiki entry describes, at length, the benefits of humic acid on soil fertility. It is not a fertilizer, but rather a mediator of trace elements. It also improves the water holding ability of soil.

The use of peat has been consistently discouraged in this forum. Because peat is a source of humic acid, that now seem to be rather bad advice. I will be buying and using peat in my soils.

Here is a link that might be useful: Wikipedia entry on humic acid

Idaho--I wasn't trying to address the humic acid point with my comments about iron. I don't know all that much about humic acid and have read a lot of conflicting information about it, so I don't really have anything to add on it.

The reason I brought up iron is that one of the first signs that high pH is affecting plants is that they get iron chlorosis. If your plants aren't suffering from chlorosis, I wouldn't try too hard to lower the pH.

Sulfur can lower the pH, but it's not very effective spread on the surface. In order for it to work well, it needs to be worked into the soil. If you want to affect a larger area, your best bet is to add as much organic matter as you can.

Humic acid is produced as the Soil Food Web digests organic matter in your soil. While there may well be an identifiable substance known as Humic Acid in the products sold in stores that stuff is nuch like the Lydia Pinkhams Magix Elixar that was sold years ago, mostly blarney. Work at adding sufficient quantities of organic matter to your soil and forget about those magic elixars.

The attached link is to a product sold locally that contains humic acid. Also, refer to the Wikipedia link regarding humic acid in my previous post.

Seems like a naturally derived product that contains concentrated humic acid is a godsend.

Likewise, peat contains humic acid. Seems like tilling peat into soil is an unqualified good idea.

Thanks,

Paul

Here is a link that might be useful: Humic Acid in a bag

Idaho--The ads for Humic acid definitely make it look like it's really great stuff, but that's what ads are supposed to do. The article in Wikipedia has a lot more info in it now than it used to.

If the humic acid you can buy in the store is the same stuff with the same qualities, it will probably help you, since it has chelating qualities (chelating counters the effects of the high pH, making nutrients available to the plants).

I wouldn't say that tilling peat into soil is an unqualified good idea, at least not in our neck of the woods. It can help add much needed organic content to the soil and can help acidify the soil. It can also help loosen clay and allow water to better penetrate (or, conversely, it can help sand retain water). The big problem for peat in the intermountain west is that if it ever dries out (and you know it will) it repels water.

A far better product to use in New Hampshire is leaves from deciduous trees. Tree leaves contain nutrients and are free while peat moss has no nutrients and costs money.

bpgreen, Thanks for your comments.

I have been applying the humic-acid-in-a-bag for several years now. I had been thinking it was a fertilizer (I thought it was dehydrated compost tea because of its color) because it makes the lawn green. It was only last week that I discovered what it actually is; humic acid only.

I tested the soil in my lawn before I started tilling it to become a garden. pH of 7.8, low in P and almost no N. But it's still green. It must be doing something good. Also, the texture of the soil was very good in the top 6".

I think that tilling peat into the soil will work if you get it deep enough because it stays damp. And the humic acid contributes to the water retention capacity of the clay.

I am beginning to think that this humic acid is why compost is so good for the soil.