 Okay, we're going to wrap up tonight with a talk on soil structure and Emily Howe is the horticulture agent for Ward County. Emily's originally from Texas and I am too, Emily. I lived there for two weeks before my parents got the heck out of Texas. And Emily holds a degree in environmental sciences and she's currently working towards her master's degree in land resources and environmental sciences. Emily grew up gardening and she loves to grow herbs, beans, okra, and cucumbers. So I think that okra is your Texan root stairs, my guess. So Emily, welcome to the forums. Yeah, so my passion for soil started when I was an undergrad and my soil professor started off the class with there's one four letter word that we will never say in this class and that is dirt. If you say the word dirt in our class, then I will fail you. In the extension we say soil. Yeah, so I don't know if any of you have ever gone to the gardening store and just looked down the soil island and like, oh my gosh, what the heck is up with all these different types of bad soils? Why do we need so many? What is the difference between them? Any of that? So I want to start off by defining the different types of soil that I will be mentioning. So we have soil. This is our native soil, the stuff that we find in our backyard. Just your everyday ground to walk on. And this is the stuff that's usually made up of a mixture of clay, sand or silt. So those are the minerals that usually make that up as well as a mixture of water and air. Our potting soil, this is sometimes referred to as a garden soil or a bag to top soil. And typically this includes a compost product as well as a native soil. And it tries to mimic the native soil that we have in our backyard. And most of the time you'll see a label somewhere on the bag saying for in ground use only. And then finally potting mix. So potting mix is fun because it is technically a soil as soil. So how do you have a soil as soil? You don't have any of the sand silt or clay in it. You typically see ingredients such as like a fertilizer as well as mixtures of core or peat moss, vermiculite, pearlite, sand and bark. So that's what gives it that really kind of light and airy texture. So this is the ideal soil structure. We want to see about 50% organic matter and minerals and the other 50% air and water. So having healthy ratios with this is what allows us to have happy plants. And too much of any of these can lead to poor color lack of bigger and wilting in our plants. So soil is essential to growing anything. So the soil minerals that we have are sand silt and clay. So these are not to scale, but sand is typically around the same diameter as a strand of human hair. So it's not very big. And it's the biggest soil mineral silt is around the size of a dust particle. And clay is around the same size as a bacterium. We have very, very small sizes for our minerals. And this is the aspect that makes a soil soil. So when we talk about potting mix being a soil a soil, then we're talking they don't have any of these minerals. So the components that we look at when we're looking at soil structure are aeration, weight, drainage, the nitrogen's organic matter. And then how are we going to be using this? So aeration, both of these pictures are soils that have good aeration. One is just a native soil. And you can kind of see that little worm sticking his head out. And the other is just your run of the mill potting mix. So they're both good, they both have good aeration. But they're different amounts. So the picture on the left is a little bit more dense than the picture on the right. So plants need air for their roots. Every plant needs some form of air and water from the soil. So having that space between the soil particles is what provides that air. If we were to take that space away, we end up with compacted soils and compacted soils can lead to waterlogged soils or plant growth, bunch of not great things. But also if we're using a heavy soil like our native soils in a small container, then we can accidentally compact that soil and lead to poor plant growth. So that leads us to weight. Different soil types have different weights. Our sandy soils are going to be lighter than our clay soils, because there's less aeration between them. And our potting soil is going to be more dense than our potting mix. Being aware of how much weight a soil has is going to help us whenever we're trying to decide what are we meeting the soil for. If I am building a big garden bed, then I need to be aware that I can't have soil that'll blow away. That's just not going to be helpful for plant life. I was talking to an extension agent, and she was telling me about one of the raised beds that they had their pollinator gardens, and they had used the wrong type of potting soil and ended up having all of their soil blow out and had to mix it with a denser soil in order to keep enough soil in their plant life to grow. So here's kind of the big difference between like a potting or a garden soil and potting mix. Our potting soils are typically going to be heavy. We use them as an amendment to our soil. So if we have a soil that we just need to add a little bit more, either organic matter or fertilizer or mix of that, then we can add that on top. You see it a lot with like yards and lawn care. And they typically contain some form of compost. Whereas our potting mixes are really light and fluffy. And they're, like I mentioned before, soilless. But there's also a lot of varieties and types. So you have your orchid one where it's predominantly bark as compared to your succulent potting mix, which is more sand and so on and so on for your different plants. It's also weed and disease free. So they take the time and they sterilize their soils. So we don't have any of those wheat seeds or disease is in it. And they almost always contain a peat moss or a core. So here are just two of the potting mixes that I ran across in a store. They were just two that I picked out. But one is labeled as a potting soil. And the other is labeled as a potting mix. If you were to look at the backs of these bags, the one labeled as a potting mix, if you can read it, it does not contain anything that there is any native soil components to it. There is a mixture of bark, peat moss, perlite limestone, and a fertilizer. There isn't any native soil incorporated to it. And the bag labeled as a potting mix is just the core compost perlite and fertilizer. So I wouldn't necessarily consider the bag on the left as a potting soil due to the lack of native soil in it. You could use this more as a potting mix. So just something to be aware of when you're looking through the grocery or the garden store, which ingredients are you looking for? Are you needing something that has a native soil plus compost? Are you needing something a little bit lighter that just has that core and compost mixture to it? So drainage is important with all plants, especially when we're working up plants and containers. I'm sure all of you know, always use a pot with holes in it. Don't overwater your plants. We don't want to drown them. But lighter soils are also going to have better drainage. So when we're looking at the two types of soils and like our native soils versus our potting mix, our potting mix is going to have better drainage than our native soil. So with that in mind, if I have something in a pot with potting mix in it, I need to be aware that I may need to water it more often than something planted in our native soil. It's just because the water holding capacity of a native soil is so much higher than the water holding capacity of a potting mix. So nutrients and I think Carrie did a great job on touching all of this. So I will try not to beat a dead horse. But yeah, we're we need nutrients in our soil. Most potting mixes or potting garden soils already have those included. So when gardening, if you've added any of those to your soils, be aware that you may not need to add any fertilizer or compost to your soil layer on in the year. We don't want to over fertilize our plant over fertilization can lead to inhibition of nutrients later on. So like too much nitrogen can inhibit the uptake of minerals such as calcium and magnesium. So being aware like, Hey, how much nutrients do I have? And the one way we do that is we take a soil test. So when do I use what type of soil? So where are you planting it? Are you planting it indoors? Are you planting it outdoors? Are you planting it in a raised bed? Are you re planting it in like one of those waste high raised beds? Like where are you planting your produce? And also, are you using a container? If you are, how big is the container that you're using? So if I am using a raised garden bud, and I'm trying to incorporate some of my native soils, I just want to use native soils plus any amendments. So take my native soils and just mix it in with probably just some garden plot soil, just mix that all in, make sure it's very consistent. And then I can add that on top. Whereas if I am gardening in a small pot, just trying to grow one herb, then I don't need all of that mixtures. I can just use a potting mix. So how big is the size of the container? Where am I planting it? There's so many different things that goes on. The number one thing we're trying to avoid with all of this is that compacted soil. We want to keep the air in the soil because having that air in the soil is going to have better drainage. It's going to have the room for the roots to grow. It's going to have all that extra things that we need for happy, healthy plants. So I hope you pay attention because we have the plants with us. So if I have Susie and she's planting geraniums in her flower beds, what soil would I use? So I would use the soil that was already present. There's no need for me to go out and get any sort of special soil. The soil in my garden is already fine. I can just get a soil test to see if there's any amendments that are needed on plant my geraniums with no extra hassle. If you're using a raised bed garden and it's eight inches from the ground, what soil should you use? And I would use personally a mixture of A and C. So that potting or garden soil with some of the soil that's already present. So anytime you're using like a raised garden bed, you're just using your native soil plus any amendments that are needed. So in order to have enough soil to raise my garden eight inches off the ground, I would just use that garden soil or topsoil added on so that I have enough soil to actually plant something but mixing it in with my native soil. You don't want to use anything like a potting mix in it because you can get hydrophobic soil over time. Because the other thing is that you're going to have to keep replenishing that soil with a raised garden bed. So same question but waist high and his soil keeps blowing away. So he most likely use a potting mix. So the soil was not heavy enough to stay in his container. It blew away. There wasn't anything for his roots to hold on to. In this case, you can mix with a potting or garden soil in order to give a little bit more weight to that soil and keep your soil from blowing all over North Dakota. I'm sorry. So Jill's planting meant because she doesn't want it to overtake her entire yard. So what type of soil would you use? And in Jill's case, I would use a potting mix. I wouldn't see any reason for her to need to mix it with anything or have any extra additional amendments unless she was using a really large container for her mint. I find that mint is a prolific producer and I don't need that much of it. So a potting mix would work perfectly fine for Jill in her garden. Oh, do we have any question? Okay, so we encourage any questions. Just if you can put them in the Q&A box, that'll be really easy to find. How about there's a question here about potting soil, the potting soil that you buy in bags. Where the heck does all this soil come from? Where do they get it? Yeah, great question. So the peat moss aspect of it, they get from peat land areas. So I know Minnesota has a lot of those. And we see a lot of sustainability questions coming into play with that because while it is something that is renewable, it takes several years for it to be at a stage where we can actually take it and use it for our benefit, which is why we're starting to see that coconut core come in. There's still some questions on the sustainability of that, but we do what we can. And then some of the other aspects for our potting mix like limestone is something that is naturally occurring. And then I can't remember about perlite or vermiculite, one of those I think is made in the lab. So you can create it in a lab and the other one is naturally occurring. I get the two mixed up constantly. So I wouldn't be the best person to answer that one. It doesn't perlate, isn't it a volcanic mix? Yep, vermiculite. Theology was not my strong suit. Are there any other questions about? So every time I see potting soil, you're telling me that's different than potting mix? Yeah, they really make it confusing because they're different, but sometimes they're the same. And potting mix, you say, is sterile and soilless? Yes. So a potting mix I could use to start seedlings, for example. That would be good. Yeah, that would be a good way to start seeds because you don't have to worry about any diseases or any issues coming in with that. Yeah, because sometimes when we start seeds, this time they recommend a soilless mix or a seed starter mix. And it can be hard to find something labeled that. But if we look carefully on the back of that potting mix, that could be a good substitute. So are there any other questions about soil types? Since there's a couple other questions here Emily, you can talk about how does no-till gardening affect soils? Are you an advocate of no-till gardening? Yeah, so no-till gardening is a way that it helps prevent soils from getting compacted. We start to see soils that have been tilled for extended periods of time increase in the amount of or increase in the compaction of the soils, especially at the depth of the tiller. So if your tiller is only going down a certain amount of inches, after that certain amount of inches we're starting to see more compaction occur. And all compaction is is a loss of space between the pores of the soil minerals. So that pie chart that I showed at the beginning, instead of having about 50% being water and air, we start to see more of that being minerals and organic matter and less water and air or there's a high amount of water, which can it just leads to problems. Okay, so you had a pop quiz for us now. It's time for a pop quiz for you. So this person has a large stock tank and they want to grow vegetables in it, but the cost to fill with potting mix or garden soil so expensive. So do you have any suggestions? What would you use in a large stock tank to grow vegetables? Yeah, no, that's a that's the tough thing with a lot of this. So we do recommend using some of your native soil and then filling it up with a mixture of it. And the real reason for that is we're trying to avoid that compaction. You could incorporate some, if you compost, you can incorporate some of that compost in there along with your native soil and then some like playground sand to kind of help break it all of that up. That's one way that you can do it. That otherwise just time. So that's not the best answer, but times the solution for a lot of things. How about a formula? Sometimes people use is like one third sand, one third top soil, one third organic matter. Yeah, so that work in this kind of situation. Yeah, that's so you can use it top soil that can be your garden soil or you can incorporate some of your native soil and then just the playground sand and a compost. And can it's okay in some circumstances just use pure potting mix like in container, small containers, just pots, literally for potting, a potting mix. How about that? So anytime you're gardening indoors, a potting mix works fine because you're typically doing it in smaller containers to begin with. But if you have like those huge planters that like sometimes people will grow trees in, that might be a situation where you need to incorporate some potting mix and some potting soil together in order to have enough weight for that like tree to be stable in the soil. Can we reuse a potting mix? Like if I want to replant, can I, if that's in my container and I'm done with that, I killed that plant, can I reuse that potting mix again? So that's kind of a dangerous game, I do, but I'm trying to be honest here, Tom, I do reuse this soil, but it's not going to be sterile like it was straight out of the bag. So if you're worried about diseases and it's not something I would use. So if I was starting seeds, it's not something that I would reuse. But if I had Christmas cactus and I killed the Christmas cactus and I wanted to grow a philodendron in there instead, like, sure, why not? It's not going to hurt anybody, I don't think. Okay, I guess it depends why you're, what happened to the first plant under the potting mix. Maybe it just died off from frost or something. Yeah, no, it totally died off because I moved it. Okay. What else? Let's say I got a raised bed and I had some natural erosion occur, windy erosion, for example. And so I need to top off that bed, a raised bed. What would you use to top off that bed with? So I'm assuming the raised bed is on the ground and it's just slightly off the ground and it's not one of those. Okay. So with that, you could just top it off with either some of that topsoil or organic matter. If you get a spoil test then you see that you're lower on some of organic matter, you could use some of that because that is going to be a little bit more dense than our potting mixes. So if you compost and you want to add some compost, that's a great option. So in a raised bed situation, should I replace that soil after three years or something or can I just keep using it? In a raised bed situation, typically the soil just kind of compacts itself down. So you just have to add a little bit more every three to five years, I think is the standard replacement rate. So yeah, just over time we're going to have to continually add some soil to it. Have you heard about those square foot garden mixes? Yeah. Any comments about them? The square foot garden mix is interesting. So we do see some good come out of it, but over time we've started to see that just the constant replacement of compost and organic matter can lead to super hydrophobic and stinky soils. So hydrophobic being we water our plants and the water doesn't seep into the soil. It just kind of goes somewhere else. And so over time we start to see issues with it, but it might be a good starting point if you don't have the resources and the availability to get another type of soil. Okay. There's in the same situation about a raised bed, the person suggests maybe like a plastic mulch could prevent that erosion and maybe decrease the need for watering. So that might be a good idea. Yeah, mulching is always a good option to prevent erosion, but it's kind of like Carrie mentioned, we have to be careful when we're adding a wood mulch to our gardens. Those microbes want to take some nitrogen away in the short term from us, but mulch is not a four letter word. So we can say mulch mulch is very it's a great word in North Dakota. How about, okay, I got an old pot, I got a old geranium in a pot and I'm tired of that geranium instead, whatever it died. Can I use that? Can I throw that potting soil mix in my garden from that container into the garden? Yeah, me too. Yeah, go for it. It's going to be fine. Let's see, are there any more questions out there? Oh, do you ever put eggshells or banana peels in your soil, Emily? So my grandmother swears by putting banana peels and eggshells out to keep the deer away. I've not seen any research saying that that is actually effective in any way. And if you were wanting to add eggshells or banana peels to your garden for the nutrients that they provide, I would heavily consider composting them first so that the nutrients become plant-available nutrients. Otherwise, they're just going to sit on the soil for years until they break down enough that the plants can actually uptake those nutrients. Right. Have you ever heard of huggle culture? I never heard of it. I have. Oh, really? What is that stuff? Sounds German. I can't remember if it's German or Norwegian. I don't remember there. But it is essentially you have your logs and then you build on top of it. And there isn't a whole lot of research out there on it. I've seen some things on it from, I think, the University of Washington or Wisconsin, one of the W's where they took some of the original literature and translated it into English because all the original literature is in like Dutch. I can't read it. Okay. So I've heard of it. I've seen it. I don't know how effective it is. There's a lot of questions about how effective it is, but yeah, all the material is not readable, at least for me. Sounds strange. Get it from a European University, I guess. It's the way to go. They're probably got the straight scoop on it. We're back to that stock tank example, and there's some comments about maybe we can reduce the amount of soil by throwing in some old five gallon pails or some milk jugs at the bottom and then just fill up the top two feet with soil or compost. What do you think about that? So you really only need about 18 inches of soil for like your garden variety plants. So you could throw something underneath it. My question is over time, how is that going to impact our plants? Are we going to start to see issues with the plastic? Or how is that going to impact the soil? I just have questions on it. It's something that you can do. It's definitely an option. I have questions. Okay. What do you think about adding sand to heavy clay soil in the garden? Please don't. So going back to the pore sizes, we would be filling, especially if you're tilling it in. If you're putting the sand into that clay soil, you're going to fill those pores in. That should be for air and water with that clay leading to higher compaction. If you are trying to loosen up your soil, tell them something like organic matter. Yeah, that sounds good. Compost is always better than just sand. How about does a sterile soil have microbes in it? A sterile soil does not have anything living in it. So sterile. Let's say we got here, is there anything different in a seed starting mix versus a potting mix? They're both soilless, I guess. I'd have to look at the back of one, but I would assume there's more like fertilizer or something in it. Yeah, read the label. It's interesting what you can see on the label, what it's actually consists of. But they're both could be suitable for seed starting. This person has a bed of hostas that's very heavy in clay. Do you amend when the bed's already planted? Can you still amend the soil? Can you add a little compost in there? Are you going to hurt the hosta roots? No, you should be able to just add some soil on top and eventually it'll get broken down by the microbes working in the soil. Clay soil is great for nutrient holding capabilities. We see a lot of clay soils being able to hold a high capacity of nutrients. So before you do any soil amendments, get a soil test. Here's that soil test going again here. How about... There you go. You mentioned native soil. Is that the same as garden soil or what's the difference? So native soil, in my definition, is I go into my backyard and I pick up a scoop of subsoil. That's my native soil. Garden soil, in this instance, I'm defining as the garden soil you can get from like Home Depot or your garden stores or nards, like just stuff you can get in a bag. So if this person has container garden, large pots on Main Street, and so how many inches of new soil should they be replacing in the top of that pot every year? What would you do about a giant container on Main Street? So I would do a mix of the garden potting soil and the potting mix. I would mix those together so we're not getting anything too heavy. And I would just replace it to where it's a couple inches from the top of the container. And that's going to depend container to container on how much you need to add. What if it's already full? I wouldn't do anything. Just leave it alone. You wouldn't replace the soil at all. Yeah. Can I make my own potting mix? There is a few recipes out there. I am trying to remember. I think the University of Iowa has a article on how you can make your own potting mixes. And typically, that's just you take some paint moss, you take some sand, and you take a third component, typically either a compost or vermiculite perlite, and you mix them in equal parts. But I would look at that article for more ideas. And hydrophobic, you mentioned that. What does that actually mean, hydrophobic? The fear of water. So it repels the water from the soil. It doesn't actually get absorbed into the soil where the roots can access it. Again, there's a lot of questions about these containers. How long is that soil in a container? Should we be blending new soil in every year? Taking out a few inches and blending some new potting soil or new potting mix in that? So if you're talking like a raised bed garden soil type thing where you're consistently adding like a new soil or more nutrients on top, I wouldn't really worry about it. If you've been growing the same mint plant in the same container for 10 years, I don't know if the mint plant's happy. I would just keep it as is. The plant will tell you what it needs. Okay, so just time for a couple more questions here. If you got a raised bed, the soil got very hard. Would you add some, what would you add? Peat moss, compost, or would you add some potting soil? What would you do? I guess my question would be, is it hard due to like concoction or is it hard because we've been in a drought and it's just hard? Yeah. That would be my first question. If it's hard due to concoction, then mixing in peat moss or organic matter, so compost would be a really good option to help loosen it up. If it's hard because of drought, just need some water and see what happens after that. Okay, and also the potting mix doesn't have any insect eggs in it, a potting mix. No, but a potting soil mix, a potting soil mix might. Yeah, so a potting soil might, we don't know because it hasn't been sterilized. A potting mix has been sterilized, so there isn't going to be any eggs or seeds in it. Okay, that's good. That's lots of information here. And thank you, Emily. That was really interesting. And I just want to say goodnight to everybody. Now we had a lot of talk about soil and we learned about melons. And next week we're really excited. We're going to have a great series of talks. We're going to be talking about how you can design a butterfly garden that a butterfly garden for monarch butterflies in particular. And they're also what we're going to talk about how to grow pears and apples in North Dakota. So please tell your friends. We're going to do the same thing Monday night.