The nights are cooling and the days are shorter, and it is finally time to take a break from the garden until spring time, right? WRONG! Now is the most important time of the year to prepare your garden soil for next year’s production.

Common sense tells us that when your garden soil is depleted of basic essential nutrients, your garden fruits and vegetables will also lack essential nutritive ingredients. Plants do not produce minerals, rather, they only transfer minerals from the soil to the edible parts of the plant. Through photosynthesis and other processes, the minerals drawn from the soil into the plants are transformed into assimilable mineral compounds which your body can utilize. When your soil is mineral-deplete, your crops will lack adequate nutrition, and will lack complex and satisfying flavors.

FACT: without proper amendments, most soils are lacking in essential minerals, particularly soils worked by commercial farms. When you consume foods produced by these commercial farms and growers, your food in nutritionally lacking. This is why you must supplement with quality vitamins and minerals in order to stay healthy.

Perhaps you know people who rely on the fertilizer producer’s advertising slogans which declare their formulations of Nitrogen, phosphate and potash (also referred to as N-P-K.) These ingredients truly make your garden plants beautiful and green but do not impart needed nutrition.

What can you do to improve the quality of your soil and greatly improve the nutritional quality of your garden plants?

First, do what Great Grand-Ma used to do……begin the re-mineralization process by dumping ashes from your outdoor cookouts and your fireplace into your garden soil. Just broadcast the ashes and rake them in. The ashes are pure mineral and are incredibly beneficial. Second, build up your soil with plant waste materials. Most municipal refuse centers will sell beneficial tree and brush grindings for a very reasonable fee. It is the natural breakdown of these organic materials which slowly and efficiently re-nutrify your soil. These processes produce great benefits over time.

I also use Bloomin Minerals, a “fast start” mineral supplement which is perfectly balanced and very effective. This product is a humate soil conditioner and plant food containing up to 76 organically bound earth elements. This product is very beneficial and cost effective.

Another factor many people overlook is detoxification and stabilization of their garden soil. I recommend a specially processed charcoal substance called bio-char which once applied, enhances the soil efficacy for many years. According to a prominent college professor, application of bio-char is hypothesized to increase bio-available water, build soil organic matter, enhance nutrient cycling, and reduce leaching of pesticides.

Another inherent benefit to all these processes is the natural rebalancing of soil PH. Healthy soil PH aids in a plant’s uptake of minerals which contributes to great tasting and nutritional fruits and vegetables for your enjoyment.

Now is the perfect time to start revitalizing your soils. For more information including where to purchase Bloomin Minerals and/or bio-char just send me an email to gwlochte@yahoo.com.