Good morning! Well, high summer is here. You can see it all around you. In the colors of your gardens. On the side of the road where tiger lilies are blooming. On ponds where baby ducks and loons are getting swimming lessons from the grown-ups.

The strawberries are passing and raspberries arriving, to be followed by blueberries, tomatoes, cukes and corn of summer cookouts. You just have to smile at the abundance. It is good to live in Maine in July.

Something tells me it’s time to remind all of you to collect seeds. Must be the sight of my hill covered in coreopsis and yarrow with buds ready to burst, covering the brown-eyed Susans and coneflowers.

Collecting seeds is one of the easiest and most economical ways of expanding your garden. If you have bare spots or areas where a few more flowers would be nice, don’t deadhead or cut off the dying blooms. Let them stay and brown, and simply dry. As they dry, their seeds ripen; and when you place a small plastic bag over that flower and shake, the seeds will drop out and into your bag. Take them to whatever empty place you have and sow them. If the soil hasn’t been tilled, just scratch it up with a hand garden rake before dropping the seeds. I also try to place a marker of some kind so that when I get busy in the spring, I don’t forget and pull the seedlings. A Popsicle stick and permanent marker usually do the trick.

A haunting mistake

Today, I want to talk to you about your soil. Pages and pages of gardening advice are dedicated to debating the best kinds of fertilizer, seeds or plants; but, honestly, the most important part of your garden is the soil.

Healthy and well-balanced soil is to your garden what oxygen is to our bodies. If I can give only one piece of advice to a new gardener, it will always be to take the time to prepare the soil properly, even if that means taking the bad out and putting in good soil.

I am as guilty of hurrying to start a garden and not preparing the soil as the next person. And, believe me, that mistake can haunt you, and your gardens, for decades. But there are ways to mitigate the problem, short of digging up all the plants and starting over. One of the most important steps is to incorporate organic material into the soil on a yearly basis. The easiest way to do this is to top-dress your plants with compost or soil rich in organic matter.

Pretty wood mulch around your plants really doesn’t do the job because it takes too long to break down. Compost is broken-down organic matter and putting a couple of inches over the ground and around your plants is extremely helpful to the soil. As the rains come and then the winter snows and finally spring thaw, compost works its way into the soil and enriches it. Worms help this process as do gardeners each time they plant a new flower and add compost.

You can buy compost by the bag at many stores and by the truckload at nurseries. You can also purchase compost from many city sewage treatment plants — this is OK for flower gardens, but I wouldn’t use it on my vegetables. And here is a big bonus to using compost — 2 inches on your garden cuts down tremendously on weeds.

Three valuable letters

You can bet that when you see a beautiful garden, that gardener has good soil containing what plants need to thrive: nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. These appear as the N, P and K on fertilizer bags and are indicated, as an example, as 10-10-10. These numbers indicate the amount of each nutrient in the product. Each does a particular job for plants such as promoting root growth, or flowers or foliage. This is why you pick a fertilizer that meets the plant’s needs, i.e. spring fertilizing should promote roots and strength while summer fertilizing is for flowers.

Poor soil comes in many forms, not just clay or sand. A wooded lot that has been cut off as a house lot will not, as many people believe, be good garden soil. Trees grow in every kind of soil and that doesn’t translate into proper soil for flower or vegetable gardens.

Folks who live near rivers, streams and ponds also need to be conscious of what problems fertilizers, especially the nitrogen, can cause. Algae blooms in lakes are directly related to nitrogen. If you start with good soil and make a habit of using compost, chemical fertilizers may not be necessary or, at a minimum, much smaller amounts can be used.

When you buy fertilizers, try to look for organic-based products. They are getting much easier to find. Some brands may be a bit more expensive, but not terribly considering the long-term benefits. Rather than put chemicals into the ground as regular fertilizers do, organic products use natural materials which work with nature.

There is also a particular group of plants that can lead to healthier soil without the aid of chemicals. They are called nitrogen-fixing plants because of the way they interact with the soil. These plants, which include false indigo or baptisia, shamrock, lupine, pea shrub and some types of lilacs, convert nitrogen in the air to organic compounds in the ground. This is why you will frequently see these types of plants growing in really poor soil, roadside ditches and open uncultivated fields. They make their own food. The plant roots interact with fungi and bacteria that occur naturally in the soil, and it is this interaction that allows them to convert the nitrogen. These plants would be obvious choices if you have poor soil, live near a body of water or want to minimize the need for fertilizers.

I know talking about dirt isn’t all that exciting, but if you want those beautiful plants and flowers that do excite you, you have to take care of your dirt. Dirt doesn’t get enough credit for all the work it does and for how important it really is.

Until next time, don’t forget to collect those flower seeds, try to keep the weeds at bay and fill your house with flowers.

Happy gardening.

Jody Goodwin has been gardening for more than 25 years. She lives in Turner with her husband, Ike, her dog and two cats. She may be reached by writing to her in care of the Sun Journal, 104 Park St., Lewiston, Maine, 04243-4400 or by e-mail at jodyike@megalink.net.

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