Virginia soil indicator plants
Imagine for a minute that you just moved onto
a large farm, the way we did three years ago. How do you know
where the soil is ideal for a garden? Soil tests are a good move,
but it would cost an arm and a leg to decipher the microhabitats that
cover even a quarter of an acre on our farm. You can do what I
did and just plant things randomly and watch half of them die, or you
can use Robert Kourik's list of indicator plants to find good and poor
garden spots.
Is your yard overrun with hopclover and whitetop aster? Chances
are your soil is excessively alkaline and needs some acidification
before it will make good garden ground. What if you've got a lot
of sheep sorrel, goldenrod, and field bindweed? That means your
soil is sandy.
I took Robert Kourik's three page list of indicator plants and compiled
all of the ones that live in Virginia and the surrounding area, adding
in an indicator plant or two of my own. The resulting spreadsheet
is easy to sort by category so that you can see all of the wetland or
cultivated land indicators in one spot --- oh the wonders of
technology! Download my Virginia soil
indicator plants spreadsheet and enjoy!
This post is part of our lunchtime series reviewing Robert Kourik's Designing and Maintaining your
Edible Landscape Naturally.
Read all of the entries:
|
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.
Greetings! I would really love to see your Virginia soil indicator list. We are planning a 1/3 acre garden, near Fredericksburg, VA that currently is growing many things on its own. Your link for it is not working. Jacki Wallo
This is a wonderful tool. Thank you so much! Jacki