Hoping for a little help from the gardeners here. I live in central Ohio, zone 5. I have a section of my flower bed along the east side of my home that the soil seems completely dead. The soil quality feels very sandy, you can easily dig with your fingers. The area is about 3-4 feet long by about 2 feet deep (edge of bed to house foundation)
We removed 1 scraggly rose plant and 1 I-Don’t-Know-What from the area. We planted two tardiva hydrangea and some annuals in their place. The soil was a concern but because something was growing there before I went ahead with the new plants. Big surprise, they’re not doing well at all. The soil will not retain water at all. The only way I’m keeping things alive right now in this spot is by daily watering which I’m sure is only keeping the soil that was a part of the root-balls of the new plants wet. It is weird because it seems the soil condition only exists in this one area of the flower bed. The soil to the north and south of this section is good and the new plants we put in there are doing great.
My question is how do I remedy the soil? My plan, with no real idea if this will work, is to remove the plants carefully to protect the root-balls. From there, I figured I would dig out the bad soil to a depth of a 1-2 feet. This should be easy enough considering it has the consistency of dust and sand. Haha! I was then going to mix soil we recently excavated from another area of our property with a small amount of compost and a small amount of potting soil. I’d then back-fill the hole where we removed the old soil, tamp it in, and then replant the annuals and perennials.
Thoughts or suggestions? What I do not have time for is to recondition the soil over a season or two before replanting. Our home is on our neighborhood home and garden tour so I don’t want an empty section in our flower bed.
For an area that small, I wouldn’t even worry about fixing the existing soil. Just get rid of it and replace it with decent topsoil from another part of your property or just buy some. You can certainly try to improve the new soil with things like peat moss, bag manure or compost depending on the plants and conditions but small amounts of anything aren’t likely to help you very quickly so you have to start with a good base.
Two solutions are just dig in a lot of compost/rotted manure/richer soil, which will improve the water retention properties of the existing soil (adding any organic matter would do it, but you’d want something plant ready if you want fast results), I doubt your existing soil there is ‘dead’, it’s just not suitable for what you planted in it, and there’s no reason to dig it out (OK, you may want to dig a bit out just so’s you don’t end up with a heap, but you don’t need to treat it like it’s toxic).
The easier option is just plant stuff like that likes very well drained soil, rather than trying to grow something moisture loving like a hydrangea in a naturally dry spot.
Generally, it works better to pick a plant that likes the conditions rather than trying to change the conditions drastically to suit the plant.
There are gardeners who’d kill for a bed of sandy, well-drained soil.
If you don’t want to grow things that enjoy such conditions (and most would also demand at least half-day sun), take the advice to improve the soil with plenty of good garden soil amended with compost. And mulch to inhibit drying out and keep weeds down. A feeding mulch (rather than something that just sits there without breaking down, like huge chunks of pine bark) also will improve the soil over time.
Really, that’s not that big of and area. I’m getting 7 yards of topsoil delivered to my house next Thursday. And that’s just to even some stuff out before a fence goes in.
Your talking about 15 square feet? Dig out some of the sand. Grab 4 bags of top soil and mix it in.
Generally speaking, I agree. This is one small section of a very large continuous flower bed that wraps around the house which already contains other hydrangea (4 pee-wee, 5 ruby slipper, 2 pom, and now 3 new tardiva). It is just in this one small area that the soil is dramatically different than the rest of the flower bed where the other hydrangea are thriving.
Yeah, that’s pretty much what I think I’m going to do. I’m going to remove a good amount of the bad soil and mix up new top soil with compost and peet moss and back-fill it in then re-plant.