I amend planting holes and entire beds and areas, and because the soil is very sandy in places it gives noticeable improvement. I still use bonemeal when planting, I use all organic fertilizers and solid phosphorous travel sloooow in the soil. Like with any soil results does depend on the nutrient level in the soil. If you dig a large hole, poor in a bucket or two of water, and it disapears in 10 minutes or so you don't have to worry about the pool-effect during heavy rain. Any thing that will loosen the soil is good in my opinion. If the water isn't gone after 15 or 20 min you need to worry. Mulching and spreading compost on top of the soil will change the soil. However it takes time and have to be done regularly for years to amount to anything; a decade even to be able to change the structure of clay soil. If you have the chance to grow plants like buck wheat, red clover, alfalfa, and even potatoes as green manure, it will help change the soil much faster. Even if you mulch, remember it really doesn't guarante nutrients for the plants, and fertilizing must not be forgotten, especially for reblooming roses. Chicken pellets are often the easiest and least costly alternative, and helps a lot with the nutrient levels. Some of the scientific tests that indicate amending soil in planting holes is a waste, were done in parks and areas that are very different from the situation in the garden, where plants are watered, fertilized and cared for in a different way. Working to improve the soil, growing different plants and amending it regularly every year is really the most important thing to make the soil more fertile. I promise you, it is no mistake !!! As you know, well composted organic material is very good for the soil and plants, and any mulching material will turn to good compost given time. Because woodchips and bark aren't always thoroughly composted, it can have adverse affects on the soil and roses; like more blackspot and fungus diseases. In addition it actually consumes nitrogen in the process of braking down and that makes additional fertilizing even more important. If you don't have any problems with fungus diseases to consider it is all right to mulch with just about anything. If you are in an area where fungus diseases is a problem, stick to well composted organic material. Some clays are naturally high in nutrients and minerals, and roses grow well with just a minimum of fertilizer spread around the roses. Some clays are lacking in just about everything and it can be a struggle to make plants grow. However given time, and effort all soils will get better. I hope at least some of this was worth mentioning ;-) Best of luck and Regards

Actually, John, this is the latest theory here, at least in my neck of the woods - do NOT amend soil. It is better to top dress than to amend. I just attended a seminar through the San Diego Horticultural Society. One of the most renowned urban foresters in the country, Robin Rivet, happens to live in San Diego county. She spoke about how to correctly plant a tree, and did confirm this is the latest recommendations. UC Riverside also recommends the exact same thing, based on my class I just attended there, "Citrus in the Garden" taught by Tom Shea and Dr. Tracy Kahn. So, my information is coming from pretty substantial sources. Our chicken manure in bags is well cooked. Actually, your best, best manure is chicken, then horse, then cow. At least, this was the information I received at my Master Gardener's classes through Purdue University. Here's the info from Center for Urban Forestry: "Do not amend the soil. Adding soil amendments to the backfill is another discredited practice. Some bagged soil products advertise adding one bag (3 cu ft) per tree. The tree roots need to get into the native soil as soon as possible in order to encourage them to grow beyond the dug hole. Amended backfill soil, while encouraging of root growth for a short distance, stunts further growth." You can access this document here: http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/datastore/391-272.pdf So, this is the current thinking. It is new, John, and based on some recent research. So, sharing what I've learned recently from some very astute and well-experienced sources. So, perhaps the gurus in Texas might want to confer with the gurus in California! I think the logic prevails with planting in native soil. You can't possibly amend soil in a large enough hole to assure proper root growth. And, your amended soil will eventually revert to native soil, so that's a huge amount of effort that will not assure solid root growth. The thinking now is to try to replicate what nature does - provide good organic materials that support excellent microorganisms in the top soil by top dressing, that will percolate down to the feeder roots. It makes much more sense to me. I respect the folks in Texas, they're great and do a wonderful job with their citrus. But in this, I respectfully disagree with them :-) Patty S. And from UC Davis', "Questions and Answers to Citrus Management" by Tom Shea and Dr. Peggy Mauk: 2. When should I plant, how deep should I plant and how big a tree should I plant? The best planting time is after frost danger (after February 15 in the Riverside area) and before the onset of hot weather. Although fall planting can be successful it is generally better to wait until spring. Always choose a location that has full sun throughout the day. It is best to plant in well-drained soil (see Q. 3). Dig the planting hole as deep as the root ball and as wide or wider than the root ball. Be certain that the tree is not buried below the graft union. The graft union (slight dogleg shape in the trunk) should be located several inches above the soil level. Trees buried too deep may not survive. It is always best to fill the planting hole with the same soil that was removed when digging the hole. Do not add any mulch or potting soil into the tree hole. These materials retain more water and may increase the chances of root rot." I understand that the citrus gurus in Texas are great folks. But perhaps they might want to confer with the citrus gurus in California who are espousing an updated philosophy about amending versus top dressing. This is supported by some fairly significant research, John. If I can dig up the research, I'd be happy to send it to you. But I'm sticking to this. It just makes more sense to me, and the research backs this up. Patty s. Here is a link that might be useful: Center for Urban Forestry, San Diego County Trees: Proper Planting

Did you do a soil test by sending in a soil sample to a soil lab or did you use those little test kits you buy at the store? If you used a soil lab, they'd tell you exactly how much to add, and I'd probably do what they said. If you used a little soil test kit purchased from a store, those things are notoriously inaccurate and I wouldn't do anything to my soil based on what one of those showed. Testing for nitrogen can be very tricky. Nitrogen is highly mobile in soil and sometimes doesn't show up well in tests, particularly when the soil is tested when temperatures are cold. Some labs no longer test for nitrogen for this reason, or they are careful to note that nitrogen can test differently in the same soil at different times of the year. Much depends on whether you're starting with soil that leans heavily towards being clay or sand or if you're starting out with a nice sandy loam that already has good tilth. You have to tailor what you are adding to your soil to whatever type of soil you start out with. It probably is an oversimplification to say this, but the answer to most soil issues is simply to add more organic matter to the soil. I don't worry about how much nitrogen, phosphorus or potassium are in my soil. I just add enough organic matter to give the soil good tilth and, in general, the organic matter contains enough N-P-K to enable plants to grow well in that soil, and it also contains all the micro-nutrients (aka trace elements) like magnesium, molybdenum, copper, boron, manganese, iron, zinc, and sulfur that plants need. Too often, gardeners focus on the N-P-K in their soil and never give the micro-nutrients a single thought. If you just focus on adding organic matter to your soil, it will tend to have everything the plants need to grow well and the more you improve the soil by adding organic matter regularly, the more fertile it will become. Because I started with dense red clay in most parts of the garden, I added 6 to 8" of organic matter (not all at once--I would rototill a couple of inches into the existing soil, then pile more on top of the ground and rototill it in, etc., until I had added 6-8") to break up the soil. All I was aiming for at that point was to break up dense red clay that was perfect for making red clay pots but not so perfect for growing ornamental and edible plants. The first few years I tried to add a variety of different materials to make up for what I perceived as deficiencies in my soil---adding sulfur to lower the pH, blood meal to increase nitrogen, soft rock phosphate to increase the amount of readily available phosphorus, etc. Once I felt like I had the soil where I wanted it, all I have done since then, for the most part, is add organic matter and let it do its job. I don't bother with soil tests because my plants will tell me if they have a problem, and you will learn pretty quickly what different symptoms indicate. For example, if nitrogen is too low, you will see decreased plant vigor, sluggish growth and yellowing of the oldest leaves on the plant. If phosphate is too low, you'll see poor flower and fruit production. If your soil has inadequate levels of calcium, your plants will be very susceptible to disease and may have tip die-back at the top of the plant. If your soil is low in potassium, you may see winter kill of plants that ought to be able to survive the winter or increased susceptibility to diseases. If your soil is low in zinc, you'll often see huge amounts of weeds. It can take time to learn what the different symptoms you observe are telling you, but once you learn how to "read" your plants, you will know if you have healthy, nutritious, well-balanced soil....or not, and it isn't as hard as you'd think to read the plants and decipher what they're telling you. The best way for me to explain what I try to do to my soil would be to say that I am trying to recreate the forest floor inside my garden. When we walk through our woodland, do we see perfectly brown or brownish-black topsoil? No, of course not. We see all kinds of organic matter lying right there on the ground decomposing---leaves, twigs, sticks, bark that has sloughed off trees, deadfall limbs or even entire trees that are rotting and decomposing right there on the forest floor. You may see the decomposing remains of insects, birds, reptiles or small animals. It all decomposes where it fell. No one goes into the woods and tries to plow, rototill or dig all that organic matter down into the soil. Over time, various creatures that dig into the soil (anything from microorganisms that are invisible to the human eye to ground-burrowing insects, earthworms, armadillos, skunks, possums, etc.) will carry the nutrients from the soil surface deeper into the soil, and so will rainfall. The forest enriches its own soil naturally and is self-sustaining, so I just work as hard as I can to add amendments to the soil surface in my garden and let them decompose and be worked into the soil over time. This doesn't mean that I never rototill my soil---I would, in fact, like to stop rototilling and do no-till-gardening, but I am an impatient gardener and like to get the organic matter down deeper in the soil more quickly that it would get there without rototilling. In areas where we have some sandy-silty soil, I don't feel the need to rototill it as much as I do the dense clay either. Just in the last couple of weeks, I've been going back and adding a couple of inches of compost on top of each raised bed. There is no need for me to rototill it into those beds and, in the case of something like the bed where asparagus and strawberries grow, it would be impossible to till it into the soil without destroying the plant roots. The compost will feed the soil and the soil will feed the plants and you won't see me out there in the garden with a Miracle-Grow sprayer in my hand unless I see a fertility issue that needs a quick fix, which in my garden is extremely rare. Remember, too, that just because plants need a certain amount of various nutrients, that does not mean that more of any nutrient is better. Excessive amounts of various nutrients can have an adverse impact on plant growth, often because too much of one nutrient can prevent a plant from taking up and using a different nutrient. All too often, people overfeed their plants N-P-K because it is too easy to buy fertilizers with too much of those elements in them, and then they think they've taken care of their plants' nutritional needs so they don't add anything to the soil (like compost, for example) that adds the micronutrients all plants must have in order to thrive. When was the last time a gardening friend told you "I am going to add some boron to my soil?" (grin) That's an extreme example and my point is that if you just add organic matter to your soil, you likely won't see a boron or copper deficiency. Copper, by the way, becomes unavailable to plants when there is excess nitrogen in the soil so it is common in some places to see copper deficiency symptoms in plants, but the issue more often is that the soil is overly rich in nitrogen and not that the soil lacks copper. Many gardeners focus so heavily on adding nitrogen to their soil, particularly via synthetic fertilizers, that they end up with big, beautiful, leafy plants with foliage so dark green that the leaves almost look blue-green, that they send up doing more harm than good with all that nitrogen. I went to a house once that had three gigantic tomato plants, spaced about 10-12 feet apart from one another. They were huge and their color was so dark that from a distance I thought they were three cedar trees. Up close they looked incredibly lush, thick and gorgeous. It was summer and guess what was missing? There wasn't a single fruit or flower on those plants. Call me crazy, but I thought most people grow tomato plants in order to have tomatoes! Obviously the person who had planted and tended those plants had overfed them nitrogen, and they did it, I am sure, with the best of intentions. They just hadn't learned, yet, that there is such a thing as too much nitrogen. My advice is to add all the organic matter you want to your soil, and it is best if it comes from a variety of sources. Compost (and particularly home-made compost) is my favorite and because we are in a rural area with tons of space I keep multiple large compost piles working all the time, but I add tons of chopped and shredded leaves to the top of each bed as mulch every year, and as they decompose, they too feed the soil. Sometimes I add purchased cow manure to the beds, or mushroom compost. In the early years, I added tons of pine bark and hardwood mulch directly to the soil. I didn't care if the bark and hardwood tied up nitrogen as they decomposed because I knew there were other ways I could add nitrogen to the soil to compensate for that occurrence. What I cared about at that point was breaking up the dense, red, highly compacted clay. Remember that plant roots do not grow, technically, in soil. They actually grow in the air space in between soil pores....so to have great plant growth, you need to break up soil that is tight or highly compacted so that the roots can move about freely. I've had friends lament and moan and groan and talk about their horrible clay soil, only to discover they don't have clay at all---they just have sandy loam or a sandy-silty blend that is so compacted that it resembled clay until they broke it up and added organic matter to prevent it from being compacted back into hard layers of soil again. Gardening is an adventure. People have done it for thousands of years, largely without all the synthetic fertilizers available the last 60 or 70 years. It is possible to garden without ever buying an actual fertilizer product, although I think most people nowadays amend the soil to improve it and then also use limited amounts of the fertilizer of their choice, whether it is organic or synthetic in origin. Focus on giving the soil what it needs, which mostly is lots of organic matter, and the soil will feed the plants. Actually, I should say the plants will take what they need from the soil. They cannot absorb nutrients that aren't there, but once you add organic matter to the soil, most if not all of what they need will be there in the soil just waiting for the plants to use it. In a hot climate like ours, organic matter in the soil decomposes quickly and gets used up quickly, so you must continually add new organic matter to the soil on a regular basis. The easiest way is by mulching and letting the much decompose in place. As it decomposes, it feeds the soil beneath it. I also mulch all my pathways heavily and then, in late winter, I scoop up all the decomposed mulch from the pathways and dump it onto the adjacent growing beds. I then put down a new layer of mulch---usually some combination of grass clippings, old spoiled hay, and leaves that have been chopped up by the lawnmower and caught in the mower's grasscatcher bag. I add mulch throughout the growing season, both to the surfaces of the growing beds and to the pathways. The mulch suppresses weeds, and it helps keep the soil beneath it cool and moist, but the main reason I regularly add more mulch is because it is like doing composting in place. To me, it is so much easier to use my pathways as a sheet composting site than to have a compost pile 100' away and to have to carry one wheelbarrow load after another of compost into the garden. It all goes back to the forest floor analogy---Mother Nature doesn't go through the forest and clean up all the 'garbage' that has fallen to the forest floor, pile it up someplace, let it decompose, and then carry the compost back to the forest---it all happens in place. I try to garden in such a way that most of my soil improvement (after the initial effort to break the ground and add 6-8" of organic matter rototilled into the soil) takes place from the top down as organic matter used as mulch decomposes in place. Don't be afraid that you'll be adding too much organic matter to your soil. Unless you are in the rainiest part of OK, which is eastern OK, where rainfall is often 40-60" or more a year, you likely cannot add enough organic matter to create a problem. In some of the rainiest parts of OK, I do think a person could add so much organic matter that their soil holds too much moisture for too long, but for most of us, that's not going to be an issue. Most of us deal with the opposite issue of not having enough moisture for much of the growing season. Sometimes we humans overthink things and try too hard. The truth is that enriching soil is pretty simple---just add compost. Making compost is also something that some people put huge amounts of effort into---adding this to the pile, adding that---turning the pile, watering it, etc. I am a lazy composter. I pile stuff up. It rots. I use it. Could it be any simpler? No, but it can be a lot more complicated. I feel like my life is busy enough and complicated enough without me making my composting and soil amending complicated. I try to keep it simple. For me, if I try to make gardening too technical and too complicated, it sucks all the fun out of gardening. Above all else, in order for it to be rewarding, gardening has to be fun. I try to focus more on having fun and less on doing things that are technically and perfectly correct. Dawn

I use bermuda grass and then whatever is growing in the pastures...which is virtually everything. I wouldn't use bermuda grass if it had formed seedheads. That batch would go into the compost pile so the heat of composting could sterilize the seeds. To prevent anything in the grass clippings OR the soil from sprouting and growing up through the mulch, lay down newspaper or cardboard and then pile on the mulch. If there is any wind, wet down the cardboard or newspaper as you lay it down so it won't blow away before you pile on the mulch. The newspaper or cardboard serves as a barrier. Weed seed beneath it cannot sprout because of the darkness and if it sprouts, it generally cannot penetrate the paper or cardboard. Weed seed on top of the cardboard or paper may sprout, but any plants that sprout in the mulch can't grow down through it and it is easy to pull them out of the mulch when you notice they've sprouted. As a bonus, earthworms adore newspaper and cardboard so having them on the ground attracts them to your soil and since they improve the soil, that's a plus. A couple of tips: 1) Never use any grass clippings from lawn treated with herbicides, including weed and feed fertilizers; 2) If the grass is holding a lot of moisture after it is cut, I leave it in the garden cart or wagon for a day or two and let it dry and then I spread them on the beds; 3) If you have cut tallish bermuda in humid, hot conditions (especially in late spring/early summer) and think chiggers might be lurking in there, spray yourself with an insect repellent before you spread the grass clippings. Then, after you're done, scrub yourself thoroughly to remove any that may be climbing around on you. I have chigger issues about once a year after spreading grass clippings DH has cut and it usually happens in late May or early June. 4) Be very picky about your grass clippings. If neighbors see and understand what you're doing and offer you theirs, make sure their lawns haven't been chemically-treated. 5) If you have an issue with snails, slugs, pill bugs or sow bugs be sure you leave a little open space (at least 1/4") between the mulch and plant stems so you can spot those little buggies and sluggies and kill them dead. (I just sprinkle Slug-Go Plus in that little open area so they can find something to eat. It is just a bonus that the 'something' they find to eat kills them.) Dawn