In much the same way that most great meals are made using a combination of skill, knowledge, passion, artistry and the right tools as well as, most importantly of all, the best of ingredients, so it is with most great gardens. So it doesn’t matter, for example, how brilliant a chef Alain Ducasse is or how many Michelin stars he has garnered so far over the course of his glittering career (21 at the last count), he’s still never going to be able to rustle up his signature bouillabaisse, sauté gourmand of lobster or truffled chicken quenelles without those essential staples. Likewise, no matter how great a gardener you are, you’re never going to be able conjure up your very own leafy oasis without that most important of horticultural ingredients, which is a half-decent soil.
I say half-decent because perfect soil is something of a horticultural unicorn, an elusive thing that gardeners can spend a lifetime pursuing. A deep, dark, friable loam, rich in organic matter, its structure perfectly intact, its soil life thriving and in balance, free-draining yet moisture-retentive, with a ratio of sand to silt to clay of 40:40:20 and an optimal pH of 6.5 is the gold standard. But in real life, endless permutations of this can be found in our allotments and gardens, from loamy sands, silty loams, and sandy clays to silty clay loams and sandy silt loams.
Of course, most of us, most of the time, don’t use these kinds of technical terms to describe the soils we garden on. Instead, gardeners use what you might call good horse sense when it comes to identifying the bad from the good. We can usually tell, for example, just by the look, the feel and sometimes even the smell of it, if a soil is inclined to be heavy, sticky, cold, or slow to
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