For soil to be in good health, water and air and roots must be able to easily flow through. When they cannot because of compaction or poor drainage, soil health never quite lands.
Compaction is generally an easy fix, and mostly drainage is too – though not always. For gardens on a high water table, in the inner city surrounded by concrete, a low point in a high rainfall zone or a slippery, heavy-duty clay – grow on your highest ground as well as doing all the things I suggest. I don’t often recommend raised beds, but if drainage cannot be resolved – they are the way to go.
How to sort drainage
Drainage is absolutely key for plant health. Our crops must have oxygenated soil to be at peak performance. Water displaces air, you see, so if your soil is soggy, it is also airless. Soil biology thumbs its nose at conditions such as these, and herein lies the deep reason for the drainage – without soil life, there cannot be above ground abundance.
Start by soaking up excess water in trees and plants a la natures way – what a difference!
Tag team that with redirecting excess away from food growing areas in simple mulched drains (aka paths). With both those sorted, drainage will start to improve, and will continue to do so as soil improvements kick in.
Sort soil compaction
In healthy soil, tree roots and tap-root plants and soil biology keep soil open and prevent compaction, but where there is a hard-pan or compacted layer they cannot. Poor drainage and compaction often go hand in hand.
Kickstart de-compaction in your food growing areas, by aerating the soil. Then plant it up right away with fast growing companion trees and lots of tap root companion plants before soil settles back down again. Roots are the long-term answer to de-compaction.
- In a small garden use a forksta, an NZ made long tined fork. It’s light and super easy to use – simply stand on the bar and use your body weight to drive the long tines in, then pull it back towards you to open up the soil. Repeat this action over the area you’re about to plant up.
- On a large scale use a single tyne soil ripper.
In the vegie patch
There are two strategies at play here: a good start as well as ongoing aeration.
A good start: Aerate the whole area, then plant up the outside edges of the vegie patch with a mixture of deep rooting shrubs, berries, dwarf fruit trees and perennials. In a large garden, plant strips up the centre too. Plant a mixture of companions with a focus on tap roots like dandelion, comfrey, chicory, parsley, bishops flower or daikon that open and aerate soils.
Ongoing aeration: Chances are you will need to continue to aerate garden beds for a good few years to come. Do so once or twice a year from when soils dry out in spring through till autumn. As companions stretch out their roots ever deeper, and soil health builds the need will fade away.
Around fruit trees
As far as fruit trees are concerned, aerating is a one-off thing that helps fruit trees get their roots down and out – wide-ranging roots are key for tree health. Companion plants will drive the transformation home.
- Plants lots of tap root companions beneath your fruit trees.
- Plant fast growing companion trees like Italian Alder, Tree Lucerne, Silverberry, Goumi berry, Brush wattle or Tithonia – choose ones that suit your soil, climate and height requirements. Use these as shelter and/ or plant amongst fruit trees. Keep them in check by chopping and dropping limbs for an awesome soil improving mulch, or when they start to get too big, remove them (leave the roots in!) and mulch them up.
Brilliant advice once again! Was just saying to my hubby, I can’t believe I get this amazing advice just sent to my inbox! Truely so grateful for you sharing your wisdom Kath!
How lovely of you to share your appreciation Rachel.
K x
I agree with Rachel! You’re so generous with your wisdom Kath! Thank you heaps
❤️ Kx
Kath, we have a very popular strawberry patch in our community garden. Unfortunately twitch has got in. How can we best get rid of the twitch. We do plan to lift the strawberries and plant in barrels, but need to clear the area
Twitch – oh thats tricky with little old strawberries, but not so hard to get rid of though it does take time. Lift the strawbs out and clean the twitch from the roots then slash the twitch right back and smother the area with black plastic. Leave the black plastic down until the grass has died right off – during this time if any pokes out the edges cut it back so as not to give it any fuel from photosynthesis. This may well take all of next summer – when its hot the smothering really does its thing.
Then sow it thickly with a mixed green crop before resuming planting vegies, or whatever you are using it for, planting right away is the thing. Little bits may well return but the job then becomes whipping them out there and then.
Kia ora Kath. Firstly I’d like to share my gratitude to you for all you do to support and share your wealth of knowledge in the garden so we can grow mauri rich kai! I have a wee compost question/wondering. Hubby has access to loads of clean cuttings from bushes/hedges (mostly native). With our property not yet able to support the amount of compost I’ll need in spring I’m keen to make as much as possible! Can you suggest the best way to compost this kind of material? With what? The only other thing we have right now en mass is grass clippings from the paths we keep cleared on the land. Can I expect to make compost from these two main ingredients? Feeling doubtful after having pawed over your book and website. Much appreciation and gratitude. B
How awesome to be compost keen! Yay! Have a play with what you got and try it out. Pretty hard without seeing it or having you on hand for and q and a.
Tree clippings (cant quite imagine what these are) have high potential – as the leafy outside twiggy edges of trees are jamming with enzymes, nutrients, hormones – they’re a super food. If they are chips then just pile them up and let them breakdown. If not I’d experiment, with various mixes and see what happens.
Let the grass grow as long as you can before chopping, that way its got a bit more stalk and stem. Whats happening either side of the path? Can you harvest ‘homemade’ hay – best compost ingredient!
Enjoy!
Hi Kath,
I am in Northland, on highly plastic clay and am creating an orchard in my septic field (NW facing slope). Year 2 and all seems to be going well but I’m concerned about water logging (have pulled the pipes to the surface but still very dense and soggy). I’m planting lots of comfrey, artichokes and other tap roots. Is it worth getting in there with my forksta or might that risk damage to the tree roots? Any other suggestions?
Thanks, Briar
Hey Briar, tree roots and soggy soil aren’t friends. In your kind of soil I’d be going for higher ground, especially for the trees like peaches, apricots, citrus that absolutely must have free drainage, and avoiding the septic field. With your rainfall and soil combo extra water really isn’t required. I cant really give much more without seeing the situation and talking it through, but I can say for sure, using the forksta now wont achieve anything – you need to move the water away.
best K x