The Spruce / Nez Riaz
The first step to creating a garden is preparing the planting bed.
Choosing the right soil for your project saves you time, labor and cost.
What Is Topsoil?
The Spruce / Nez Riaz
Topsoil is the uppermost layer of the earth’s crust composed of clay, sand and silt.
It consists of minerals broken down from different types of rock, wood, leaves and other organic materials.
What Is Garden Soil?
The ideal soil composition for gardens isloamconsisting of 40 percent silt, 40 percent sand and 20 percent clay.
Garden soil is topsoil amended with organic or inorganic fertilizers to support edible, ornamental and landscape plants.
It may be screened or unscreened and contain higher percentages of sand or clay.
Unscreened topsoil includes small rocks, sticks, woods chips and other organic solids.
It does not contain inorganic fertilizers.
Standard topsoilmixtures are rated for specific landscaping projects such as planting lawns, trees and shrubs and flower gardens.
Topsoil is practical and less costly for large garden projects that require cubic yards of soil.
Garden soil can be added to long-standing flower and vegetable gardens to replace nutrients plants have used up.
This is a good choice for the top layer in raised beds and container gardening.
It is already broken down to drain well and includes nutrients immediately available to plants.
Use topsoil to build depth before adding garden soil.
