9 Easy Ways to Improve Your Soil

Improving your soil is always a good use of time! It helps future plant species gain all the nutrients, moisture, and air they need to survive. It also boosts beneficial fungi, bacteria, and archaea belowground. Join native plant gardener Jerad Bryant and discover nine easy ways to amend your garden’s soil.

Pitchfork and gloves in a wheelbarrow full of compost to easily improve fall soil

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Soil improvement is often an afterthought; we think of boosting soils when we have lots of available mulch. This happens during autumn in temperate climates as fall leaves, grass clippings, and dead wood become widely available. It also occurs throughout the year in tropical climates where evergreen species dump leaves year-round.

Aside from adding organic matter to your garden, there are other easy ways to improve soil performance. We’ll undo past gardener’s mistakes, help nature heal itself, and remove pesky weeds. Together, these tasks make a comprehensive strategy for creating lush plants and fertile, rich soil.

Whether you live in Florida, Kansas, or Washington, these techniques aid gardeners looking to promote soil fertility, biodiversity, and healthy plant species. Follow along to see which of these nine strategies will work best for you and your garden setup.

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Plant Cover Crops

A dense patch of flowering vetch, with vibrant purple flowers dotting the landscape. The thin, delicate green stems have small, lance-shaped leaves, providing a soft, wispy appearance as they sway among the purple blossoms.
Use them instead of mulch, and dig them into the soil just as they flower to release readily available plant nutrients.

Cover crops heal the earth, so you don’t have to! Some grow during intense summer heat or extreme winter cold, covering the soil and letting beneficial microbes thrive. Plants like oats, rye, and fava beans grow roots that hold onto the dirt, insulating the area so it’s warm for worms and bugs. Use them instead of mulch, and dig them into the soil just as they flower to release readily available plant nutrients.

Leguminous cover crops fix nitrogen in their roots, transforming the molecule into a form that plants can digest. They have knobby root structures called nodes that host bacteria. The bacteria give the plants nitrogen in exchange for sugars, thus forming a symbiotic relationship

Some soils already have nitrogen-fixing bacteria present, but others lack them. You can innoculate leguminous cover crop seeds with store-bought nitrogen-fixing bacteria to ensure they thrive in your garden’s dirt. 

Here’s a list of beneficial plants that blanket the soil well in home gardens:

Common NameScientific Name
Fava BeansVicia faba
Hairy VetchVicia villosa
Crimson CloverTrifolium incarnatum
Lacey PhaceliaPhacelia tanacetifolia
BorageBorago officinalis

Use warm-loving cover crops during summer and plant cold-tolerant ones in autumn and winter. Dig them into the soil or cover them with mulch before they sprout seeds, as many of the species readily reseed. You don’t have to till them! Simply bend their stalks, rake them into the soil, and add compost or leaves in a thick layer above them.

Loosen Clay Dirt

A shovel stands upright, featuring a sturdy metal grip contrasting against a smooth wooden shaft. Its blade, concealed beneath clumped brown soil, suggests recent use in gardening or construction tasks.
Adding organic matter, incorporating cover crops, and layering mulches help break up clay soils.

Clay soils are thick and poorly draining, making them unsuitable for thousands of plants. Some species prefer clay, like swamp or bog dwellers, although most will need fertile, well-draining, and porous earth. Loosen the clay, and trees, shrubs, and perennials will loosen it as they sprout roots deep below ground.

Adding organic matter, incorporating cover crops, and layering mulches let clay soils break up. Organic matter includes things like leaves, kitchen scraps, and plant clippings. They inject structure, nutrients, and beneficial microbes into the dirt that help break the clay up further. Cover crops grow roots that crumble big particles, and thick layers of mulch protect soil critters that turn clay into beneficial humus.

Soil aerators are another excellent option for disrupting clay particles. You may use tools for lawn aeration or try stabbing a pitchfork into the earth where clay is present. New gardeners inheriting old gardens should try the French Intensive method—you’ll dig deep, add organic matter, and place the dirt back on top. Do this once in the ground or raised beds, and it’ll have lasting effects for decades. 

Amending clay takes some time, and you likely won’t see improvements for a year or longer. Plant clay-loving species into the garden in the meantime—they’ll break up clay as they attract beneficial microbes and use their roots to split large dirt chunks. Use clay-tolerant wildflowers like black-eyed Susans or vegetables like lettuce and cole crops

Thicken Sandy Soils

A focused image of light brown sandy soil in big and small clumps.
Mix organic matter into sandy soils; materials like compost or leaf mold are particularly useful.

Sandy soils, like clay ones, aren’t optimal for most plant species. They’re incredibly free-draining, dry, and too loose for many plants to get a good footing. What’s interesting is the ways you amend clay soils are similar to the techniques for thickening sandy onesorganic matter, mulch, and cover crops are the three main solutions. 

Mix organic matter into sandy soils; materials like compost or leaf mold are particularly useful. They inoculate the ground with fertility, soil microbes, and larger creatures like worms. They also create air pockets underground so plants’ roots breathe easily. Mix it in during fall or early spring to help crops grow well for the next summer.

After amending the sand, add cover crops or thick layers of mulch on top. Either of these materials insulates and protects the ground so that soil microbes and creatures can do their work without disruptions. Dig in cover crops while they’re flowering, and let mulch decay as long as it takes.

Avoid Repetitive Tilling

A gardener wearing black boots, using a machine, tilling the soil in a garden.
Tilled soil loses the intricate network of microbes and creatures that makes it resilient and strong.

The key to healthy soil is insulation and protection! Disruption destroys worm pathways, fungal mycelia networks, and sensitive plant roots. Tilling is the main offender—it uses large, metal blades to chop up large dirt particles. Although it creates loose, crumbly soil this season, the destruction it causes has long-lasting effects

Tilled soil loses the intricate network of microbes and creatures that makes it resilient and strong. It takes years for worms, fungi, and bacteria to move back into the ground again. There’s a current movement to shift our agricultural systems from tilling to no-till for these reasons. Untouched grounds allow vegetables to grow with minimal pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers. The soil network keeps them strong!

Instead of killing worms and soil creatures, practice no-till gardening instead! You’ll see results next growing season as you use fewer chemicals while the plants protect themselves with minimal outside aid. 

Remove Synthetic Materials

Close-up of a piece of burlap resting beside a wooden stake on the green grass in a garden.
Organic landscaping materials like untreated burlap and cotton fabric benefit your garden!

Synthetic materials impede the flow of nutrients, water, and air underground. They create barriers that roots struggle to root into, and they disrupt the natural decay of organic materials that occurs regularly in healthy dirt. Materials like landscape fabric, black plastic, and weed covers persist in the environment longer than we intend them to!

I recently dug up over ten square feet of landscaping plastic from my yard. Landscapers used to apply it to kill weeds—they’d put plastic on top of the weeds, then place thick layers of mulch on the plastic. It looks pretty for a year, but eventually, weed seeds fall into the mulch and sprout! Not only is landscape fabric ineffective in the long run, but it also causes more harm than good when it stays outdoors for more than a year. 

Although it may take an entire day or weekend to remove landscape plastic or fabric, the effort is well worth the reward. Plants will put down deeper roots and grow more resilient to shifting weather, pests, and diseases. Water will flow as it should instead of pooling atop the fabric. 

Organic landscaping materials like untreated burlap and cotton fabric benefit your garden! Fear not when using organic landscaping materials, as they naturally decay at an average rate. The only materials to watch for consist of plastic or synthetic fibers.

Leave the Leaves

Brown, crisp fallen leaves from various species cover the surface, layered densely with a mix of colors ranging from light amber to deep rust, atop the damp ground.
When you leave the leaves in your yard, you mimic the forest’s methods and create a cohesive ecosystem.

Fall leaves are the cheapest material for improving soils—they’re virtually free! They appear abundantly in autumn as trees and shrubs lose them before winter. In nature, these leaves form thick mulch mats on forest floors that protect bugs, keep microbes thriving, and insulate sensitive roots. When you leave the leaves in your yard you mimic the forest’s methods and create a cohesive ecosystem. 

Leaves are rich in carbon, a nutrient that all plants use. It’s what trees and shrubs use to make wood that stands the test of time. When you add leaves to your garden, you inject the space with carbon that other species can use. You’ll recycle these leafy nutrients so they stay available, rather than sending them to remain forever in a landfill.

If your neighbors have leaves and want to get rid of them, ask if you can take them instead! Fall leaves make nutritious compost, leaf mold, and mulch. They’re essential for improving soils without breaking the bank, and there are many different ways to turn fall leaves into garden gold.  

Add Compost or Organic Mulch

A person wearing black gloves spreads a thick layer of brown mulch across a garden bed, covering the surface for moisture retention or weed prevention.
Add these amendments on the ground in a layer one to three inches thick.

One of the best soil amendments is compost! It’s made of old debris that decays into crumbly, black, and fertile humus. Humus is the end product of decay and an essential component of healthy gardens. Introduce compost regularly to keep humus levels high, or use a similar organic mulch that breaks down into humus.

Some other ideal options are straw, leaf mold, fall leaves, wood chips, or organic mulch mixes from a garden center or plant nursery. Add these amendments on the ground in a layer one to three inches thick. It’ll insulate the area and continuously supply nutrients like carbon and nitrogen.

Would you like to make compost? It’s easy enough with the right materials. You’ll need browns and greens—browns are carbon-rich waste products like dry leaves, paper, and straw. Greens are fleshy material with lots of nitrogen; think kitchen waste, grass clippings, and plant scraps. 

Combine these two in a pile using a ratio of 1:2 or 1:3 parts greens to browns. Turn the pile regularly, and keep it moist but not soggy. You’ll have ready compost in a month or longer! Learn more about creating homemade compost with this easy-to-follow guide.

Pull Weeds

A hand wearing a white glove pulling out weeds from the ground.
Remove weeds before they sprout seeds to limit their spread.

Improve soils easily and instantly by removing invasive non-native weeds! Not all weeds are bad. Native weedy species evolved to grow in our local environments, and they help rather than hinder soil improvement. Non-native weeds are monsters! They lack the pressures that keep them in check in their native range, so they exponentially grow out of control.

Pull weeds before they sprout seeds to limit their spread. Some, like Himalayan blackberries, will spread rampantly once they grow to a certain height. Remove them when they’re young, and you prevent infestations from occurring. Others, like dandelions, are less harmful and rarely creep into natural spaces. You get to choose which ones to keep and which to banish forever!

After pulling weeds, you leave bare soil where you can put perennials, vegetables, or woody shrubs and trees. Continuously adding new non-weedy plants boosts your garden’s biodiversity, and their roots anchor onto healthy soils to keep them safe and secure. 

Fertilize Nutrient-Poor Gardens

Close-up of a gardener's hand adding fresh, loose soil to a glass test tube.
The best way to know what nutrients your garden needs is to complete a soil testing kit.

Some gardens require fertilizing to boost their nutritional content. If you inherit an old yard or are reusing old potting soil, you’ll want to add some organic fertilizer before putting plants down. The best way to know what nutrients your garden needs is to complete a soil testing kit. These reveal organic matter content, nutrient values, and soil pH.

You may also use weeds as a determinant of the nutrient deficiencies in your garden. Some species grow in exclusive conditions where these levels are high or low. Burdock shows high potassium and low calcium, while wood sorrels indicate low calcium and high magnesium. These are two examples, but dozens of weedy species are good indicators of excesses and deficiencies.

If you regularly apply compost or organic mulch you probably won’t need to fertilize the garden. Some plants that benefit from regular applications are vegetables, annual flowers, and heavy-feeding perennials. Use an organic fertilizer with mycorrhizae or beneficial bacteria in it for the best results.

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