Your Soil Successful gardening depends upon soil quality.
Organic matter is a vital part of soil quality.
Organic matter makes soil easier to work, improves water and nutrient retention for easy absorption by plants, improves soil aeration, and helps the soil warm up earlier in the spring. Since soil organisms constantly break down organic matter, gardeners need to build and regularly replenish their soil organic matter. Green manure crops are high in nutrients and are an important and inexpensive way to produce organic matter for the garden. Instead of buying and bringing home bags or truckloads of compost or manure, bring home some seeds to plant a green manure crop. The name green manure is given to any crop which is grown only to be tilled back into the soil.