After a number of years you may find that your plants are not responding to fertiliser as they should be, or simply not looking their best. Some soils will compact after a few years and others will loose their nutrients due to leaching or the use of water from a deep bore. There are a number of soil conditioners on the market, and we have tested two of them.

The first one is "Garden Mate", made by Earth Life in Toowoomba. It is a dry powder that is spread over the garden. Results with this product were very good, but as it is very heavy the freight cost to north Queensland is extremely high. We simply could not afford to use it.

We then looked for a locally available product and really hit the jackpot. A company on the Sunshine Coast called Nutri-Tech Solutions Pty Ltd produces a number of organic based products and a couple of them are suitable for native plants (www.nutri-tech.com.au). This company has an outlet in Tolga (Quantum Ag Solutions) where the products are sold at a very reasonable price.

We had a discussion with one of their salesmen and he recommended two products:
1. Huma-Tech Liquid Humus (humic acid) which is a fertiliser stabiliser/magnifier, plant growth stimulant, soil life activator and soil conditioner.

2. Gyp-Life which is micronised natural gypsum combined in a free-flowing suspension with fulvic acid and soil-life metabolites.

As both these products are liquid they can be applied through an irrigation system during watering. This makes their application simple, and is far better than broadcasting a powder.

The results of using these two products can only be described as spectacular. We applied both at the rate of 10 litres per hectare in two applications about a month apart and the change in the plants was quite dramatic. No fertiliser at all was applied but the plants produced a huge amount of new growth, and turned dark green. Especially noticeable were understorey plants that had not grown for several years due to the root competition and soil compaction. These burst into new growth, and many flowered.

The Gyp-Life is of particular use to us as our bore water is high in soda which results in a build up of sodium in the soil.

Beware of many of the Nutri-tech products as they are for agricultural crops and contain large amounts of phosphorus.

For a small garden you can buy a "Fertigator" device from a hardware shop that plugs onto a hose and sucks the mixed liquid from a bucket. These products are easy to apply as you are applying a rate per hectare (which can easily be calculated down to a rate per 100 square metres), not a rate per litre of water which requires expensive equipment. One hectare is 10,000 square metres so 10 litres (10,000 ml) makes it one ml per square metre. So for an area 10 m x 10 m (100 square metres) you would use 100 millilitres.

So don't despair if your garden has lost its glow, there is a solution (no pun intended).

Garry

All those areas are now under mulch just to hide the eyesore, so this product could well be the answer on our 3/4 acre I have just got to try and work it out a bit hard for us oldies, now if I take away the land from the house, huge shed and winding driveway around the house I reckon I would be left with about 1/2 acre so I would need two litres is that right. Many thanks for that info.

MM.

Garry I will stick to just a few points that you have put. Firstly, soil compaction in home gardens is generally as a result of too much foot or vehicle traffic. Just about any Gypsum will react pleasantly with sodium in the soil, provided it is mixed in with the soil. The Gypsum you are recommending has higher amounts of Sulphur I think, and this is not all that necessary in our East Coast acid soils unles you have. You have mentioned rates that are way outside a home gardener (ie. 10 litres per hectare).

Soil that has has organic matter, like compost etc. added to it at reasonably regularly intervals will have adequate amounts of the minerals etc. that you feel are missing in yours. Decomposed organic matter has Humic acid in it.

Also any of the seaweed solutions have the auxins that are supposed to be in the Liquid Humus. In fact stuff like Seasol etc. along with compost or any good decomposed organic matter will have more benefits than Liquid Humus in improving soil structure, nutrient availability.etc.

I also agree with Robert's recommendations for improving soil, despite the fact that he has mentioned Seasol by name. I guess we will all settle on our favourite products, but my local nurseryman is adamant that nothing beats good, homegrown compost when it comes to helping one's soil. It may take longer to break down than a liquid application, but I feel that the benefits will be there for longer afterward. Seeing the state of my soil prior to composting, mulching and the addition of plant life, I was sceptical that it would ever be productive again, but mother nature has worked her magic, and I'm a lifetime subscriber to the joys of composting.

I have 5 acres of 'artificial rainforest' consisting of more than 10,000 plants of all life forms and applying gypsum or any soil conditioner by broadcasting is hard, slow and costly. I have tried seasol and can't say I got much of a result.

It is certainly easy to criticize when you have tried it.

I would certainly like to hear from anyone else who has tried these products.

As trying to lug some of these 25 and 35kgs bags into the shed is getting beyond me and hubby even with the trolley I reckon I would welcome something lighter so I will go looking for it.....MM.

Many native shrubs go into a state sinesence after a while and a simple prune or bushfire will quite effectively prod them back to life.

These products may or may not work but I simply point out that they are not necessary.

My favourite one is the potash to promote flowering pushed by every garden show host and their dog. It would never be that the plant is simply out of its natural range and the environmental queues (length of day, temperature range etc) for flowering are not ideal.

You see all I want to do it fix up the wrong that has been done to our soil, but if people out there continue to rape this beautiful land it wont be long before we will not be able to grow anything.

And on the subject of Potash I do use it, as when my glorious red frangipani's new flower growth is blooming a real washed out pinky red I apply a little around the drip line to get that wonderful colour back again and if that is what I have to use to do that, well so be it.

You also must realise that Queensland climate it nothing like Victoria's having lived there for 45 years I know. You get 120mm of rain in a day once in a lifetime, here we can get more than that in one day and it is nothing it get 300mm over a weekend which washes all the goodies out of the soil then we may not get any rain for five months, and believe me tap water does not do a thing for our plants or soil so try and understand that up here every little helps. Cheers...MM

Just look at what 120 mm did to Melbourne the other day. I don't know what would happen if they had some real rain!

If you have heavy soils and you are irrigating with water that has significant amounts of sodium then you certainly will get a sodic/dispersive soil structure. When dry, a dispersive soil tends to be too hard for roots and seedlings to penetrate. It would be a far better idea to solve the sodium problem before the water enters the soil profile. In sodic soils, clay particles disperse rapidly when the soil becomes wet and it then sets hard when it dries. This is possibly what you see as being compaction. Compaction only occurs as a result of heavy traffic from animals or machines. Solve your sodium problem in your irrigation water and you will save a lot of expense.

Soils with high sodium levels, or sodicity, can certainly benefit from applications of gypsum, which displace the sodium ions to improve soil porosity and water infiltration. Applying Gypsum of just about any sort will improve soil structure thereby improving water infiltration and aeration. Micronised Gypsum is quite common; all it means is that it has been ground very finely. However your stuff, Gyp-Life, is in a liquid form like "Clay-Breaker" so that using the word micronised is strange (but I guess it sounds good). I am not saying it is snake-oil but there are other products out there that are just as good and possibly cheaper.

Humic acid is the product of the microbial decomposition of plant and animal matter. You will find it in all composts etc. When ever we mix organic matter in with our soil we add Humic acid. When we mulch our soils, Humic acid washes into the soil when we water it or it receives rain. It is simple soil chemistry.

M.M., by all means try the stuff but be aware of what is going on in the soil itself like drainage, soil structure pH, etc. before you do anything. Even get a soil test if you can afford it. I never cease to be suspicious of new products that preach magical cures but do not explain why they are better than what we already have, be it toothpaste, anti-aging creams or even fertilisers.

Garry go ahead and use the stuff by all means but that is not to say there is another easier and less costly way.

Soil is not just dirt; it is a diverse community of symbiotic soil organisms, both flora and fauna, micro as well as small animals like earthworms. Each are interdependent on one another as one's waste becomes another's food.

When soil is healthy, so are the plants that live on it. Conversely, when soil is poor, so are the plants that live on it.

Soil is mainly destroyed by human activities through overexploitation and chemical abuse.

To recondition soil, we ought not to employ more chemicals but just restore the ideal condition for soil organisms to thrive and the critical ingredient is "Organic Matter".

In the natural, organic matter comes from "humus".

As the mining of humus from virgin forest to replenish lost humus is not viable, compost, especially aerobically and thermo-phillically manufactured and matured compost is the next best alternative.

To recondition soil to its former glory, just restore the conducive environment for soil organisms to thrive and it all lies in the availability of organic matter.

With the provision of adequate and appropriate organic matter, the soil is reconditioned and plants can expect to thrive in harmony with the excellent health of soil that by natural law is supposed to support higher life forms.

Never try to recondition soil destroyed by chemicals with more chemicals, simply restore the organic matter content and everything else will return to normal healthy soil condition when the community of diverse soil organisms return and thrive in harmony.