One thing I have a hard time grasping is: how do you find out whether your soil quality is still good enough? How do you know when nutrients are depleted, and you need add fertilizer? How do you know when there is sufficient nutrients, and you shouldn't add fertilizer? Poeple just tell me "don't think too much about it, add fertilizer once in a while" but that to me feels lile flying blind.
I don't have a garden, only a balcony with a few boxes of dirt. Gardening manuals seem to tell me to replace all dirt every year (or 2-3 years at most) in order to renew soil quality and get rid of diseases. That seems... increadibly wasteful? Are there no alternatives? Why do real gardens and farms not need to replace all their soil so often?
I don't have a garden, only a balcony with a few boxes of dirt. Gardening manuals seem to tell me to replace all dirt every year (or 2-3 years at most) in order to renew soil quality and get rid of diseases. That seems... increadibly wasteful? Are there no alternatives? Why do real gardens and farms not need to replace all their soil so often?