Planting in Bagged Soil

This is pretty indicative of what my soil is before being ammended. This has been dug to ammend but nothing had been added yet. You can see the little chunks that are obviously not loam. They are also impossible to break up when either too dry or too wet; for different reasons but the result is the same. I can't dig after rain and to dig in the heat of Summer requires watering prior to digging. This year we had a lot of rain in the Spring that left me with much to plant late in the season and I resorted to planting in ground with bagged soil. This is a practice I do not recommend. It is definitely emergency only strategy and should never be used to plant perennials. The problem with planting in only the soil dumped out of a bag rather than mixing that soil with your current garden soil thoroughly before planting is that most plants will typically take the path of least resistance to both water and sun. They may grow roots through the bagged soil and then when those roots hit the permanent soil, which would take more strength to grow through, they will instead curve around the hole and start to grow circular much like a root bound potted plant. The risk then is that these plants never actually set root in the permanent garden soil and a good wind can pick them right up out of the ground to leave them lying in the garden with their tidy little round root balls. Having said all that, if we get the same wet Spring next year, I fully intend to plant all of my dahlia in bagged soil. I figure since they get lifted in fall, it is not such a big risk with setting root and I want earlier flowers next year so I won't be waiting out the weather as long as I did this year.