Strpos() Works Only Sometimes

The trim() perform strips whitespace from the beginning and end of a string and returns the resulting string. The characters it strips by default are newlines and carriage returns , horizontal and vertical tabs , end-of-string characters (), and areas. You also can move it a second parameter containing a listing of characters to strip as an alternative of this default listing. Depending in your particular purpose, you may like to make use of the ltrim() or rtrim() features as a substitute which carry out the identical operation, but you choose which aspect of the string to affect. Strings, integers, floats, constants, booleans, and particular characters are all common elements of datasets. When working with strings, it's often typical to wish to alter the capitalization, examine for further areas, extract a certain portion or in any other case regulate or tweak the info ultimately. Cutting the clusters and displaying simply the required information is feasible utilizing the Google BigQuery SUBSTRING perform. This operate permits customers to see, edit, and alter particular sections of strings and byte knowledge. If the geometry just isn't a 3D line object, it returns its 2D size. Calculations are at all times planimetric in the Spatial Reference System of this geometry, and the models of the returned size will match the units for the SRS. This differs from the calculations performed by the $length function, which will perform ellipsoidal calculations based mostly on the project's ellipsoid and distance unit settings. To get the substring between two characters, we'll use the REGEXP_SUBSTR() perform. This perform returns the value of the substring that matches the common expression, or NULL if no match is found. By default, the strstr() perform returns a portion of the main string, ranging from the substring and going to the tip of the main string. It will return false if the substring doesn't exist inside the principle string. Calculations are at all times planimetric within the Spatial Reference System of this geometry, and the models of the returned perimeter will match the models for the SRS. This differs from the calculations performed by the $perimeter operate, which is ready to perform ellipsoidal calculations primarily based on the project's ellipsoid and distance unit settings. If the default approximate offered by this technique is insufficient, specify the optionally available densify fraction argument.

Specifying this argument performs a section densification earlier than computing the discrete Hausdorff distance. The parameter units the fraction by which to densify every segment. Each section might be split into a variety of equal-length subsegments, whose fraction of the entire size is closest to the given fraction. Decreasing the densify fraction parameter will make the space returned method the true Hausdorff distance for the geometries. Only usable in an embedded kind context, this operate returns the present, unsaved worth of a subject within the father or mother form presently being edited. This will differ from the mother or father feature's actual attribute values for features which are presently being edited or haven't yet been added to a parent layer. When you create a category or perform you need to create a unit check for every conduct it will need to have. At a really fundamental level you want to make sure it errors when you ship it unhealthy arguments and ensure it works when you send it legitimate arguments. This will help make certain that whenever you make modifications to this class or perform afterward in the growth cycle that the old performance continues to work as anticipated. The only various to this would be var_dump() in a check.php, which is not any method to build an utility - massive or small. Data may be filtered in another way primarily based on its objective. For example, when unfiltered overseas input is handed into HTML web page output, it can execute HTML and JavaScript on your site! This is named Cross-Site Scripting and can be a very harmful attack.

The strpos() function will return the place of the primary incidence of a substring in a string. This example is a little different from the reply above in that we have wrapped the whole set of concatenated substrings in parentheses and cast the result within the date format. We might also forged it as timestamp, which includes additional precision . In this case, we're not pulling the hours out of the original subject, so we'll simply persist with date. If you're not using the SMTP settings for then you should make certain to make use of the correct settings. As e mail servers are getting stricter with sending messages, you could need to use specific SMTP settings. The settings you have proven above point out that you're not using InMotion because the host. However, as I even have indicated above, the error message indicates a sending error as a end result of it could not connect with the server. Double-check your settings after which it ought to work properly. The operate checks the string and returns a boolean true in case it exists and false otherwise. However, understand that str_contains is case-sensitive. Ensure that the substring used to search is in the proper case, or you would use the strtolower() method. String capabilities are built-in language constructs and features that are designed to govern and show strings.

These features embrace trimming whitespace, correctly escaping strings for safety, splitting strings, and lots of more. This will act as more of a reference than an entire tutorial, as there are many features to cover. It will include proper utilization, a description of what the operate does, in addition to what the function returns under normal circumstances. PHP 7.four launched assist for weak references, and in PHP 8, that concept was expanded additional into a new WeakMap class. To understand what these features do, a slight tangent into PHP garbage collection is important. When an information construction, corresponding to an object, is created, the allocated reminiscence remains until all references within the script to that data have been destroyed. Once the item is now not referenced, PHP will launch that memory for one thing else. For a longer-running PHP course of, the result's, functionally, a memory leak. PHP eight has a lot more than the above to supply; there are also loads of new options. Two of our earlier articles on PHP attributes and match expressions are recommended reading for details on those particular options.

Readers are additionally inspired to review the PHP eight.0 launch notes for bug fixes, and the project's RFC part on PHP eight for an exhaustive listing of modifications and enhancements. PHP eight has made some vital changes to various aspects of error dealing with, each for built-in capabilities and within the language itself. One specific change that stands out is the @ operator, which is used in PHP to dam errors, warnings, and notices for a single expression. In precise fact, PHPStan doesn't only perform autoload in the case of unknown classes, but it additionally does so for all courses. We have lots of old code which was written before the looks of nameless lessons. We create a given class in one file and then instance it straightaway and, possibly, additionally call some strategies. If you autoload these information, it results in errors because the code isn't being run in its usual surroundings. Static code analysers simply read code and try to find errors. They are able to perform each quite simple and straightforward checks , in addition to 'smarter' checks (such as finding non-matching sorts, race situations or vulnerabilities in the code). The key's that analysers don't run the code; somewhat, they analyse this system textual content and take a look at it for typical (or not-so-typical) errors. In this fast tip, we went over three alternative ways of checking if a string incorporates a substring in PHP. You can use any of these capabilities relying on what data you want from the string. When you utilize strpos() to check for a substring, just be sure you use the strict inequality operator. This is as a outcome of the position returned by strpos() starts with 0, and zero can also equate to false. Using a regular equality check will give you false negatives if the substring is correct firstly of the main string. You can use the PHP strpos() function to get the place of the first prevalence of a substring in a string. The perform will return false if it can not discover the substring.

This group accommodates features to create or manipulate keys and values of map knowledge constructions (also known as dictionary objects, key-value pairs, or associative arrays). Unlike the listing data construction where values order matters, the order of the key-value pairs within the map object is not relevant and values are recognized by their keys. Calculations are always planimetric in the Spatial Reference System of this geometry, and the items of the returned area will match the items for the SRS. This differs from the calculations performed by the $area function, which will perform ellipsoidal calculations based mostly on the project's ellipsoid and area unit settings. Gets an setting variable and returns its content as a string. If the variable is not discovered, NULL might be returned. This is handy to inject system particular configuration like drive letters or path prefixes. Definition of setting variables depends on the working system, please verify along with your system administrator or the working system documentation how this can be set. Many frameworks provide their very own abstraction layer which may or may not sit on top of PDO. Yii helps array, Gettext, and database-based translation, and includes a messages extractor. PHP helps first-class features, meaning that a function may be assigned to a variable. Both user-defined and built-in features could be referenced by a variable and invoked dynamically. Functions may be passed as arguments to other features (a characteristic known as Higher-order Functions) and capabilities can return different features. As many capabilities (i.e. strpos(), strstr(), substr(), etc.) embrace false among the many potential return varieties, the false pseudo-type can be supported. You cross strstr() a haystack to be searched and a needle to be found. If a precise match of the needle is found, the strstr() function returns the haystack from the needle onward. If it does not find the needle, it will return false.

If the needle occurs greater than as quickly as, the returned string will begin from the first occurrence of the needle. I tried operating it from localhost, but when I submit through the post-button, it takes me to the Phpmailerautoload.php file. Use the next perform to filter out words from user enter. It works by having a pre-set array of words which might be to be excluded, this array is then looped by way of and every merchandise is used to switch any situations of that word within the text. The regular expression makes use of the \b character class, which stands for any word boundary. This way you aren't getting the center of phrases being filtered out when they aren't meant to be. Just-in-Time class loading is slightly difficult, and can most likely require particular benchmarking to see which technique works greatest for a given project. As a common rule, if a project accommodates just a few dozen lessons, the autoloader might be most efficient with a static map . If there are lots of, a file-based method (checking at runtime to see whether or not a thusly-named file exists) shall be better, significantly on a Linux server. One of the fields in a MySQL database is a varchar() that was populated using a checkbox technique and may comprise a couple of response. In this case i have blue, yellow, green and wish to check if the sphere incorporates blue before echoing the assertion to the display screen. The below in fact works if the field ONLY accommodates blue. The second type added is the static kind, which applies only to method return values. In PHP, static is a special class name referring to the category a method was called from, even when the tactic was inherited; it is called late static binding. Phan doesn't understand these PHPDoc hints, however on this code the category of the item could also be obtained from the name of the constant passed to the create()method.

Phan permits you to write a plugin which activates when the returned worth of the method is analysed. And, with the assistance of this plugin, you'll have the ability to let the analyser know which explicit type the method returns. These features are best should you do not want to get any further information about the substrings, like their position. People who need extra details about the match should consider using the functions below. Three new capabilities have been added in PHP eight to assist us work out if a string accommodates one other substring. Please keep in mind that all these capabilities are case delicate, and checking for the existence of an empty substring with them will at all times return true. A lot of times after I am working with strings in PHP, it becomes important to verify if a string incorporates another substring. PHP has a lot of features that can assist you manipulate strings any way you like. We shall be using some of these functions right now to discover ways to verify if a string incorporates a specific substring. If known as with a 'feature' parameter only, the perform returns true if the specified function from the present layer is selected. Expression - an optionally available expression to judge on the options from the target layer. If not set, the function will simply return a boolean indicating whether there might be at least one match. The three commonest types of messages are errors, notices and warnings. These have totally different ranges of severity; E_ERROR, E_NOTICE, and E_WARNING. Errors are fatal run-time errors and are usually attributable to faults in your code and must be mounted as they'll cause PHP to stop executing. Notices are advisory messages brought on by code that may or could not cause issues through the execution of the script, execution just isn't halted. Warnings are non-fatal errors, execution of the script won't be halted.

One of the good advantages Gettext has over customized framework i18n packages is its in depth and powerful file format. "Oh man, that's quite exhausting to grasp and edit by hand, a simple array can be easier! " Make no mistake, purposes like Poedit are right here to help - lots. You can get the program from their website, it's free and out there for all platforms. It's a pretty simple tool to get used to, and a very powerful one on the identical time - utilizing all features Gettext has obtainable. Pluralization defines the foundations required between distinct languages to interoperate strings containing numbers and counters. PHP units up two special variables based mostly on the arguments your script is run with. $argc is an integer variable containing the argument depend and $argv is an array variable containing each argument's worth. The first argument is always the name of your PHP script file, on this case hello.php. This operate accepts a single character as the needle, but it could settle for a string of any size. The elective offset parameter determines the point throughout the haystack to start looking out. Most of the features offered in this lesson are specific to certain knowledge sorts. However, utilizing a selected perform will, in plenty of circumstances, change the data to the appropriate sort. Numerous approaches exist in Google BigQuery for sorting strings and bytes data types, nevertheless, probably the most typically used parameter is the ANSI SQL mannequin BigQuery SUBSTR perform. This helps the principle instructions listed above as properly. In server the data is deposited & an error message exhibiting that it can't send e-mail as a end result of it cannot connect to smtp host. Sorry for the continued issues with the PHP mailer issue. It's attainable that a port is being blocked, or could additionally be there's another factor, however we cannot troubleshoot the connection to Google's SMTP server as we've no control over it.

Try testing your outgoing settings in an e mail shopper like Thunderbird/Outlook. If they work there, then they should work in the code. If they're working in the e-mail client and not in the code, then there could also be one thing small that you're lacking within the code. $_GET is an array of variables handed to the current script through the URL parameters. $_POST is an array of variables handed to the present script by way of the HTTP POST methodology. Print out a full URL for a hyperlink will sometimes mess up your formatting, especially if you URL is type of long. This could be the case in case you are linking to a Google search web page, or have an automatic script that reveals numerous URLs of indeterminate length. The following function will reduce any URL longer than forty five characters by splitting it in two and join them up with a simple string. By default, perform arguments are copies of the unique. This is useful in isolating scope, but can result in increased reminiscence use and processing time. For heavy data, like a large array, it's higher to arrange the perform to accept the argument by reference. The default action is to break on the first "."after $limit characters after which pad with "...". That implies that the output will at all times be longer than$limit characters, however only as far as the following $breakcharacter. Further down the web page you can find a function that returns a string that is at all times shorter than $limit. PHPStan will read the PHP code from the passed recordsdata. If it encounters unknown classes, then it will attempt to autoload them and perceive their interface by reflection. You also can configure a path to the Bootstrap file through which you can configure autoload, in addition to include() some extra information in order to simplify the PHPStan analysis. Do we all know what the explode() function could return?

Create List Of Unique Values From Dictionary

Here firstly, we have imported the Counter() function from the collections library. Secondly, we have taken the input list and printed the input list. From the input list, we have created a new list in which only the elements whose key values are present once are stored.

Finally, we have printed the empty list that contains unique values now and the count of the list. Hence, we can see all the unique elements in the list. In this tutorial, you learned how to work with duplicate items in Python lists. First, you learned how to identify duplicate elements and how to count how often they occur.

You then learned how to remove duplicate elements from a list using the set() function. From there, you learned how to remove duplicate items from a list of dictionaries as well as a list of lists in Python. Here firstly, we have taken an input list and printed the input list. Secondly, we have converted the input list into a set. Set, which is the built-in data type in python, contains only the unique elements in it. Thirdly, we have stored all the values in another list.

Look at the program to understand the implementation of the approach. To get the elements in a particular order, we have used the sorted() method. By using for loop in list comprehension, we have stored only the unique values from the dictionary into the result list. Python's lists can be converted to sets based on the assumption that each set contains only unique elements. This is the simplest way to count the unique values within a Python list. In addition to counting unique values, a dictionary, or collection, can also be used.

This above method of converting a list to a set only works if a list is hashable. So it's fine for strings, numbers, tuples, and any immutable objects. But it won't work for unhashable elements like lists, sets, or dictionaries.

So if you have a list of nested lists, your only choice is to use that "bad" for loop. That's why "bad" is in quotes - it's not always bad. In this method, we will use the built-in data type of python called Set.

We will take the input in the form of a list then convert it into a set. As we all know set doesn't contain any duplicate elements in it. It will contain only the unique elements in it, and we will print the length of the list using the length() function.

We can use a list comprehension to declare the elements in the list without using any loop. We will use the list comprehension along with the dict() and zip() function to create a counter for the unique elements. Then we will simply print the keys of the dictionary.

In this method, we will be using a counter function from the collections library. In this, we will be creating a dictionary with the help of the counter() function. The keys will be the unique elements, and the values will be the number of that unique element. By taking the keys from the dictionary, we will be creating a list and print the length of the list.

Numpy has a unique() method for counting unique values. Unique() returns unique values and takes a list of arrays as an input. It also counts the number of unique elements, if the return_counts parameter is set to true.

In Python the set method stores only unique values it will automatically remove duplicate values from the list when we apply the function 'set()'. In python, the set is an unordered collection of elements and we can easily remove or update value from it. Create a simple dataframe with dictionary of lists say columns name are A B C D E with duplicate elements. Secondly, we have taken an empty list and a count variable which is set to 0. Thirdly, we have traversed the list from the start and checked if the value is not present in the empty list or not.

If the value is not present in the empty list, we increase the count value by 1 and append that value in the empty list. If we find that the elements are present in the list, we do not append it in the empty list, and neither increases the count value by 1. In Python, we have duplicate elements present in the list. Sometimes, we occur in a situation where we need to count unique values in the list in Python. So we will be discussing the various ways to find the unique values in an array or list.

And also, print the number of unique elements present in the list. We can use the counter function from the collections library to print all the unique elements. The counter function creates a dictionary where the keys are the unique elements and the values are the count of that element. Using the pandas dataframe nunique function with default parameters gives a count of all the distinct values in. Here firstly, we have imported the numpy module as an alias np.

Unique() which will keep only the unique values of the list and stored in another list. Let's take a look at how we can remove duplicates from a list of dictionaries in Python. You'll often encounter data from the web in formats that resembles lists of dictionaries. Being able to remove the duplicates from these lists is an important skill to simplify your data. A Counter is a dict subclass for counting hashable objects. It is a collection where elements are stored as dictionary keys and their counts are stored as dictionary values.

Counts are allowed to be any integer value including zero or negative counts. The simplest way to count unique values in a Python list is to convert the list to a set considering that all the elements of a set are unique. You can also count unique values in a list using a dictionary, the collections. By using the frozenset() method we can easily get the unique values from a nested list. In Python, the frozenset() is used to return an immutable object.

While the element of the set can be modified anytime and it will check the condition if the argument is provided then frozenset is created. You can also count unique values in a list using a dictionary, the collections.Counter class, Numpy.unique() or Pandas.unique(). In this tutorial, we will learn to extract unique values from a dictionary in Python. Dictionary in Python is a data type for an ordered collection of data values. Dictionaries hold a key-value pair where each value is linked with a unique key. Since a dictionary key cannot have duplicate elements, duplicate values are ignored like set().

Passing a dictionary to list() returns a list with dictionary keys as elements. When you need to remove duplicates from a collection of items, the best way to do this is to convert that collection to a set. By definition, the set contains unique items . This will make your code faster and more readable. We first declare a list with repetitive elements.

Then we extract the unique elements by using the set() function. As we know the unique elements we can loop through them to extract the counts of them in the original list. In this case, we'll use the dictionary to save the counter. List comprehension is an easy way of declaring elements in the list without using a loop. You can even initialize dictionaries with unique counts of elements. In this specific example, we'll use dict() + zip() function to create a counter for unique elements.

We first begin with our default list which has repetitive elements. Then we declare a dictionary comprehension with list element as a key and list count as a value. Then print out the dictionary keys to get the unique values.

To learn about other ways you can remove duplicates from a list in Python, check out this tutorial covering many different ways to accomplish this! In the next section, you'll learn how to find duplicates in a list of dictionaries. Python – Add List Items Append Items Insert Items. To insert a list item at a specified index, use the insert () method. To append elements from another list to the current list, use the extend () method. The extend () method does not have to append lists, you can add any iterable object (tuples, sets, dictionaries etc.).

To perform this particular task we are going to use the concept of dict.fromkeys() method. In Python the dict.fromkeys() method is used to declare a new dictionary from the given values. Now we have to remove duplicate values from a list and store the unique values into the list.

We could create a dictionary where the unique elements in the list are the keys of the dictionary. The values of the dictionary are counters that tell us how many time each element appears in the list. Another method to get unique values from a list in Python is to create a new list and add only unique elements to it from the original list. This method preserves the original order of the elements and keeps only the first element from the duplicates. By passing a list to set(), it returns set, which ignores duplicate values and keeps only unique values as elements.

It is not possible to assign to the individual items of a tuple, however it is possible to create tuples which contain mutable objects, such as lists. There can be multiple pairs where value corresponding to a key is a list. To check that the value is a list or not we use the isinstance () method which is inbuilt in Python. It return a boolean whether the object is an instance of the given class or not. Let's discuss different methods to count number of items in a dictionary value that is a list.

In the above code, we created a list 'list_values' and then iterate the 'i' variable over the 'list_values'. Once you will print 'new_output' then the result will display the unique values from a list of lists. When it is required to extract unique values from a dictionary, a dictionary is created, and the 'sorted' method and dictionary comprehension is used. In this approach, we will be using a combination of these methods to extract unique values from a dictionary. We will use the values() method to extract values from the dictionary.

List comprehension will be used to get unique values from the list. Sorted() method is simply used to sort the unique values in ascending order. Sometimes, while working with data, we can have problem in which we need to perform the extraction of only unique values from dictionary values list. This can have application in many domains such as web development. Lets discuss certain ways in which this task can be performed.

Since it is a subclass of a dictionary, you can retrieve keys and values with items(). You can extract keys with more than two counts by list comprehension. In this tutorial we will learn how to get the unique values distinct rows of a Get distinct value of the dataframe in pandas by particular column. Return an iterator over all values in a collection. When the values are stored internally in a hash table, as is the case for Dict, the order in which they are returned may vary.

But keys and values both iterate a and return the elements in the same order. Zip function makes sure that the dict function iterates simultaneously through the list member and its count. After printing the dictionary you can verify that it contains the count of each unique element. Moreover, you can use the len() function over the dictionary to check a number of unique values. In this method, we will be using a dictionary with a combination of zip functions to find the string's unique values by converting them into a list.

Unique Values in List are the collection of distinctive values which are not the same. Many times, we require to fetch the nonrepititve values from a list. To do so, you can use loops, sets, counter module,s and many other ways. In this post, we'll go through every possible way to get unique values from the list. Using set() on a sequence eliminates duplicate elements.

The use ofsorted() in combination with set() over a sequence is an idiomatic way to loop over unique elements of the sequence in sorted order. By using the Python set() method we can easily perform this particular task. In Python the set method stores only unique values it will automatically remove duplicate values from the list. In the above program, we initialized the list that contains integer and duplicate values. Now use the enumerator() function and within this method pass list comprehension as an argument that will return a unique value list.

I have a list of dictionaries that all contain the same key and I want to get the count of unique values across all the dictionaries in the list. We can use the dict.fromkeys method of the dict class to get unique values from a Python list. The combination of these methods can together help us achieve the task of getting the unique values. If A is a table or timetable, then unique returns the unique rows in A in sorted order. Lists is a 0 based index datatype meaning the index of the first element starts at 0.

Why Is My Garden Dirt So Hard

Even plants that love clay will appreciate a little help. Adding compost to the planting hole or amending the clay soil withMiracle-Gro® Organic Choice® Garden Soilwill give new plants a good start. The organic matter will loosen the soil and improve drainage.

For trees and shrubs, smaller plants and bare root plants may establish better than large plants because their roots will adapt better to the clay soils around them. Avoid adding sand because it will mix with the clay and form cement-like soil. Another way to improve soils is to plant a green manure - a plant that will grow during the fall or winter that you then till into the soil to add organic matter. Winter rye can be planted as a green manure in fall and turned under in early spring.

Plants draw the nutrients they need to grow from the soil. Those nutrients usually need to be replenished every so often for the healthiest growth, no matter which type of soil you have. This is especially true for the soil where you grow annual flowers and vegetables, which suck up a lot of nutrients to fuel their rapid growth. Luckily, it's easy and inexpensive to restore nutrition by adding high-quality compost and/or granular or liquid fertilizer products as needed. If you're not sure if you need to add nutrients, a soil test is a quick way to check. To add nutrients and to replace organic matter as it breaks down, add 1-2 inches of compost to your garden beds in the fall.

Then you'll be all set for spring and can just add a layer of mulch after cleaning up and planting your beds for the new growing season. I always see things on how to work with sandy, silty, or clay soils, practically nothing on peat soils. I moved to an area this last Fall, that had a lot of glacier activity and is a meadow or grass land now. We would like to grow a garden, but we have black peat soil for about 14 feet down. I used a home soil test and found no nitrogen in the soil. There is some phosphorus and a small amount of potassium.

What should we do to our soil to be able to grow a vegetable garden and fruit trees? Unlike sandy soil, clay soil holds moisture well—sometimes too well. Fine soil particles stick together, allowing little room for drainage or for air to reach plant roots. The solution is to break up the soil and add lots of organic matter such as compost, shredded leaves, peat moss and gypsum over time. They hold more water than sandy soils and are often high in nutrients plants need. But clay soils can become so waterlogged that they deprive plant roots of oxygen, or so dry that they become too hard to dig in.

To determine how much clay is in your soil, feel the soil. If you can roll moist soil into a ball that hangs together, it contains more clay. Fortunately, you can find plants that thrive in clay soils and soil amendments that will help you grow a wider range of plants.

Clay soil is often not aerated enough and is deficient in good structure which makes it more difficult for successful growing. To get the most out of clay soil it's best to add large quantities of well-rotted organic matter in the fall and peat a few weeks before planting. Greensand can also be used to loosen heavy clay soils or bind sandy soils.

No matter where you garden, it's worth improving the quality of the topsoil you've got. After all, plants rely on topsoil, the uppermost layer of the earth's surface, for water and necessary nutrients. The more organic matter it has, the darker the soil will look (like what you may see sold in bags or bulk as "black dirt"). This type of soil is very easy to dig in and support healthy plant growth.

However, the type of soil in your yard may look very different. Depending on your region, it can vary from reddish clay to beige sandy soil. Here's what you need to know about improving your topsoil. Adding organic matter is the best way to make your soil more loam-like and improve its structure. Another option is to build a raised garden bed and fill it with a well-balanced soil mix. Or take the simple approach by growing plants that do well in your soil type, such as choosing drought-tolerant plants for sandy soils.

You can grow a garden successfully in any soil, as long as the plant's roots are accustomed to the conditions. Organic soil is rich in humus, the end result of decaying materials such as leaves, grass clippings and compost. Good organic garden soil is loose and fluffy — filled with air that plant roots need — and it has plenty of minerals essential for vigorous plant growth. It is alive with living organisms — from earthworms to fungi and bacteria — that help maintain the quality of the soil.

Proper pH is also an essential characteristic of healthy soil. Chop over-wintered cover crops directly into spring soils a few weeks before planting. During the growing season, sow a quick-growing cover crop, such as buckwheat, to fill the gap between spring and fall crops. When it's time to plant, pull the buckwheat cover and use it as a mulch for fall garden beds.

It can encourage the growth of weeds by bringing dormant seeds to the surface and exposing them to sunlight. It can disturb the beneficial burrowing activities of earthworms — the best free labor you can get for loosening and aerating your soil. It can also interfere with the activity of important soil microorganisms. Despite these negatives, tilling is still a viable option if you need to work organic matter and nutrients into sticky clay soil or a new garden bed that's heavily compacted. After that initial deep tilling, you can often let nature take its course to improve the structure of your soil. To get the organic matter down to root level, use a garden fork to mix the material into the top 4 to 6 inches of soil.

In vegetable gardens, which usually contain annual or biennial plants, you can amend your soil each season. Perennial gardens should be amended prior to planting so you won't disturb the plant roots. Many perennials must be dug up every few years for division, providing a good opportunity to work in additional organic matter.

Compost is decomposed organic matter, and it is the best thing you use to improve the health of garden soil. Organic matter in soil serves as food for earthworms, insects, bacteria and fungi-they transform it to soil nutrients and humus. Through this decomposition process, materials are made available as foods to growing plants. In finely textured clay soils, organic material creates aggregates of the soil particles, improving drainage and making it easier to work.

Earthworms are especially helpful in making and keeping soil porous and well draining, said Brewer. Mulching – Clay soils can tend to speed water runoff because water isn't absorbed as quickly into clay soils as it is other soils. Clay soils also tends to stick to the bottoms of your shoes, which can make a mess when you go indoors. By adding a layer of mulch to clay soil, you not only help keep the house clean, but can reduce the number of weeds that sprout.

As mulch decomposes,it will enhance nutrition and water retention, which ultimately allows for better plant growth. Mulch will slow down water run-off allowing clay soil more time to absorb, and store, water. A layer of mulch is also cooler than exposed soil which helps to reduce temperatures overall in the garden. Compaction is most likely to occur with heavier soils like clay and loam, but when heavy equipment is used, sandy soils can become compacted. These are soil particles that are packed closely together. The problem may be compounded by events that have happened to the soil over the course of years.

The pore spaces are reduced to the point that air and water cannot move freely and plant roots cannot grow easily into the surrounding soil. The soil could remain overly wet longer than is healthy for the plants growing there. Bark, sawdust, manure, leaf mold, compost and peat moss are among the organic amendments commonly used to improve clay soil. Two or three inches of organic materials should be spread and rototilled, forked or dug into the top six or seven inches of your garden beds.

To improve your soil, you'll need to add 6 to 8 inches of organic matter to the entire bed. Grass clippings (as long as they haven't been treated with chemicals), shredded leaves, rotted manure, and compost are all perfect choices. The organic matter needs to be mixed into the top 6 to 12 inches of soil. Digging it in and mixing it with a shovel is a great way to do this, as it moves a lot of earth without pulverizing the soil particles the way tilling can. However, if digging is just too hard on your back, using a tiller is a fine method.

After a crop is harvested the soil needs to be renewed before planting a successive crop. These cover crops are tilled in before they go to seed, and break down quickly so a new harvestable crop can be planted without much delay. In beds earmarked for vegetables and annual flowers, amend the soil before each new crop is planted. Compost and well-rotted manure are preferred by most gardeners, since they dramatically improve the soil's structure, making it hospitable to the fine, tiny roots of seedlings. Unamended soil may dry into hard clods that small roots cannot penetrate, and plants may grow slowly, be stunted, or die as a result. Manure and compost break down rapidly–manure in a few weeks, compost in several months–so be sure to replenish these amendments before you plant each crop.

In addition to mulch, using cover crops is a great method for improving clay soil in garden beds that are resting. Winter rye and red clover are two of my favorites for increasing organic matter and blocking weeds in your garden bed. I like to add chopped leaves into the soil in the fall. Run them over with your lawnmower and sprinkle into your beds to break down over the winter. I have a compost pile where all the other leaves go.

When they're ready, I'll use the leaf mould to spread in my gardens. To maintain the health of even the best soil for a raised garden bed, adding organic matter every year is essential. Surprisingly often, people imagine that the proper way to improve dense, clay soil is to add the opposite kind of mineral material—sand.

After all, loamy soils, viewed as ideal garden soil, are a mixture of sand and clay. Unfortunately, when sand is added directly to clay, the result is something that more accurately resembles concrete. The reason loamy soils are great for plants is that they have a large ratio of organic material in them as a foundation for the sand and clay.

Without lots of organic material, clay plus sand equals an awful garden. Clay soils are best improved with the addition of compost and other organic materials only. Rock phosphate, or rock dust, is also a valued amendment to restore phosphorus levels needed for vigorous plant growth. Good soil provides just the right space between its particles to hold air that plants will use. Silty and heavy clay soils have small particles that are close together. Sandy soils have the opposite problem; their particles are too big and spaced out.

The excessive amount of air in sandy soil leads to rapid decomposition of organic matter. Adding organic matter in the form of compost and aged manure, or using mulch or growing cover crops , is the best way to prepare soil for planting. Adding chemical fertilizers will replenish only certain nutrients and do nothing for maintaining good, friable soil. Organic matter will help supply everything your plants need. Before planting every year, ensure sufficient nitrogen by counting all the sources you've added.

Organic fertilizers, such as blood, seed, or feather meal, are sources of concentrated nitrogen. Fall or spring legume cover crops transfer nitrogen from the atmosphere to the soil. Manures or green grass clippings, incorporated as amendments, provide nitrogen as well. Compost, on the other hand, does not supply enough garden nitrogen.

While compost is great for improving overall soil health, additional nitrogen sources are needed when using compost as an amendment. In a garden bed, the best way to introduce organic material without digging , is to apply layers on top and let nature do the work for you. Simply pile your garden bed high with organic material – it can be wood chips, shredded paper, straw, chopped leaves, lawn clippings – whatever you can lay your hands on. It might be slow, but the wait will give you time to get to know your land before you plant. For a large vegetable garden, another solution is to grow a cover crop at the end of the season, then mow and turn in the following spring before planting.

The roots penetrate the compacted soil and loosen it. By mowing and turning the mowed tops in, the soil is additionally loosened. Cover crops could include annual ryegrass, winter wheat, winter rye, buckwheat, oilseed radishes and hairy vetch. Topsoil is a good choice for filling up raised beds, repairing eroded spots, or filling in holes.

When planting a new lawn or overseeding a patchy lawn, you can use a thin layer of topsoil to protect grass seeds as they sprout. One thing you shouldn't use topsoil for is filling your containers. It won't drain as well as you need it to in a container, and it makes your pots very heavy.

Stick with potting mix($7, The Home Depot) for containers, and use topsoil in garden beds. Farmers often cope with hardpan by using a chisel plow to cut and break up this dense layer of soil. Home gardeners can break up and mix the hardpan layer by "double digging" the soil. This involves removing 10 to 12 inches of topsoil, and then working organic matter into the 12-inch layer of material that lies below. If the hardpan layer is not too deep, you can use a digging fork to puncture it and open up passages for air and water.

Loamy soil, a relatively even mix of sand, silt and clay, feels fine-textured and slightly damp. It has ideal characteristics for gardening, lawns and shrubs. Loamy soils require replenishing with organic matter regularly, and tend to be acidic. For starters, fall mulching gives you the upper hand on spring weeds.