creating the best garden soil

Creating a new garden is not difficult. Most people go out into their yard with a shovel or garden tractor and start digging up the dirt and putting in a few plants. Follow organic and natural methods and add a little mulch or compost and you are good at creating good soil for your home vegetables. But in the long run, the success of your garden depends on creating healthy garden soil. The more you can do to keep your soil healthy, the more your garden will yield and the quality of your crops will improve.

Add organic matter

For better soils, the sources of organic matter should be as varied as possible.

1. Add fertilizer for nitrogen.

All animal fertilizers can be valuable additives to the soil - their nutrients are readily available to soil organisms and plants. In fact, fertilizers contribute more to soil accumulation than most already decomposed fertilizers.

You need to use compost carefully. Although pathogens are less likely to be found in fertilizers from home gardens and small farms than in large enclosure livestock activities, root crops or leafy vegetables such as spinach and lettuce should be allowed three months to be harvested to protect against contamination. (Tall crops such as maize and trellis tomatoes should not be contaminated.)

However, because some nutrients are readily available from fertilizers, they are more likely to leak out of the soil (where they are needed) into groundwater and streams (where they pollute). Also, if fertilizers are used excessively, they can provide some of the excess nutrients, especially phosphorus. For this reason, it is best to control new fertilizers for crops such as high feed, fast-growing maize, and to apply additional fertilizer.

When thinking about fertilizer, it is worth considering ours. Cleaning up “human resources” disrupts aquatic ecosystems and implies a net loss of potential resources from agricultural soil. On the other hand, human manure requires careful management to prevent the spread of disease. Joe Jenkins' Humanity Guide, I Recommend.

2. Try composting.

Composting is a way to recycle almost any organic waste. It reduces most of the organic matter, ensures their high volatile and soluble nutrients, and accelerates the formation of humus in the soil.

Moderate amounts of compost - a quarter of an inch per season - provide slow-release nutrients that dramatically improve your soil water retention and help control disease. Making classic compost is relatively simple (to learn more about how to make it, see "Start a compost heap" below), but it can be labor intensive if you try to make it on a large scale. As I get older, I become more and more interested in easy alternatives. Fortunately, I found two.

3. Tap the chicken force to mix the organic matter into the soil.

Usually, I use an electric net fence to move my chickens from one place to another in the pasture. However, when needed, I "park" them in one of my gardens. I pile up the organic stuff I have on hand, and the chickens happily do what they like - constantly scratching through that material and looking for interesting things to eat. In the process, they disassemble it and attach it two inches above the soil, a zone of intense biological activity. Their wastes are also scratched and they give a great boost to the soil microbes.

4. “Mine” soil nutrients with deep-rooted plants.

As I explained in the previous article, when you first start gardening, it may be necessary to use rock dust and other slow-release minerals to correct the mineral deficiency in the soil. However, in the long run, you can supply minerals without buying inputs. The organic matter we add to our soil provides most of the minerals needed for healthy crops. In addition, we plant "fertility patches" to grow a lot of our own mineral supplements.

Final Thoughts on Fertility Patches: Many gardeners are a little paranoid about "weeds", but some weeds are deeply rooted and can use comfrey as dynamic accumulators to bring minerals up from deep soil. An example is the Rumex Crispus. Some yellow dock here and there, edges, and Why not allow it to grow in corners where it is not in the way? When the plants begin to form seed heads, cut them off at the top of the crown to prevent a large number of seeds from being loosely shed in the garden, and then mulch or compost the plants.