In this episode we will be discussing how your living soil could become dead dirt. I will also show you how to identify dead soil, and how to fix it. Enjoy and happy gardening! Check out our new clothing line! http:www.freshpickedapparel.com
VIDEO: How Your SOIL Could Turn to DIRT and How to Fix It
In this episode we will be discussing how your living soil could become dead dirt. I will also show you how to identify dead soil, and how to fix it. Enjoy and happy gardening! Check out our new clothing line! http:www.freshpickedapparel.com
How many times did you film the shot where you went down to the ground and started talking about how we’re destroying our soil? Lol
Either way great video. I’m going to make compost in the garden box dirt outside my apartment windows.
Would you recommend tilling the garden if I add a ton of compost to it? Is that a time when tilling is recommended?
What is your website? I like to see if you have some bee balm plants or bare roots. Thanks.
Hi Luke! I have a problem I would like to share. Unfortunately, I cannot access your website, it's giving me an "Access from your Country was disabled by the administrator" error. Any ideas how I can fix this?
Why did you stop using your intro?
Can manure me a good organic matter
Since watching your channel I've become much more confident with gardening, especially with converting them to no-till garden beds. It's something I wanted to do for a long time. Thank you SO much!
We took a tiller to our back yard this year to add on to our existing garden space. I diddnt have the means to come up with compost to till in with it but I'm hoping that with me covering it within a few days after tilling that it will be fine. We just used straw and we will be growing mostly melons in that space the first year in hopes of helping cover the soil. Hope it works. I dont usually grow in the native soil for all the reasons you explained plus weeds.
I tried mulching my garden with leaves. The wind blew them all away!
And by using chemical fertilizers to grow vegetables quickly, the resulting vegetables have little nutrition.
Treat your soil like dirt and that’s what you will have. Mars is covered in dirt.
The fastest way to kill your soil is tillage. I’m on my 4th year of no-till now. I always keep an armor over the soil. I don’t compost, I let the soil microbes do that for me. When I planted my beds of kale, lettuce, radish and spinach I just raked the armor back, spread the seeds and rake them in. My soil is soft and full of worms and night crawlers now. At the beginning of year 1 you couldn’t find a worm in that garden.
Luke are the crops still in your beds winter kill on purpose to keep plants/roots in the soil over winter?
Is trifecta plus still available? If so where can I get it?
I planted Sudan grass last year on very hard dirt, and the tilth dramatically improved. Ever heard of that approach?
Last year, I started raised beds. I had compost that wasn’t as broken down as I hoped it would be. Some of my veggies were yellowing and I couldn’t tell if I was short on nitrogen (because the organic matter wasn’t broken down far enough) or what was happening. Does this happen when organic matter hasn’t broken down enough?
Thanks for all the fantastic tips!
A bit of soil science. The distinction between dirt & soil is articifcial.
But, for the sake of argument…
Compost does not turn bare or bad "dirt" into "soil." Plants turn "dirt" into "improved dirt" (soil.)
A tablepoon of bare dirt can contain millions of micro-organisms. When a dandelion seed blows onto a bare dirt patch & germinates, sending down a root & raising a shoot, the soil building process begins immediately. The plant exchanges carbohydrates produced by photosynthesis with the micro-organisms in the dirt within its rhizosphere via plant exudates. Micro organisms grow & supply the plant with root support & assist in nutrient exchange. That is the process of soil building. Plants + dirt.
Plants do not need compost. Human added compost is an excellent delivery medium for additional micro-organisms & adds to tilth, etc… It enables gardeners to speed-up the process of plant to forest sucession (that begins with pioneer species like dandelion) allowing them to grow annuals with greater success as the bacteria to fungi ratio changes & the counts increase. But, human added compost isn't even necessary.
The key is keeping a living root in the ground to feed the micro organisms in the soil via covercrops (in between active veg gardening crops & over winter) or establishing perennials witnin an annual garden bed which actively promotes on-going soil building. ( Compost is beside the point. A mulch is a better choice if you are actively keeping perennials in the garden bed. )
Left alone, a garden bed will not revert to "dirt" without compost or other amendments. It will fill with weeds & grasses & begin the transformation to forest. (Dead plants make their own compost which then turns to humus.) Plants change the bacteria to fungi ratio on their own via exudates.
( Web search forest succession image or see the bacteria to fungi count in the plant succession pic here https://freewayestates.org/tag/plant-succession/ )
Plants are not merely additive to dirt/soil. They are tranformative.
Very informative thank you
Is straw on top a good idea before planting? ( in about 2 weeks)
3:04 Squirrel!
What should be the minimum ratio of Organic : Inorganic matter? I thought I had heavy clay soil but when I did the jar test, it was 50% sand, 35% silt and 15% clay. I took this from under my lawn and it looked as though there was no organic matter.
hi migardener does manure count as organic matter to fix your soil
Those last 3 or 4 sentences you spoke in this video can be boiled down in these two words.
Working smart……………….gardening version.
Tried an experiment this year growing tomatoes along a fence row with clay for soil. Part of the row I amended with compost from the kitchen. Part of it I left alone. Plants were noticeably taller and more productive with the composted soil. I got a few tomatoes from the uncomposted soil in the early summer; those in the composted soil produced throughout the summer. Reasons for growing along the fence were several: 1) rabbits don't like tomatoes, so if I can grow them outside my primary garden, I'm ahead of the game; 2) it creates interesting conversations with my neighbors. They're more into an organized, manicured look for their gardens; I'm more into giving plants some of that good ole leave-it-alone, and letting them grow. The yard has kind of trashy look to it, with veggies growing out of a kitchen sink and stuff growing in odd shapes along the fence–tomatoes, cosmos, marigolds, and perilla–all mixed together. I'm also into letting my grass grow long. It looks more manly. The only thing I'm lacking is the decorative semi trailer tire decor for my flowers. If I come across the right tire, I have just the place for it in my front yard. Of course I'll paint it white…
This was great! Thank you. Question: Does it matter when you amend? It is currently September, and I am wondering if I should add some now so it has it as the snow melts. Or wait until spring.
I have a hobby of relocating to a different part of the country every 5 years or so. I purchase property with a derelict yard and then get to work to bring it back to health. Its an amazing experiment learning how to garden in different climates. I am currently living in a steppe-shrub climate in eastern Washington…. the most difficult climate for me so far. My soil was not even dirt, just a beige powder. I have added organic material for 5 years now, and every year it gets better. I grow alfalfa to add to my compost pile, it causes a faster breakdown, this summer I got 5 piles of finished compost.
epic content i could cry lol
This is such a great explenation! My question is… When adding compost to beds that need it, let's say at the very beginning of the season, it is better to spread it on top and plant the seedlings in that, or lightly blend up the compost into the existing soil?
So I have questions about compost and chop and drop. Would you use nite shade plants for this? I see some channels that show tomatoes, peppers etc in their compost pile, which I always thought was a bad thing. So just wondering your thoughts.