Look after your soil and your soil will look after you! Healthy soil means healthy plants and NOW is the time to show your soil some love before winter sets in.
In this week’s episode, Ben shows us how to protect, feed and nurture your soil with these three simple techniques. Get ready to get on down and get your hands dirty!
For our video on collecting and using leaves, see:
https://youtu.be/kN8OMgaLiaI
If you love growing your own food, why not take a look at our online Garden Planner which helps you to plan and design your garden to maximise yields and get more out of your garden all year round.
It’s available from several major websites and seed suppliers:
https://www.GrowVeg.com
https://gardenplanner.almanac.com
https://gardenplanner.motherearthnews.com
and many more…
To receive more gardening videos subscribe to our channel here: https://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=GrowVeg
If you’ve noticed any pests or beneficial insects in your garden lately please report them to us at https://BigBugHunt.com
If you put cover crop in, do you rake it under when you are ready to plant?
Yes, I bury all my veggie and fruit scrap, grass and leaves and they all could sleep eternity under my garden.
I love this guy! So down to earth, (pun intended) passionate about gardening, helpful! Love watching!
In addition to adding homemade compost in the spring and fall, I have been burying leafy veg and a bit of straw in the beds to help feed the worms living in our beds. I just push a small handful down into the loose soil to a depth of about 6 inches periodically here and there randomly throughout the beds. Now we find worms whenever we dig up potatoes, sweet potatoes, etc. We don't buy worm castings, because our beds are basically vermicompost bins themselves.
I was collecting pea straw and the nursery suggested an old duvet cover to line your car boot it's a great idea. I got a black one. From an op. Shop. Enjoy your humor and wild animal!
I have lately practiced growing chickens and I noticed they do great job to the fertility of the soil. they bring eggs and also fertilize the soil for better larger crops.
Well now that they want to abolish cows for good and Carbon Dioxide good luck for us finding "shit"
Love the video! Does anyone know if almond meal can be good for the soil, I have a lot of it!
It's not the nutrients that flow away from tillled fields, it's the soil biology that gets destroyed.
Can I just add leaves from the trees to raised beds and kitchen scraps then use cardboard to speed up the breakdown process? Or do I need to buy or add anything else? Thank you!
I have acces to horse manure, it’s just sold at the Sid of the road/house, in the next village. If I put that in with a lot of carbon rich stuff will it break down into compost?
I seem to have a lot of carbon stuff from my nans hedge we cut down a few months back but now I don’t have anything high in nitrogen as I don’t put food waste in as we got mice it it the first time we did that, never again my mum said. She’s 100% petrified of them bless her, I wasn’t keen either
So now I’m stuck as to what to put in. I don’t really want to put chicken manure pellets in, I do have alot as I got given lots lol so could use them. ?? Please give me some advice
I dump stall cleanings (from the horse, goats, and chickens) directly onto the garden all winter long, stopping in early March. The heavy rains in our Maritime climate (helped by chickens foraging through the garden in winter) break everything down so it's ready for planting in Spring. I make sure to include stall bedding (urine-soaked wood pulp) as well as manure. The native soil here is gravel-over-clay, so amending it is vital to even move a shovel around in it.
Any suggestions for mulch for hot summer months, fire resistant on container plants? Shade cloth around plants with pumice stones on top??
I had to go out and put fleece on my broad beans this morning as the frost was so heavy here in S France. I was a little unsure re the green manure and sowed rye and buckwheat they may be a bit of a tough crop for my beds to get rid of! I have sown some mustard (for bio fumigation) and planted turnip within it, hoping to plant potato crops later and will try tansetifolia on the legume bed, maybe in January! I am totally envying your cavello nero as i tried to grow it and it didn't appear – thinking of trying it in January under cloches we will build as soon as we can before it gets too warm. Have broccoli though and some old cabbage!
You are our hero. I put my kitchen-scraps in the smoothymaker and pour it onto our vegetable beds. Is it wiser to cover the scraps just as they are?
Ben is a monty don replacement all day long
Hello Ben, Can you advise me, if I need to remove all the weeds from my veggie plot prior to mulching with compost, leaves etc. I have some small green leaf weeds that have arrived and have spread a little. Some appear to have a root going from one to the next slightly under the soil and I think there is also chick weed.
Also, can you tell me what breed of dog little rosy is? Best wishes Wendy
I love this channel so much.
Hello Ben,
Thank you for your reply, I will get outside and begin work as soon as I can.
All my friends adore Rosy, she is beautiful and appears to be a real companion to you.
My husband passed away this time last year and I feel lost without him. I have been considering buying a dog to give me a focus now. I have read just about everything I can on the Cavapoo and the breed is a serious contender. If there is anything you can tell me about them that you have discovered since getting Rosy, it would be very much appreciated.
Thank you for all of the valuable information and enjoyment that your videos have brought this past year and I wish you and your family a happy, healthy Christmas and New year.
Regards Wendy
Hello Ben,
I am so pleased I contacted you about Rosy. You can't beat personal experience when you're trying to reach such an important decision.
I started my weeding yesterday but rain drove me in but I've been saving all my good cardboard for the next step. The weather in Suffolk has been one of extremes but I have never had so much chickweed in my veg plot. I've had just about every mite, rust, fly and tree bug known to gardeners and l lost almost all fruit from my plum, apple and pear trees. I'm trying everything I can to get better crops next season. I will not let them get the better of me.
Christmas wishes to you and your family.
Regards Wendy
Is it good to add worms to a new raised garden bed?
20 years ago, we rented an old Victorian monstrosity in Portland OR. You could see places where outbuildings had been 150 years ago, but one such outline was the only really tomato-worthy place for sun. I got the soil tested, and it came back as contaminated with heavy metals. Apparently, 150 years ago, what they used for horses for colic or worming or something was mercury compounds (they sold such as "patent medicines" for humans at the time, too).
The sunny patch had been the corral for the stables. I was very sad at the state of the soil. To sow in it, or even above it in a raised bed, it would require excavating and removing a meter down.
I didn't have a garden there, except containers. Sometimes you can't build on a bad foundation of soil at all.
Hello again Ben. On the subject of soil nutrition, what's your take on the use of human urine as a fertiliser? Rich in nitrogen and also contains phosphorus. It is recommended diluted 1 part to 10 parts water. Can also be used as a compost accelerator.
Can you use pine chips for fertilizer? I have mixed it with my garden soil last year for this year's crop.
Ben please buy a pitchfork! Spades and worms don’t survive each other!
How do I know if the manure is from a trusted source? I feel the owners would no necessarily know what the feed/hay is treated with. What questions could I ask to ensure this? I live in rural midwest where this should be easy to find but want to know how to screen for this. Thanks!!
Ha, ha, ha!! The car bit had me laughing aloud! Great garden my friend. 🙂