Healthy Soil Means A Healthy Garden
When I first started gardening understanding soil and how to make healthy soil, all the extra things short of just sticking things into the ground was so confusing and so daunting that I just didn't bother but over the years my understanding grew and it become less scary.
This post is here to take that fear away I hope and give you some easy to understand and things to follow that I do.
Our compost area is something we built with pallets, it wouldn't last forever but in the mean time it's great.
First bay is used for raw green waste(kitchen scraps, grass clippings and garden waste) and brown waste (twigs,leaves and paper/cardboard)I layer this over a period of 3 months or so. Keeping bags of leaves that fall over the autumn is very handy but just layer with what on hand will still give you something.
Keeping the compost damp as I build it up, once it's started to breakdown I turn it into the middle bay after about 3 months and leave it to continue do its thing. Then I continue with that empty first all over again.
That middle bay will sit for another 3 months or so and then I'll turn it into the last bay and by then it should be ready to use.
Now if you don't have the space for this space those black bins from Mitre10 are just as great,if anything they speed up the process and as long as you do the layering it breaks down nicely.
It's taken a number of years for us to build up our beds but firstly we chose to build rise beds and also our soil is mostly made up of clay base which retains moisture over the winter and then over the summer bakes rock hard. But over the years of adding manure, pea straw,grass clippings, compost and at the end of each summer season growing a green crop which helps to break up the clay as well as adding in nutrients once you cut it down it breaks down into your garden, feeding with very little effort.
I practice No Dig which is all about building up layers each season and trying not to disturb the structure of your soil and the healthy micro organisms in there. That's not to say you don't dig but it's kept at a minimum. A bonus to this practice is that without all the digging the weeds are less because you aren't disturbing and mixing them around.
Soil and composting are a very important part of the garden but you don't have to spend years building up to a great garden. Go to the garden centre, buy a couple bags of good quality garden mix, couple bags of good quantity compost mix, map out where you want the garden or fill a couple containers and start planting it's that easy.
Gardening shouldn't be scary and just sit back and look at the rewards.
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