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Walking the walk / Re: Gardening
« on: June 27, 2020, 01:37:55 PM »
I agree with what Neven said about using this year as a baseline. There is a saying I like - "you need to kill a plant 3 times before you learn how to grow it". It was certainly true for me!
For building up the soil, it is worth thinking about what you are trying to achieve. Most people think about gardening in terms of soil chemistry - i.e. you need to get the right nutrients into the soil so the plants have the food to grow. A better way is to think about gardening in terms of soil biology.
The foundation of soil biology are the bacteria and fungi. Oversimplifying, the bacteria are what create the nitrogen cycle and the fungi are what create the mineral cycle, and together they create soil structure. Teaming with Microbes is a great book about this, and Dr Elaine Ingham is a great person to watch on YouTube https://orfc.org.uk/understanding-the-soil-food-web-with-elaine-ingham/. The great thing about gardening with biology is that you don't need to buy any fertiliser as your fungi will provide all the minerals from what is already in your soil.
Weeds love soil with no fungi. If you dig soil, you kill the fungi so you make the soil much more attractive to weeds. This may be the reason you have so many weeds. Even if you did not dig the soil, the previous people may have done so and the fungi has not had time to recolonise the soil. I do all my gardening no-dig https://charlesdowding.co.uk/start-here/ and have almost no weeds.
Most vegetables and all fruits like a 50:50 ratio of fungi to bacteria. If your soil has recently been dug, you will need to do some work to get the amount of fungi to increase.
The quickest way to change the soil biology is to make a fungal dominated compost (50% green matter (e.g. grass cuttings), 40% brown woody matter (wood chip is great for this) and 10% manure). Make it in a batch, turn it at the end of weeks 1, 2 and 3 then leave for another 3 weeks and you will have wonderful compost for your garden. Mine reaches a temperature of 70C and stays at that temperature for the first 10 days, which kills all the invasive weeds. Just spread it over the top of your soil - don't dig it in. You don't need a lot of compost - the idea is to seed the biology, sort of like like a probiotic yoghurt, rather than provide nutrients.
If you don't have the material to make a fungal dominated compost, a good alternative is to cover the soil with wood chip, but it does take more time before it is effective. This is best done at the start of the wet season (i.e. in Autumn in the UK) so the wood chip is wet enough to rot (i.e. be eaten by fungi). It also provides a good mulch for your soil which will reduce evaporation so you won't need to water as often. Again don't dig the wood chip into the soil, just leave it on the top. At the start of the next growing season you can rake the wood chip into paths and have clear soil to sow into.
Good luck!
For building up the soil, it is worth thinking about what you are trying to achieve. Most people think about gardening in terms of soil chemistry - i.e. you need to get the right nutrients into the soil so the plants have the food to grow. A better way is to think about gardening in terms of soil biology.
The foundation of soil biology are the bacteria and fungi. Oversimplifying, the bacteria are what create the nitrogen cycle and the fungi are what create the mineral cycle, and together they create soil structure. Teaming with Microbes is a great book about this, and Dr Elaine Ingham is a great person to watch on YouTube https://orfc.org.uk/understanding-the-soil-food-web-with-elaine-ingham/. The great thing about gardening with biology is that you don't need to buy any fertiliser as your fungi will provide all the minerals from what is already in your soil.
Weeds love soil with no fungi. If you dig soil, you kill the fungi so you make the soil much more attractive to weeds. This may be the reason you have so many weeds. Even if you did not dig the soil, the previous people may have done so and the fungi has not had time to recolonise the soil. I do all my gardening no-dig https://charlesdowding.co.uk/start-here/ and have almost no weeds.
Most vegetables and all fruits like a 50:50 ratio of fungi to bacteria. If your soil has recently been dug, you will need to do some work to get the amount of fungi to increase.
The quickest way to change the soil biology is to make a fungal dominated compost (50% green matter (e.g. grass cuttings), 40% brown woody matter (wood chip is great for this) and 10% manure). Make it in a batch, turn it at the end of weeks 1, 2 and 3 then leave for another 3 weeks and you will have wonderful compost for your garden. Mine reaches a temperature of 70C and stays at that temperature for the first 10 days, which kills all the invasive weeds. Just spread it over the top of your soil - don't dig it in. You don't need a lot of compost - the idea is to seed the biology, sort of like like a probiotic yoghurt, rather than provide nutrients.
If you don't have the material to make a fungal dominated compost, a good alternative is to cover the soil with wood chip, but it does take more time before it is effective. This is best done at the start of the wet season (i.e. in Autumn in the UK) so the wood chip is wet enough to rot (i.e. be eaten by fungi). It also provides a good mulch for your soil which will reduce evaporation so you won't need to water as often. Again don't dig the wood chip into the soil, just leave it on the top. At the start of the next growing season you can rake the wood chip into paths and have clear soil to sow into.
Good luck!
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