Ah....soil. I keep some decent sized garden plots so I have a little experience with this. I started out with sandy, barren, crap soil like this where I live:
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and have been working on it over the past few years to make beautiful loamy earth worm-filled stuff like this:
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I started out doing basically the lasagna method like the video above. I layed down cardboard, straw, compost and let it break down over winter and then planted cover crop like clover on that. This area where I was laying down cardboard/straw:
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now finally looks like this:
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I don't know if you can where you live, but if you can...you should really be composting. I keep a couple compost piles going. One I built in my chicken pen. The chickens get to eat scraps of food and they scratch around in it (meaning I don't have to turn it, they do the work for me).
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This is the "good stuff", that I use for my pot plants or other potted plants. All my food waste and most of my veggie garden trimmings/weeds get thrown in here in to break down.
Then, I also get free horse manure out where I live so I keep a pile of that to break down over the winter to spread in the garden in the spring:
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You want to keep it covered and let it sit for several months to break down and kill any weed seeds in it before introducing it to your soil. I also grow cover crops that i cut as use as mulch in the garden or also mulch with wood chips every year.
As far as container planting, if I'm doing raised beds....I still like to do a lasagna style method if I can. Layers of "green" and "brown" material to break down. For my potted plants or potted ganja plants, I like to use the Super Soil Recipe. I don't necessarily follow it EXACTLY.....but really just use it as a blueprint. When using a super soil recipe if growing weed, you most likely will not need to fertilize at all throughout the growing season. Here's the recipe:
- 8 large bags of a high-quality organic potting soil with coco fiber and mycorrhizae (i.e., your base soil)
- 25 to 50 lbs of organic worm castings
- 5 lbs steamed bone meal
- 5 lbs Bloom bat guano
- 5 lbs blood meal
- 3 lbs rock phosphate
- ¾ cup Epson salts
- ½ cup sweet lime (dolomite)
- ½ cup azomite (trace elements)
- 2 tbsp powdered humic acid
With an all organic soil, you can reuse it every year by just adding needed ammendments. If you use synthetic fertilizers and shit like that in your soil, salts will build up in it. No bueno.
I usually add kelp meal too or in my garden when I feel ambitious I will collect a shit ton of seaweed and scatter it over my veggie garden. My tomatoes go apeshit for it.
Whatever you do, just remember you are trying to feed your soil. Happy soil, happy plants. Compost and organic material are your friends.
Happy Gardening!
