How to build delicious soil!

Have you tried to grow plants in your yard with no success? Do you have rocks underneath the grass in your yard or no rich top soil at all? You can easily create lush, nutrient rich soil very easily and for very cheap or even for free.

Soil is quite literally how you can grow delicious nutrient rich food and beautiful flowers and trees from the ground up. Cultivation in super nitrogen and mineral dense soil will increase yields and decrease the amount of work as well. There are many ways people try to build soil on their property and some can take years and importing soil can be quick expensive and doesn't always yield results. This method of building soil takes as little as 6 months (may sound like a lot but it's better than growing broccoli in rocks or hard pan clay for that long!). It will also highly suppress weeds and other unwanted growth in the given planting area.

So how do we do this exactly? Make lasagna! No really, we are going to make a lasagna of components to make some nice tasty dirt, rich with humus and organic matter. The official terms for this method are called lasagna gardening and sheet mulching.

First choose an area where you would like to grow food or any other plants. This method can be used for food cultivation or purely for landscaping, it's entirely up to you! Now that you have an area set out we need to get some materials together. You will need enough cardboard or paper to cover the entire area. You can get these materials for free in the form of old newspapers, cardboard boxes and who knows how many other places. Get creative!

Then you will need mulch. This can be in the form or leaves, hay, or wood mulch. Tree trimming companies in your area will deliver many cubic yards of mulch to your front yard for free if you ask them. It's true, I've seen it myself! You can also pick up giant bags of leaves on the side of the road in any neighborhood in Austin. The bags those leaves come in can also be used for the paper part of your sheet mulch. Make sure if you use hay or straw that it is not treated with pesticides and doesn't have any seed in it. This is a very important question to ask in general if you use hay or straw as mulch.

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Image courtesy of wildwesleyan.wordpress.com

Ok, now you need some poop! Ha, this may sound weird but manure is the basis to all good soil. It's actually not 100% required but highly encouraged. It will bring in a ton of nitrogen to the mix. If you already have chickens you can simply clean out the coop. You can also use horse manure which you can get for free from any number of people in the city who have horses. A lot of times they are listed on craigslist but you can also ask stables in your area. Sometimes they even deliver! When using horse manure make sure and ask what they are fed. If they eat hay treated with pesticides it doesn't always break down and can go into your garden.

Now that we have our materials together, we can start our lasagna. Start by spreading your paper or cardboard onto the chosen area. Make sure to fully cover everything. This will highly suppress the weeds that may come up and grass. After the paper is down add your layers. Put down your mulch and then manure. It's up to you how high you want to go. You are just going to start and end with mulch. The depth of each layer will be as wide or thin as you want to make them. It will vary depending on what materials you use.

Once all of the material is laid out we wait! You can speed up the process by watering the area afterwards. Don't completely soak it down. The consistency should be like a sponge. If you have very hard clay underneath it can be helpful to break it up with a large metal or iron digging fork. You can also use and experiment with other materials and ingredients in your lasagna. A lot of people add things like sticks, twigs, grass clippings, food waste, already broken down compost,

Image courtesy of www.soilfoodwebnewyork.com

If you do this and wait about 6 months you will have the most beautiful and delicious nutrient rich soil you've ever seen! The soil will be complete with micro and macro nutrients that are need to grow healthy plants. You will have also brought up all of the worms and other bugs that help to break down material into soil found in the soil food web. Please check this out and share your results.

IMG 8542 768x1024 Lasagna gardening for the impatient

Photo courtesy of Lasagna Gardening for the Impatient

 

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