Soil Maintenace On The Farm Yard

Poor Soil Results in Poor Growth

The soil out in this rural area unfortunately is non-draining clay.  Poor is an understatement.  When our house was built, the soil which was pushed up against the house was rocky and lots of yellow clay.  Big hard chunks which were hard to break up.  Water wouldn't absorb.  I was anxious to plant beautiful showy plants.  Wrong.  I planted those nice plants with excitment but they were soon ugly dried up straggley looking plants which died soon thereafter.  The soil was just too poor to grow much of anything around the house.

I knew I couldn't afford to replace all of the soil around this huge house, so I knew I had to do something to help the soil.  What better way than on-the-spot composting.  The result of composting is called Black Gold by gardners.  I started hoarding every potato peel, every piece of brown or otherwise discarded lettuce and just about anything else except for meat products.  I even saved the egg shells to put calcium back into the soil.  And banana peels are just wonderful to put under a rose bush when planting. But they also add potassium to the general soil content.   I just cut them up in smaller pieces before taking them out to the soil.

Coffee grounds including the filter, tea bags (remove the staple holding on the string), plain pasta, stale cereal, stale crackers, old spices, onion skins, even the paper from your paper shredder.  All of these can be composted.  Put it on top of the ground, dig it down into the ground or throw soil over it to get the decomposition started.  I turn this compost soil pile about once every two weeks.  Just dig down and redistribute the soil.  I add peelings, grounds, etc about three or four times a week and everytime I throw a bit of dirt over the new additions.  And the best thing is to throw your unused fishing worms into the pile when you come home from fishing.  Worms really help the soil.

So far I've done this is in three large places in our yard and I have begun to have nice healthy plants in the places where I started compost piles.  Note, I stop the composting when I start planting in that spot.  Then I move to another new spot.

Here's some pictures of the latest compost pile.  I started this one about two months ago so it has a long time to go.  But over the winter, it should begin to really produce some nice soil.   As you can see, some black gold soil is beginning to show, but there are still big amounts of yellow clay. By next fall, I should be ready to plant some fall bulbs in this spot.

Hope this helps if you need to improve the soil in your yard.  Don't be afraid to start a compost pile.  It's fun to watch your soil turn a different texture and color.  And, eventually your flowers will show how appreciative they really are that you took the time to help them have a better soil to live in.

 

 

Hope to see you again.

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