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RE: WHAT'S FOR DINNER? BEETS ME! FIRST GARDEN HARVEST AND RECIPE
I envy you. I want to grow my own vegetables too. Do you have any tips to give me about picking soil suitable for planting? I'm from a country about to completely unban pesticides so I worry a lot about getting cancer.
I am not an expert but I do spend a lot of time watching videos on YouTube to learn tips and tricks. I also took an online course that gave a good overview of permaculture which taught me a lot the foundation of growing. permaculture is a system of growing which is intended to mimic how nature grows. There are many other types of growing that are good methods, too. It just depends on your goals.
The most important thing to consider is what's inside the soil. What I mean by that is feeding the microorganisms in the soil. The microscopic bugs, bacteria, and fungus, as well as the regular bugs you see. For example the worms. So when you grow healthy plants, it's because what's in the soil provides the nutrients the plants need. Yes, each plant needs a certain amount of nutrients like nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus and such, but the foundation of soil really should encourage and feed the microbiology living in the soil.
I'm not experienced enough yet to understand the nuances of certain plants. What I do know is the compost we make always has the healthiest plants growing every year from volunteer seeds of vegetables we put in the compost. Our compost is really neglected. We basically throw everything in a pile, leave it for a couple of years without turning it. This is called cold composting. The compost you hear people talk the most about where they turn the pile to aerate it really just speeds up the process so it's usable faster.
Anyway...Because we have mostly clay soil and are not creating enough compost yet, we have had to start grow areas by adding components to make good healthy soil. We do not till the ground because that kills the microorganisms. What I do is lay down a weed barrier such as cardboard (you could also lay down a really thick layer of compost so that it smothers the light from anything growing below). The area we are growing in right now was what's called a lasagna method. As you can probably guess, that's where you layer different soil components. We layered cardboard, straw and recyclable paper, kitchen scraps, compost, straw, worm castings (worm poop), rock dust (this has minerals), blood meal, bone meal, coconut coir, food scraps, compost, then a thick layer of straw. We do this in the fall so that by the time spring rolls around, those things are composted down and ready to plant. That's worked well so far. Really the main problems we have here dealing with the bugs, heat and humidity. The plants thrive in our soil.
Sorry for the really long reply lol. Hope it's helpful.
Extremely helpful. I bought you a vote for this. Thank you.