To create a healthy, happy garden, follow these steps:
- Use a bow rake or broom rake to loosen the soil surface.
- Lightly sprinkle water on the top of the soil after raking.
- Work in organic material in the upper layer if necessary.
- Plant seeds or new seedlings.
Soil compaction is a common issue in gardens and lawns due to too much water, which reduces friction between soil particles and creates smaller pores. To compact soil around structures, lay out soaker hose 1 to 1-1/2 feet from building walls and limit water pressure to 25 psi.
To improve soil compaction, avoid tilling when it is too wet or too dry. Don’t till your soil more than once a year and choose appropriate containers. Mix a healthy soil blend and time for repotting.
Add organic matter like compost or peat, and water the ground for 10 to 15 minutes two to three times per day. If the soil is pulling away from outer walls, more frequent treatments may be needed.
To fix dense soil, take it out of the pot and loosen it up a bit. Wetting agents for hydrophobic soil can be purchased at most garden centers or made at home using agar (powdered kelp). Loose soils are better at keeping water present because they enhance the upward pull of water through capillary action.
Slow, deep watering allows water to penetrate the clay soil gradually, encouraging roots to grow deeper. To ensure soil loses as little water as possible, use plastic sheeting to cover the soil and use mulch.
📹 How to Fix Dry Soil to Make it Healthy and Productive
Today I’m creating a new herb bed out of an old concrete planter filled with dry and dusty garden soil. Before I can plant into it, I’ll …
How do you stabilize loose soil?
Lime or cement soil stabilization is a popular method in the United States to increase soil strength and resiliency. The percentage of lime or cement mixed into the soil depends on the native soil’s characteristics, with higher plasticity resulting in more lime or cement. Lime occurs naturally, while cement is synthetic or manmade. Lime is most prevalent in paved roads, as it is cost-effective for unpaved roads. Geographical regions often dictate the use of lime or cement, with some having lime readily available and others lacking.
Lime or cement soil stabilization works by binding soil particles together, increasing soil strength. Most soil types are compatible with this method, but the soil must be analyzed to ensure the correct additive amount is used. A low amount may not reach the desired strength, while a higher amount may cause shrinkage or cracking.
Lime or cement can be used on soil above optimum moisture, as the powder method can dry the soil quickly and compact it properly. However, this method has health concerns due to its fine powder, which poses a safety risk to workers.
To apply lime or cement to the soil, mix it thoroughly, keeping the soil’s moisture content close to optimum moisture. After compacting the soil, the soil will begin to cure and continue for approximately 28 days.
What is the best way to loosen compacted soil?
Core aeration is a highly effective method for loosening compact soil in lawns. It involves pulling up tiny plugs or cores to relieve pressure, create space, and soften soil. This loosens the soil, allowing roots to grow deeper and water to penetrate the ground. Some homeowners rent aerator machines and learn to aerate themselves, but professional lawn care companies are often most successful. Timing is crucial, as aerating at the wrong time of year can strain the grass. Overall, core aeration is a crucial and effective method for addressing compaction issues in lawns.
How do you fix mushy ground?
To fix a soggy lawn, follow these 18 tips: let the lawn dry out, remove standing water, hire a lawn care professional, aerate the lawn, top-dress with compost and sand, fill in low spots, regrade the yard, and install a French drain. Excess water can lead to fungal diseases, a lack of grass growth, and prevent enjoyment of the lawn. To install a French drain, dig a trench and hook up pipe connections, among other tasks.
This will help disperse water into the soil surrounding your home, preventing the accumulation of water and promoting a healthy lawn. By following these tips, you can enjoy your yard to the fullest and maintain a healthy lawn.
How do you fix soggy soil?
To quickly dry out waterlogged soil in your garden, apply hydrated lime, compost, and turn the soil thoroughly. This will absorb the water in the soil and distribute it throughout the garden. Overwatering plants can lead to dead plants and waterlogged soil. If muddy soil is common, consider installing a new garden sprinkler system or adjusting your irrigation system design. Resolving waterlogging issues quickly is crucial to prevent plant health issues. This article provides tips, tricks, and information on how to dry out waterlogged soil and how to do so.
How can you help the soil by loosening it?
The process of soil turning and loosening facilitates the recycling of nutrient-rich layers, thereby enabling plants to utilize them more effectively. This process facilitates plant growth by enabling the transfer of nutrient-rich soil to the surface. Furthermore, a score of 70% or higher on the BNAT examination will entitle the candidate to a scholarship covering the cost of tuition for one year at BYJUS. This process is fundamental to the maintenance of healthy soil and the promotion of plant growth.
How do you stop loose soil?
Maintaining a healthy plant cover, mulching, planting cover crops like winter rye in vegetable gardens, and using crushed stone and wood chips in heavily used areas can help maintain vegetation. Other erosion controls, such as geo-textile materials or hydroseeding, can establish permanent cover and work well on steep slopes and heavy traffic areas. Contact your local landscape contractor or the RI Nursery and Landscape Association for more information. Addressing problem areas with high stormwater runoff can be done by redirecting stormwater and roof runoff to areas that can settle and dissipate water, such as a rain garden.
What is the best way to break up hard soil?
Hard soil can be difficult to dig with a standard garden shovel, causing poor drainage and low oxygen, which can lead to stunted or dead plants. To loosen hard soil, use a broad fork or a mechanical rototiller, and add organic matter like straw or chopped leaves. A soil test can determine the composition of the soil, such as clay, sand, silt, or loam. Soil can also become hard due to lack of water, rocky composition, or excessive foot, equipment, or vehicle traffic.
Over-tilling, working soil when it is sodden, and mixing sand into clay soil can contribute to compaction, making it hard and difficult to work with. The best tool to break up hard soil is to use gypsum or other organic matter to soften it.
How do you firm up loose soil?
Mechanical compaction methods involve applying force with a roller, hoe, or rammer to compact soil. Rollers, like a drum aerator, crush soil by pulling it over the lawn. A flat hoe compacts dirt close to the surface, used for supporting saplings. Rammers, like jackhammers, shake dirt beneath and settle it, typically used for major construction projects like foundations and driveways. In summary, mechanical compaction methods are effective for achieving desired soil compacting results.
How to loosen the soil naturally?
Soil cultivation can be loosened through three methods: using equipment to break up soil structure, mixing sand to change particle sizes, and nature’s own methods through soil organisms and plant roots. Tools are suitable for loosening soil when it has been compacted by driving or walking over it frequently. There are various garden tools available for this purpose. It is recommended to avoid compaction in the first place, especially in winter or after rain, and to walk as little as possible on wet soil.
How do you bind loose soil?
Soil stabilization entails the utilization of cementitious materials, including cement, lime, fly ash, bitumen, or a combination thereof, to reinforce unbound materials. This process yields a soil with enhanced strength, reduced permeability, and diminished compressibility when compared to the native soil.
What is the method of loosening soil?
Tilling or plowing is the process of loosening and turning soil. Upon a single visit to our website, visitors are granted full access to our free classes, courtesy of BYJU’s.
📹 3 Ingredients to Fix ANY Soil, the Lazy Way
0:00 Intro 1:07 Observing Nature 5:44 Killing vs Healing everything 7:02 Is this cheaper? 7:45 This isn’t good soil 8:43 Soil testing …
I have thick orange and grey clay and have been working on it with the contents of my compost pile, wood chips and I shred my own plant debris. All of it helps improve my soil 🙂 It gets flooded during wet times and just sits there so I added a LOT of woodchips to raise the ground level. Its several inches higher now, has turned to soil and soaks up more water and is much improved. It took a few years but was totally worth it!
I am amending my soil with my lawn mower. When it’s dry the soil cracks open. I have been mowing and raking a mixture of leaves, grass, weeds, sticks, loose soil into cracks. Some are 6″ deep. Dump the bagged debri caught with lawn mower back onto cracks and rake in. Debri disappears into cracks. May take a year to work, but i am confident it will. The best way to amend soil is. To add organic matter. May add some clover seed or legume seed.
I transformed my soil by putting wood chips everywhere. I pulled out the big weeds and buried the small ones. I keep adding wood chips and green material on top. There was a big improvement after just 2 years and it keeps getting better. I also used compost tea every few months to help bring life to the soil.
My Granny used to take me out in the valley, dig up plants, and plant them in her beautiful garden. My mother used RoundUp around my garlic patch, which didn’t grow ANYTHING for 10 years. Use compost! No more garbage cans! Throw leftovers in a pot and make tea! And don’t forget Hügelkulture and electroculture! Best things ever. And don’t trust the FDA~💚🌱🌾
I live in MS, surrounded by woods. My ground is mostly sand and clay; however, the woods surrounding my house has a mix of compost, sand and clay so it drains well and is full of nutrients. I go under trees and peel back leaves and take down till the clay gets more prevalent then top it off with leaves. Any earthworms/buggs I happen to get comes too. As far as pests, I even have sugar ants in my garden, but they dont harm the plants too much, probably because I encourage spiders and lizards to make my garden home. I have a compost pile with nothing but organics close by and leave my garden faucet on a slow drip. The constant damp around my spigot, along with the other things I have around it (bricks, small plants) makes the perfect home for lizards and my garden snake Terry in the summer. I decided a couple years ago to work with natureinstead of fighting it, and your website made me feel like I wasnt as crazy as everyone acted like I was. 😂 Thanks. ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE ❤
My friend didn’t believe me when I told her there were no earthworms where I live. She had to look it up. After that, she was so shocked and stumped on how to help me revive my soil. In her mind, earthworms are key and you can’t make topsoil without them. I have discovered that we need water, water seeping INTO the ground and not running over, and nitrogen. You can lay all the compost and mulch on the ground that you want and it’ll just dry out and sit there for years if you can’t get water IN and some nitrogen to break it all down. The desert can be frustrating, but it can be done. Even here. I’m having great luck with the most insane diversity of desert grasses and wildflower seeds that I could come up with. More than 30 native species so far and they’re starting to make serious progress in only two years.
rabbit manure is excellent for the garden you dont have to want for it to compost just drop it in the holes before planting your tomatoes and cucumbers once they get going well you can ad more to the top then cover it with whatever you are using for mulch grass clipping work nice if you have them O and dandelions and plantain herbs that is called a weeds are great to have lots of health benefits when eaten and making salves
Thank you @Anne of All Trades. This is what I’m doing, they started this garden, but didn’t do anything but till it and it’s got some type of grassy weed covering the red dirt now. I got a composite barrel I started out there, so hopefully in a yr or so, I’ll get some type of black dirt❤. I want to stay 100% organic. I’ll put leaves over the place I pulled the weeds. 😊
The minor issues I face with a garden here in Colorado Springs include not having a fence (yet), semi-arid climate, and frequent visits from deer that love to eat the whole garden. There is wonderful humus in the scrub oak grove and decomposing Pikes Peak granite in much of the rest. Fun! Yours is an amazing garden!
I have scaled back on plants quite a bit since I got chickens. Most of my attention has been on potatoes, since that’s the biggest bang for my family’s buck. I grow them in buckets and cardboard boxes or just whatever (I hate digging for potatoes). I bought some half decent potting soil four-ish years ago. I’ve been doing 2-3 rounds of potatoes in each container per year in the same dirt. All I have added has been chicken shit and woodchips. I permit weeds to grow in them when the weather is bad for potatoes (sometimes, with the potatoes), then as it starts to warm up, I pile them up with the two magic ingredients to kill off the weeds and feed the soil. My potatoes are getting better over time, not worse, with no additions other than the aforementioned two. I’m about to try something similar in new containers, but starting off with my junky sand, instead of potting soil
I do the same thing I have a lot of trees and a lot of leaves. I blow off the grass and I have a lower area leave some of them in so I don’t ever buy bark or anything like that and all my flowerbeds are just composting leaves that I turn over and my plants that I have in pots, berries, etc. I go out there to do something and there’s worms everywhere worms under the pots, I do the same lazy gardening I do sometimes do some organic fertilizer twice a year a little bit and little Pete here and there a little bit of manure here and there. Just use what you have. That’s the best way and you really can see the differencewhile letting things break down in the worms, love it
This is incredible. I’m currently taking an elective in college called “soil analysis”, I chose it specifically because I want to start homesteading with my mom and my brother and stepdad. We’re looking at land and stuff currently. I’ve been learning a lot about different types of soils and desertification and it’s super interesting. I’ve always been really interested in dirt since I was a kid, and I have pet invertebrates and reptiles, so I’m always learning about how to keep their soil mixes healthy
This is my first time perusal your articles. Now I am going back to watch more. I live in Joelton, Tn Lil town north of Nashville, just barely in Cheatham County. Nice to see a article in Tennessee. We struggle with the heat, less water, and keeping our garden going. But we do agree with using the leaves that we drop to our advantage also.
I’m so glad I’ve discovered you and your website. I’m just about done setting up my raised beds using the hügelkultur method – too late for planting this season in S.E. Idaho, but I’ll be ready for spring. I have an undeveloped 1/3 of my 1 acre property, where my beds and greenhouse are, where I’d also like to plant a small fruit tree orchard next spring. The soil has recently been scalped, a few months ago, so now I know I need to start the work of making it look less like the soil you showed in the beginning of this article to what you created and showed in the last part of this article. I don’t have a lovely forest next to my property, but I do have a lot of deciduous trees and lots of grass, so I save the leaves and grass clippings. Both my evergreen trees and deciduous trees are constantly shedding twigs which I’ve used in my raised beds as filling in the bottom half. I don’t have livestock to collect droppings from, but I have a dog, yet I understand that carnivore droppings is not good for composting. Right? And it’s just me living here, so I don’t have a lot of kitchen waste for composting. So, I’m wondering what you would suggest I do to my dirt, where weeds thrive, to make it awesome soil for growing fruit trees. Pretty are the weed flowers may be, I’d don’t want them choking out the future orchard. Speaking of choking, I have an aspen that has obvious girdling happening at ground/surface level. Assuming I should remove as much of the surface girdling as possible. Oh! I’m wondering what natural method do I use to eliminate the tree borers?
My wife and I have just started our garden in Tennessee on our 2 acre plot of land. Our biggest problem so far is getting rid of the poison ivy without using chemicals. It is growing everywhere in the 1/4 acre area we have cleared for our garden and throughout our wooded areas as well. I have 3 major outbreaks since we started last year. Any advice on how to get rid of it without chemicals? We love your website and both of us really enjoy your incredible articles.
I’m looking forward to establishing a homestead in the future. I expect to be on a steep wooded slope, doing mostly building for the first couple of years. I expect that I will “mine” my wood lot for compost and rich soil as I put in my driveway and establish paths and trails. I’ll have a lot more woods then raised beds for the foreseeable future.
You both are well connected to nature. You breathe, listen and look and you both have learn’t. It is great to listen to two people that just love their natural surroundings including what others regard as pests. I also have started collecting loads of leaves and they certainly help. I loved this conversation Anne. Thanks to you both!
Wow. A link to that soil test would be great – im working hard un eastern Tennessee to turn shallow dirt/shale into soil. Yeah, we have clay too, but no real soil… Im using goats, chickens and muscovy ducks in my endeavors, but still having to fight with family members anout keeping the ground covered! I do finally have a small spot that ive had full control over for the winter, and finally able to start covering the cover crop with goat mulch/waste hay. I have a feeling that MY spot will be the best in production, even though it gets quite a bit of summer shade. The main garden has been bare all winter, despite my insisting it get covered with.. ANYTHING. Its currently looking sad, all compacted and bare 😢 Why isnt it covered? Well because, the seeder apparently doesnt do well over mulch 🙄 I guess the proof of a failure croo last year, when going against my ideas, wasnt proof enough. Another year of barely growing anything (in an ideal spot!) should prove interesting…
Anne, first I would like to tell you I enjoy perusal all your articles. I am seriously think of doing my garden over this way. Patients with the wood chips breaking down will be the hardest thing for me. Please continue to make these articles. Also, could you recommend a seed company please. I live in Sc. Thanks
I’m a backyard gardener and i find this info.with the forest soil to enhance the garden very good.Are you concerned at all with bringing something you may not want into your garden from the forest?Or am i just over thinking here? Last yr.i planted a large garden and it was infested with crucifer flea beetles that decimated the entire garden.The beetles took every single green leaf and left just the stems.This was a first for me losing everything to a beetle.
Hi friends, Tee and Ube here! 🌱 We loved your article and totally agree – soil is the foundation of everything! 🌿 Healthy soil means healthy plants, and we’re always teaching our friends how important it is to care for the soil. We’re all about nurturing the earth so it can nurture us back. Thanks for spreading the word about the magic beneath our feet! 🌍🌱
I just happened upon your website and I am so excited about you and your content!!!! I am actually out west so I know (from living in TN before) that these are 2 entirely different places in so many ways. However, I can hopefully apply some techniques anyway. Looking forward to enjoying your articles, your content is exactly what I need! Thank you!
I bought a house with 3 acres and it was not taken care of at all, we’re slowly getting it to look better but now after cutting the 3 foot tall grass and keep up with it, there is so much poison ivy which both my boyfriend and I allergic. What would you recommend to do to get rid of it? I love perusal your articles and learning as I’m a newbie gardener but haven’t seen any on this subject yet though I could have missed it. I have some seedlings started inside for tomatoes and bell peppers I’d love to plant outside in the ground but may need to start this year in raised beds (probably kiddie pools cause my dog put a hole in theirs lol repurposing) due to all the poison ivy. I have a bunch of small trees and berry bushes on probably and acre but so much poison ivy too so I don’t even want to try to harvest them.
I have several horse tanks. During growing season I clean all of them except one in my yard. I let it get full of algae and I water my plants with it (well water not city) I discovered this one time when I drained it to clean and my horses were licking the swamp gunk from the bottom. 😳 they are pastured and have mineral blocks so there must be some kind of beneficial growth or they wouldn’t like it so I use it in my garden. The microbes are excellent for growing.
I use the ‘no dig’ method of gardening which is to add a mulch of well rotted compost every year. As thick as you can, 4″ if possible. This way it feeds the earth below as well as keeps weeds down without having to dig up the soil which disturbs the soil life beneath. Then you just plant into the topsoil. Mulching in autumn is the best as it gives the compost a chance to work into the soil. Otherwise any other time of the year is good. The ‘no dig’ method of gardening means that I haven’t used my spade or fork in years. It also means I can save my energy for the numerous other aspects of gardening.
Where i use to live, the ground was heavy clay. I wanted to plant some flowers in front of my privacy fence. I borrowed my dads little troybilt tiller and started breaking up the sod and dirt. After raking the sod off, I started tilling the dirt. Once that was done, I kept tilling at the dirt until it was fairly well tilled. Because it was fall, and I had an overabundance of leaves, I raked about six inches of leaves onto the area and tilled them in. The next spring, I borrowed his tiller again, expecting the ground to still be fairly hard but a little better. I couldn’t believe the great soil I had. It wasn’t hard at all. I have ten acres now I wish I could do the same thing with. It’s very heavy clay. There are places where it’s so hard it use to push my four bottom plow out of the ground.
I’ll apologize beforehand if I’m wrong about this but, early on in your article, while talking about the daffodils and the “lazy way” of getting wonderful soil… you pulled a plant amongst your daffodils that looked like poison ivy/ poison oak? I sure hope that I’m wrong about that, but I’d imagine that most likely that the symptoms would be presenting themselves at this point? I just noticed the “leaves of 3, which you leave them be…” Besides that, love your highly informative, very detailed and entertaining work! You’re an amazing and very inspirational person! I wish you all the best… p.s. I’m writing to you from Nebraska, and a little bit envious of the weather and how far ahead your season is compared to ours… especially after all the snow that we just had dumped upon us… lol.
I’m taking advantage of my “leaf litter” at least for the first year from the forest area of our property to help start our compost piles. I found that the “leaf litter” has hidden so much stuff that is toxic to the land. We are finding garbage trapped under it. We also found rotten logs that previous owners have cut and stacked. I’m taking those and adding them to the bottom of our new garden beds and around the base of our compost piles (at least until the next new garden bed is needed). I’m still cleaning up leaves from last year because we moved in late fall and within days of unloading the moving truck we had snow. We are in the Upper Peninsula and there has been snow reported in at least 10 months of the year but I am not letting that stop me to grow my own produce. This fall I shouldn’t need to grab much from the forested area and just clear the leaves around the house and garage instead to add to garden and compost pile. Previous owner left us so many potted plants and I just recently started dumping them into the compost pile as well. A greenhouse to help extend our season has arrived and is ready to be assembled… we just need a day where it isn’t windy, cold, and/or raining.
Loved this article, thanks. I’m gardening much the same way now – observe nature, then do the same! Q, Anne: I LOVE your sweatshirts! Where do you get them?? (I’m referring to the red one under your jean shirt and the grey one at the end of the article in the soil test segment). I would love to buy some!
Anne, I was wondering about your thoughts on biochar, which seems to be all the rage. A couple of YouTube websites have articles on making it in your wood heater while you’re warming your house (love 2 for 1 outcomes!). Much less daunting than the big pits or barrel burns that need to be tended to. (Channels are Edible Acres & Live on What You Grow). So jealous of your forest by the way – what a fantastic resource!
Okay when you went into the woods it all makes sense I grew up playing in the creek it was my playground. Wow eyes wide Open. So just about everything I was taught about gardening was wrong. But I can’t say All is Lost that’s what made me love to do it,it is my favorite besides swimming. And in the comments whoever said that there weedy garden does great I totally believe that can I do believe that if you read your garden and you have a deer problem all you are doing is setting up a smorgasbord when I used to leave my garden with weeds growing in it I think it’s somehow camouflage my vegetables from the deer. I’m going to try it again this year but not exactly sure it will work since they know the spot so well now. Probably should do a temporary fence. I know they can jump any size fence but if they can’t smell the vegetables why would I will put mini Marigolds in they can’t those
Okay, so seeing the “woodsy soil” that is what these 2 people are seeing is no big shock. And, all of those Daffodils are a common sight. BUT, I must say that leaf litter is just a really PERFECT medium for protecting seeds that have been sown, and maybe even able to protect seeds that may have been normally hard to get to sprout.
Nice to run into this website. The forest part looks just like half of my backyard. The other half looks like I grow vegetables. Certified Wildlife Habitat in the middle of town, in the old section and less than half a mile of everything. 100+ trees that were used to mark the property line. (Got super lucky because real estate woman was trying to rip off the former owner, so she could pay a lot less than it’s worth. Previous owner got more money from me and I ended with the perfect “homestead” with house built by a bootlegger who was a genius.) Crazy female hates me.
So…silly question. Maybe I’m just ultimately lazy, but why not just plant IN the wooded area instead of trying to condition dirt exposed to all the sun and elements? I’m in Texas and it’s really challenging to keep plants safe through the hot and dry summers. So why not just use the shade and good soil that’s already around the perimeter of my property??
We live in the city with a utility easement alley behind our home. The alley leads to an urban park. I struggle with rats because of our compost. I think the answer will likely be turning our compost more regularly, but it’s a 4x4x4′ compost pile with 3 bins (2 for processing and one for completed). We only turn the compost 2x/year. It creates great compost, but the rats tend to live in the corners where there isn’t compaction. Then come spring, I set out my transplants that I have nurtured and the rats then feed on my transplants. 😭 I am frustrated.
I agree with you in many ways. The proper fungi and bacteria really have a tremendous impact on soil fertility and prevent the development of bacterial and fungal diseases on annual plants. However, I still use chemical plant protection products and fertilizers in my household, since: 1. Chemical insecticides and acaricides are necessary to control certain types of pests, such as spider mites or cabbage fleas. These pests are very resistant to biological plant protection. 2. Potatoes in my region cannot be grown without drugs for late blight, and late blight is also very resistant to biological plant protection. 3. In my region, there is very little nitrogen and potassium in the soils, with intensive use of soil, there are not enough nutrients from compost to produce a large harvest. And I don’t have any cattle to use manure. Oh, and the pH of our soils is quite acidic (4-5), so I have to use liming. 4. I have a lot of perennial plants and trees that need special care. For example, only chemical plant protection products helped me against plum moniliosis.
Jerry Baker was the first person who fascinated me in using homemade care products. He was on PBS in the 1970s. Someone made a article website with all his shows. Check him out. Going the route of leaving leaves on the ground may upset my neighbors but I don’t want chemicals that will affect children and animals (wild and domestic).
The ingredients for healthy soil are: 1: Use mulch. Mimic nature using lessons from the forest to inform how you garden. 2: Increase opportunities for microbiology to flourish: use compost and other organic matter to amend your soil and 3: Employ Observation, observe what your plants are telling you about your soil’s health and needs, use new and improved soil tests to gauge the mineral balance within your soil, amend accordingly
Lady ur a rock star. So many people want to get rid of the leaves and spray the weeds. We actually they are our friends and help in so many ways. Look at the forest and learn from it. Ur a beautiful lady. Ur husband is lucky to have a gal like u. P.s. check JADAM ORGANIC FARMING. u will pleased u did.
If your soil has excess clay and needs better drainage, you can extract the clay for sale, pottery, or brick making. Here’s how: 1. Create a watery mud bath: Use a large container and fill it with your clay-rich soil. Add water and mix thoroughly until it forms a watery mud. 2. Separate organic matter: Let the mud settle for a minute, then skim off any floating organic material. 3. Drain the muddy water: Carefully pour off the muddy water. Let the remaining clay settle until it’s firm enough to handle. Then, drain off the remaining water. 4. Repeat: Add more water to the slurry and let it settle again. Repeat this process several times to further purify the clay. 5. Grade the clay: Once you’ve extracted a significant amount of clay, dilute it with water to a watery consistency and let it settle again. This will help you separate the clay into different grades based on its quality and suitability for various uses.
Modern science is way detached, disconnected from nature and abandened nature, so I learn by observing how things grow in the wild. I live in desert with no trees so no option to do compost, too dry and no access to many things. I bring stuff from forest, backets and buckets of forest soil, backets of manure from wild horses, all plant matter from teas I drink, I dump it right into garden and let nature do its thing. Time will tell but so far it is working.
The healthiest and most nutritious plants are not the healthiest things we can eat. Meat is far more nutritious and healthier for the human body. There are some plants which are less harmful to the human body. That’s not the same as being the healthiest thing for us. Having said that, I am a proponent of making your soil healthy for growing plants for ruminant animals to eat, making them healthier and giving us better nutrition.
This is seriously great entertainment and far removed from reality! An average person watches this and gets excited by “laziness” and other buzz words to the point of getting into their giant SUV and driving into a bait shop looking for bugs they can introduce in their garden…this is furthest from the truth and even further removed from the agriculture that feeds billions of people
We people should just let the earth do it’s thing and let it be but the modern human don’t like to see “untouched” nature and they don’t know or care why it’s even important to not turn up side down on every inch of the earth. We don’t even need science to succeed, just keep it as simple as it works in the wild.
Please come to Europe! We dont hate nature here. Pesticides are forbidden in private gardens, truth is: we are using a lot of fertilizer. Either biological and chemical. Mulching is pretty common here. But wood chips are not for free. Actually nothing is, and therefore most people with a garden have their own compost