“Families and institutions should learn to do more in the cultivation and improvement of land. If people only knew the value of the products of the ground, which the earth brings forth in their season, more diligent efforts would be made to cultivate the soil. All should be acquainted with the special value of fruits and vegetables fresh from the orchard and garden. ” (CG 357.1)
“He spake also this parable; A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none.
Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?
And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it:
And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down. ”
(Lk. 13,6-9)
Isn’t it amazing when you put one small corn seed in the ground and a few weeks later, there is a big plant standing in your garden?
How can from something so small come something so big? Isn’t that a miracle in itself?
Back in 1634, Jan Baptist van Helmont was trying to understand what makes plants to grow and increase so much on mass. The common theory back then was that plants grow by eating soil. Therefore, he planted a willow tree and weighed the soil in the pot. He kept watering it and after 5 years he realized that the tree increased by weight over 12 stone. The weight of the soil in the pot stayed almost the same. His conclusion was that trees seem to grow by drinking water. Later on, it was researched more until the understanding of nutrients, water and photosynthesis was developed.
No matter if you plant heavy feeders, medium feeders, or light feeders – all of them need nutrients to develop. These nutrients are mostly taken from the soil. To keep planting healthy and big vegetables, we need to make sure to nurture our soil.
Different soil amending methods
In general, there are some ways that can improve your soil:
Humus: There are two ways:
1. Add humus regularly to the soil
2. Try to improve the humus production of the soil. This is done by adding mulch, organic fertilizer, plant remains or horse manure. There are also soil activators one can add like mycorrhizal fungi.
Loosen up compact soil: One way is to exchange the topsoil and add compost and more loamy soil. That might be expensive if one has a big garden. A cheaper way is to sow cover crops which have deep roots and can loosen up the ground as well as adding mulch and other organic material can make the soil environment more attractive for microorganism to work and keep producing nutrients for the plants.
Regulate the pH-value: If the ground is more acidic, there might be a lot of nutrients, but they are not available to the plants. Alkaline soil doesn’t allow humus to be built up. Important is to have a value between 5,5 – 7,0. Adding lime or ashes can help an acidic soil. Is the ground too alkaline, one can add horn chips, chopped coniferous wood, coffee ground, fine chopped oak leaves or small amounts or vinegar.
Minerals: Some minerals help either loosen the ground, store nutrients, improve the pH-value as well as adding nutrients. Examples of minerals for soil amendments are sand, lime, clay minerals, biochar, volcanic rock dust or other mineral fertilizer which can be bought in bags.
Plants: Soil can be improved also through certain cover crops which take the nitrogen from the air and transform it into nitrogen which the plants can use. Nitrogen is very important for the growth of any plant. Examples for cover crops are peas, lupines, alfalfa, yellow mustard or even marigold.
Mixed crop rotation: Since different plants need different nutrients, it’s good to try to avoid as much as possible to plant the same kind at the same place the next year. In that way the soil can recover while giving the nutrients needed for that specific year.
Compost
Compost itself is a rich humus made of organic waste products. Sometimes it’s referred to as “the black gold” of the garden because of its great value. Compost is something that everybody can produce at home.
Depending on the amount of organic waste as well as space there are different methods of composting.
In general, one can use things like leaves, lawn clippings, kitchen waste, horse manure, wood chips, wood ashes, paper or some old soil from the garden. If possible, one should avoid sick plants, cooked kitchen waste (attracts rats), metal, leather, printed paper as well as cat or dogs waste. Some say it’s better to not add rests of citrus fruit since our microorganism here are not so good at decomposing them. My suggestion is to use them with moderation.
Some tips for any type of composting:
Chop big plant material into smaller pieces (branches, etc).
Turn the compost for bacteria to receive enough oxygen which helps them to work better.
If possible, build your compost fast so that it can develop a good temperature. At around 70 °C seeds of any type of weeds will die.
Make sure compost worms have access to the soil.
Don’t place it in the direct sun, the compost might dry out too much. The microorganisms need a certain moisture to move forward (they move on the water surface).
Cover it with some material like fleece which lets the air go through but prevents the compost from getting soaked in the rain.
Some leaves decompose harder and longer like oak, chestnuts, birch, plantain, acacia, walnut, spruce, or beech. Fruit tree leaves, maple, willow, basswood, ash wood decompose faster.
Generally, we speak about a measure of 2:1 between brown and green material. Green material is for example kitchen waste, lawn clipping or fresh garden waste.
Brown material are leaves, branches or paper.
Some composting methods:
Compost windrow
At the school of Bogenhofen where I work, we have some bigger amounts of compost. Here it is useful to build windrows with the help of tractors. The windrows are placed in a certain distance so the tractor with a compost turner can go through to turn it regularly. Since we use machines, our compost is finished faster than smaller compost piles. We just mix all the materials on a big pile and afterwards place them in windrows. The downside for us it that we don’t have a roof and at rainy times it’s difficult to maintain the right temperature even though we turn it every day.
3 Pile Backyard Compost System
The advantage is that there is a good, designated space for it and since the compost is placed in chambers, it can pile up and microorganism work well which also increases the temperature and speed. One can keep track of which part is finished already.
Usually, the three chambers are made of wooden boards which leave a little distance between for the air to circulate. At the bottom one can place a mouse wire to prevent small animals to come but let worms and other useful creatures go through.
Compost piles can be built to about 1x1x1m. It doesn’t always work but if one can build one pile in chamber 1 within one month, that would help the temperature in the pile. The ideal is to turn the pile once/week and add water if it is quite dry. After turning the pile, cover it with fleece.
After another month move half of the pile to chamber 2. The rest in chamber one is there to help keeping the compost progress for the new material which can be added to it now. Keep turning both piles regularly. After another month all the compost from chamber 2 can be moved to chamber 3 while taking half of chamber 1 to chamber 2. The last pile doesn’t need that much turning anymore unless the temperature is still very high. The compost is finished when it doesn’t smell anymore and when most of the bigger pieces are broken down as well as the soil looks black.
Some people just let the compost sit in the first chamber and turn it into the second after one year. In that case one doesn’t turn the piles so often since one might also not have a lot of material for the compost to be filled.
Here is a video instruction of how one person built his compost:
Rotary Composter Bin
The rotary composter bin simplifies the turning process and is especially for smaller amounts of compost material. You can either build it yourself or just buy one. Usually, one chamber is filled with some bigger material like branches and leaves. Above it comes the kitchen and garden waste. It can be turned every week and when one chamber is full, one starts filling the second one. After a few weeks the compost is already finished.
Here is a suggestion of how to build your own rotary composter bin:
This is an example of how the ones to be purchased can look like:
And here are different compost tumblers:
Vermicomposting (Worm Cast Compost)
This compost method has the advantage that it can be done inside the house, especially if one only has plants on the balcony or just to make it simpler to not having to take all the kitchen waste outside every time.
Some companies sell worm cast composts as furniture pieces to keep in your kitchen where you can sit on.
In that case it’s a wooden box which has two chambers separated with a chicken wire. The wall should have some holes for air to get through but small enough or more on the top so worms won’t exit. One places some moist cardboard pieces in the bottom and on top a little bit of finished compost soil with all the worms. Depending on the size of the box one starts with 500-1000 compost worms. Over it one can place some kitchen waste, covered with moist paper towels. Feed the worms every 3rd day with about 200g fresh stuff. Make sure they decompose it. If too much remain, feed less to avoid the material to turn bad.
Important is to only use small vegetable scrapes, green leaves or eggshells.
After the first chamber is quite full, start to fill the second one with some moist cardboard pieces, a little bit of soil and some fresh waste. The worms will move to the second chamber after finishing the first. They multiply according to the amount of food as well as space. After the worms have moved, wait for another two weeks in case there are worm eggs in the first chamber. After they have hatched, the soil in the first chamber can be taken out.
If you keep your compost box inside the house, make sure that you place a tray under for the liquid to be collected.
Instead of building a box, one can also layer the vermicompost with trays and holes in them. Usually, they are made of metal or plastic and need another pan in the end to collect the vermicompost tea which is a rich fertilizer.
At Bogenhofen we have built our own simple compost boxes with the students and even collected worms from our compost pile outside. We also added some sand which is good for the digestion of the worms. As well as some volcano rock dust. There are many instructions how to build your own vermicompost, in English most of them use plastic.
Here is a lady harvesting from a layered vermicompost:
Here is an Austrian page of worm compost boxes as furniture:
Here is a description of how to build a worm compost. It’s in German but one can translate the website:
Bokashi
This is a Japanese way of composting which is an anaerobic process of fermenting food waste inside the house. The finished products are a compost tea as well as a pre-compost.
We did it at the high school just to try out with the students. For that we took two buckets which can be placed within each other (with some spacers at the bottom to collect the compost tea there). The inner bucket is cut on the top to fit inside as well as we drilled many holes in the bottom for the compost tea to escape. One the bottom of the inner bucket we placed one layer of paper towels and 3cm of biochar. Then we layered 3cm organic waste, sprayed some EM (effective microorganism) over it, a thin layer of volcano rock dust, 1-2cm of biochar. We repeated these layers until the bucket was full. Important is to always press the layers down so there isn’t much air between. Also, organic waste should be nicely chopped. Place the bokashi bucket at around 25 degrees, but in the shade.
After 10-14 days the bokashi can be taken out. On the top is a white layer of fungi. Dig a hole in the garden and place it there. It’s to intensive to be next to the plants since it’s not finished decomposing. In the hole will decompose for another 6 weeks and is then ready for next time you plant something there.
The “bokashi tea” is finished after a few days but needs to be diluted to be used as a fertilizer 1:10 since the pH-value is around 3-4.
If you buy a professional bokashi bucket, it has a spigot for draining the bokashi tea into a cup.
The advantage of bokashi composting compared to other methods is that there is no loss of nitrogen.
Here is another way of how bokashi can be done:
Usually people buy a bokashi bucket which looks like the one the person has in the following video:
Compost in general is a material that takes time to release all its nutrients to the plants. At the same time, it saves them and can be useful for longer periods. If one needs to give nutrients faster to the plants, I recommend using some liquid fertilizer. We make our own stinging nettle fertilizer mixed with comfrey fertilizer. Stinging nettles is rich in nitrogen, comfrey on the other hand has lots of potassium. We collect the leaves of these plants and put them in a barrel filled with water. It needs to be covered on the top and stirred regularly (depending on the temperature, every day or every other day. After about 7-10 days one can see the leaves separating from the plants. Now it’s time to take them out and use the fertilizer. We add some volcano rock dust since it has valuable minerals, and it takes away some of the smell. To use it for the plants it needs to be diluted 1:5 or even 1:10. We fertilize our hoop house crops every week with it.
An even faster way is to take finished compost soil and place it into a barrel with water for 24h. The water can be used right after as a good fertilizer.
Let’s make a diligent effort in improving the soil that God has given us. May God bless your gardens abundantly!
Rebekka Hart has grown up on a family farm and taken an education as a kindergarten teacher. After several years working and learning at different institutions within Europe, God has convicted her to work full time within gardening at the Adventist institution Bogenhofen in Austria. There, she is still learning together with the students how to grow vegetables and how to grow closer to God.
Picture sources:
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