You know the first year of our garden bed consisted of mostly composting the bed , turning it on itself and having the chickens turn it and leave their little gold surprises along the way.
Our soil here in the Midlands of South Carolina is mostly sand. I guess it's from when the ocean was actually here. 🌊. So our yard of course was .....guess what.........SAND. ⛱️.
So we had to start building our soil to support our gardening long term plans. Now we knew this wasn't going to happen overnight so we started developing it.
It was quite a long wait that first year but we'll worth it. We began to heavily change the way we dealt with what we used to just chunk in the trash can to haul off to the dump. Yes composting. But it actually helped us two fold. First of all we have cut our trash nearly by 1/2 . Secondly we had perfect ingredients to place in the compost pile to help develop our soil.
Of course we had our chickens, ducks and rabbits to help the soil as well. The nutrients they were adding was invaluable. And the chickens were turning the soil for us . Win Win.
Well recently I've noticed it seems every gardening show whether on TV or any of the videos on YouTube are pushing you buying their " best soil " recommendation that " they " recommend. Well first of all they are either getting an incentive from that brand of soil or trying to get an " incentive" from that brand.
Now I realize that in today's fast paced society you want everything right now. Which there's nothing wrong with buying the soil for garden beds if you have money to buy dirt. But what I'm talking about is building an ecosystem that if properly managed can be continued without buying dirt every year for your garden beds.
Now I realize that is a novel concept making your own soil ecosystem and it is time consuming but in the long run you are absolutely much better off and can manage a sustainable ecosystem.
Those pests that usually present you such a battle every year can be negated by having a well managed soil ecosystem. Now mind you it's not going to totally get rid of every pest and disease but it can considerably reduce them.
So as far as our soil and gardening soil needs I think we're going to continue to produce our own. 👨🌾☘️🌷🌱🌽🌿🍆🍅
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