How I'm amending my garden for spring (adding nutrients back to the soil, beating back the weeds)
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- Опубліковано 17 вер 2024
- Amending your garden beds is essential to maintaining a healthy garden! As your plants grow, they pull nutrition out of the soil and put it into your harvest, so you need to add nutrition back to the soil each year. Today I'm showing you my own process of garden amendment and talking about why I'm doing things this way.
How to test your straw for herbicides: • How to test your straw...
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Welcome to Auxhart Gardening! I’m Rachel, a small-scale southern gardener growing near Clemson, SC, zone 7b. I mainly garden in-ground, with containers as secondary production spaces.
Knowing where your food comes from is powerful, and empowering, and I believe we can change the world through gardening education.
The agricultural system is broken; we’ve monocultured nearly every major crop, forcing the use of chemical pesticides and inorganic fertilizers to maintain large-scale food production. I believe there’s a better way.
By teaching people to rely on themselves, even just a little, for their food supply, we might be able to create some breathing room for our strained food system, allowing for change to start happening.
By educating people about where food comes from and how to grow it, we can raise awareness about our broken agricultural system and form a community that understands how to fix it.
By forming a community, we can move toward creating real change in the world.
My goal is to educate; yes you can grow food, yes you can do it without chemicals, yes you can do it in your backyard or on your windowsill. And yes, that can make a difference in the world.
Follow me on Instagram @auxhartgardening
/ auxhartgardening
My dad’s woodworking channel:
/ @theredtruckwoodshop2722
Contact me at: hello.rachel.andorfer@gmail.com
Mailing Address: PO Box 614 Central, SC 29630 (can receive boxes of any size)
Lots of good info. Keeping that yard prepped and ready. Thanks for the share!
Thanks for watching!
Well done I really enjoy your videos
Congrats on getting a good start on your garden! Just sub'd your channel. I suggest starting a compost pile using yard and kitchen waste then go to the woods with a coffee can and scoop up some rich soil from under a 3-5 year old downed tree. Use that can full of soil to inoculate the compost pile. Before the Fall leaves start dropping apply the compost to the garden and then start a Winter pile from the leaves of the Fall. Starting a garden is a lot of work but once you 'let' nature guide you along you will find a rhythm and it gets easier each year as you build soil. I find applying compost and amendments in the Fall much more effective.
I've been trying to make my own compost, but until recently I wasn't able to source enough material. Hopefully I'll be fully making my own soon.
@@AuxhartGardening If you can, a few hens will supply the fertilizer (N) for the compost pile...you get the benefit of fresh eggs as well.
Looks great!
Thanks!
Looking good! Heads up on the straw being a haven for slugs if you are in a damp/humid area. I still use straw but I make sure to sprinkle an organic slug bait about every 3wks. Your video on testing the straw was awesome!
Thanks for the tip! I'll keep an eye out for them.
I noticed you are wearing the sleeves. I've been thinking about buying some. But am wondering if they would be hot. Great info in your video. Thanks!
Get chicken or turkey guano from local producers. Very high nitrogen. Broadcast on woodchips. Feather compost from a processor is high nitrogen and a slower release.
Feather compost? Like made out of feathers? I've never heard of that.
@@AuxhartGardening yes made of feathers when chickens etc are harvested. Feathers are the hardest thing to get rid of because they degrade slowly or are stinky if burned or put in water to decompose WITHOUT AERATION. I have only seen it at one place but we haven't been looking for it. It is rich compost. We live close to a chicken farm but not a processor.
It looks SOOOO good, Rachel!! I’m looking forward to seeing how you grow the mushrooms. I just got an entire dump truck load of wood chips off of chipdrop so I have an ample amount to play with and would be interested in trying my hand at growing mushrooms too if that’s what you use to do it!
Thanks!! Also, thanks for mentioning chipdrop, i knew it existed and have been trying to remember the name for like a month! Do you like the service? I’m trying to reccomend it to a friends mom.
Hey Rachel, are those sun protection sleeves? Those sleeves look awesome! For a second I thought you got "sleeves" (full arm tattoos).
Yes! They're from Farmer's Defense, and I love them!
@@AuxhartGardening That's cool. Are they breathable? Just asking because I live in Zone 9A where it can be steamy
@@monkeymommy778 I’d give them an A- on breathability. I don’t feel like they stifle me. But I do find myself being glad I have them on when it’s a little chilly outside.
You 100% need a different wheel barrow.
Why’s that? I like this one lol
@@AuxhartGardening ☺️ Your backs will thank you in 20yrs. 😉
Where'd you get the compost?
I see. Linked in the description.
A local mulch and compost yard.
Also wood chips only rob nitrogen if mixed with the soil, not if placed on top, so if you are no tilling… wood chips would not effect your garden in any way that isn’t beneficial!
Sort of! According to my research they do take nitrogen from the top layer of soil that they sit on, so anything with really shallow roots would be affected. I think if you can afford extra compost to amend with below the wood chips, you probably wouldn’t notice a difference, but since I’m only able to add a little compost I’m trying to make it count.
Why is that dumpt car still on the bakground?
It's my neighbor's. I think it's an outward sign of a mental health struggle.
"No Tillage" method?
Yeah, the no dig method. I heard about it from Charles Dowding. The idea is that it’s better for the soil not to disturb the structure all the time by tilling, and you can get just as many nutrients to your plants even if you don’t till in the compost. Plants actually do better most of the time in no dig spaces because there’s such a large benefit to maintaining the existing structure of the soil with all its life.