Do you have heavy clay soil in your garden? Wet, it’s a leaden muck. Dry, it’s the consistency of cement. Just thinking about digging up that stuff to cultivate, plant and weed your garden or is enough to send you back to bed.
Don’t fight your garden soil—improve it!
Every gardening expert agrees that the absolute best way to improve garden soil of any type is to add compost, that rich, moist but not wet humus made of decomposed organic materials. Why?
- It’s long-lasting. Dig in the compost once, and forget it. You’ve just created premium top soil, the kind of dirt people actually pay good money for.
- It doesn’t cost a cent. You can pay out a lot of money for soil conditioners and organic soil amendments of various types, but why pay for something you can make for free from kitchen scraps and other discards—and that’s superior to most of the store-bought stuff besides?
- It improves drainage in clay soils.
- It improves moisture retention in sandy soils. (Sandy soil may be easier to dig than clay, but it has its own problems. Water runs right through it, leaving plants thirsty all the time.)
- It improves the texture of all soils. You’ll never again swear as you huff and puff and break your back digging up your garden. You can dig this soil with your bare hands.
- It encourages the growth of the bacteria, worms and other critters that keep garden soil healthy.
- It’s self-perpetuating. Unlike vermiculite and other soil conditioners it provides fuel for even more compost in the form of worm castings and other naturally derived humus.
Not just any compost will do, though. Making compost is a scientific art that Rod Taylor, author of the e-book The World’s Best Compost, has spent more than two decades mastering and teaching to others.
The compost that Taylor makes is true humus. Humus is a colloid, a suspension of solids and liquids (like butter). Taylor can gather his compost into a rubbery ball. Try doing that with the 14-day “compost” from the average compost tumbler.
You wouldn’t think there’s that much to say about compost, but Taylor’s e-book, The World’s Best Compost, is jam-packed with information.
He teaches a method for making compost that not only “cooks” up beautifully, but never needs to be turned. You just pile it up and let it rot.
True, making good compost is not labor-free. You will have to put in some time to collect the ingredients and build your pile. But, if you build it properly, that’s it. Just wait. You will have the best compost you can possibly make.
Taylor offers several bonuses, including one for folks who have a small yard or live in a town that doesn’t allow open compost heaps: step-by-step videos on “green manuring,” the practice of growing nitrogen-fixing crops that you then till into the soil.
Feed your flowers and vegetables real compost, and your garden will turn even Mother Nature green with envy.
