Soil gold

The rains are coming and it’s a good time to fertilize the garden and add some more mulch.

The pics below are of handfuls of soil gold. They’re hay, straw and Pine needles all mixed with sheep poo that have been decomposing under two huge Pine trees forever. It’s what I get from Greg’s Shared Garden to put a real kick into the deep litter in the chook run and, because there’s very few seeds in there, I’m adding it straight to the garden after it rains on today. The acidity will be a boost for the Blueberries and the fungi in the soil and mulch.

As the front garden is all perrenials (plus a few self seeding annuals), it’s been a job of ours to convert the soil to a slightly acidic pH. In general, perennials, especially the tropical plants that Ligaya Garden is becoming known for prefer it. They like to make associations with fungi too and these prefer slight acidity as well.

The area I get this all from is also home to one of the best seasonal Nettle patches in Gawler and I saw lots popping up while shovelling. These will all go to liquid compost this year. Now that we have our technique down pat, we can ramp up production and make enough to last us all year.

This Winter, I’ll put in a second compost tea press to process a lot more Nettles into concentrated compost tea for use throughout the year and to help with converting out aquaponics to bioponics. It’s the time when Nettles are popping up around the place so this year, we’ll make gallons of the tea.

I’ll be posting about the changes to the aquaponics system as I get my head around it all properly and it morphs into bioponics so stay tuned if you’re interested in such things.