In past posts I have talked about some of the benefits of compost. It improves soil structure and it adds nutrients to the soil. What about the other benefits like adding microbes to the soil, reducing diseases and eliminating the need for additional fertilizer? Are these real benefits or just gardening myths?
I was doing some reading about compost and compost myths and I asked myself, do I really know what compost is? I thought I knew. I had certainly read a lot about it, and I have been making it for over 40 years. I started by Goggling the definition of compost and it quickly became clear that the popular dictionaries on the net don’t agree on a definition. In fact they contradict one another. It became clear that this simple question had a more complicated answer.
The posts for the next several weeks will be dedicated to composting, making compost and composte‘, if you prefer that term. I’ll unravel the truth behind this black gold.
You have probably heard that humus is an important part of your soil, but few people know what it is and why it is important. There are many myths about humus that need to be cleared up.
It turns out that humus may be the most important thing in soil: more important that dew worms, and organic matter, but it gets so little attention. This post will have a closer look at humus to better understand how we should be gardening to create and maintain humus rich soil.
In my last post What is Organic Fertilizer I explained why the nutrients in organic fertilizer and synthetic fertilizer are the same. Plants can’t tell the difference between the two because there is no difference. However, organic fertilizer is better for the garden. In this post we will look at why this is true.
