3 Free Ways to Make Your Own Soil for Growing Organic Food - Regenerative Gardening & Permaculture
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- Опубликовано: 3 июн 2024
- Want to grow your own food, but the price of garden soil is holding you back? If you get your soil in bags from the big box stores you’ve probably noticed that dirt isn't dirt cheap. In this video I’m going to show you how to make your own garden soil from scratch for free. Rich, nutritious soil is easy to make and all you need to do it is time.
Here at Forever Food Forest we explore ways of growing food without the use of pesticides, herbicides, or commercial fertilizers, and instead we rely on permaculture principles such as creating symbiotic relationships in the garden inspired by nature to grow food that’s good for the garden and good for the planet.
With these soil building methods that I’m about to show you, you will have beautiful, nutritious soil that you can use in your garden in as little as 3 months.
My main goal this year is to grow good soil. To do that I am taking inspiration from a forest. Nature - it’s the best teacher. Imagine a forest. There are a bunch of trees and one of those trees falls. It starts to decompose and all of these natural organisms move in and break down the tree, release the nutrients and then the nutrients are taken up by the plants around the tree and the cycle continues. I don’t recommend decomposing a whole tree in your yard (that will take forever), but what I do suggest is using wood chips. What you want is untreated wood chips or arborist mulch as it's sometimes called. You can get free wood chips from either your local tree removal service, or an arborist, or through a service called Chipdrop.com which I do not recommend.
All you do is dump your wood chips out in a layer that’s about 2-6 inches deep (or more if you want to get rid of stubborn weeds). As the wood chips break down, they’re going to release nutrients and they’re also going to help retain moisture and moderate the temperature of the soil . Once they’re fully broken down there’s also going to be a lot of humus that is going to get incorporated into the soil.
Humus is the black stuff left over after decomposition. It provides plants with nutrients, and improves soil texture and water retention.
You can also just leave your wood chips in a pile to break down over time. However, this process is slow and can take up to 10 years. It is hands off and the resulting soil is going to be absolutely gorgeous, but if you don’t want to wait, you can speed it up by incorporating nitrogen. Nitrogen speeds up decomposition by heating up the pile and that heat helps break it down in as little as 6 months depending on where you live.
If your native soil is sandy or dry, you can improve water retention by adding leaf mold. Leaf mold is easy to make and all you need is at least a cubic yard of leaves, water, oxygen, and time. Leaf mold is made when leaves are broken down through a fungal decomposition process. The result is a spongy, nutrient rich soil amendment that your plants are gonna love. It is similar in properties to peat moss, but much more environmentally sustainable.
Lastly, you can use herbivore manure to improve your native garden soil. Horse manure is great as it already has some wood shavings incorporated in it and once it’s decomposed makes excellent nitrogen rich soil.
These are just some gateway methods into soil regeneration and building up your own soil. And granted there are way more ways of building your soil. These are just some beginner friendly methods that you can start today. For me building good soil is like an investment that keeps paying out for years to come. It’s not just about nutrients -It’s also about the microbiology of the soil. A teaspoon of soil has more microorganisms in it than there are people on earth. Through these soil regeneration methods we are creating a symbiotic relationship between plants and soil. If you like to learn more about that, make sure to hit that subscribe button. 
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Good video! I love to see people using wood chips; I have used them for mulch, a bottom layer in a raised bed, and for compost. I would add a few tips, though. Mixing the wood chips with nitrogen-rich material is a great start for compost, but it will work faster if you turn the pile, and cover it to keep the moisture in. You can certainly just leave the pile alone, but it will take much longer to compost. Similarly, shredding leaves helps quite a bit. Without it, the leaves can tend to flatten into mats, and it slows the decomposition. Finally, if you are getting horse manure (or any other manure), it's essential to find out if the horses have been fed hay that was sprayed to kill broadleaf "weeds." Some of those herbicides persist in the hay, in the manure of animals fed that hay, and in the compost made from that manure. Compost containing those herbicides will kill the plants in your garden, and will persist in the soil, sometimes for years. If the people don't know how their hay was grown, don't use it.
Thank you! These are great tips. I'm pinning your comment so others can learn too!
Perhaps like a flow-through worm bin with mesh "floor" could work for compost?
Or on a small scale, compost inside of used animal feed bags, jute instead of plastic?
A great, and free, source of nitrogen-rich material is your local coffee shop. To them it is just garbage, but used coffee grounds are extremely rich in nitrogen. Last year I got a couple hundred pounds over the course of a week from ONE local shop (there are at least 10 within 3 miles of my house), and that was more than what I needed. Some of it ended up just getting spread on my grass. I know that last part will take a while to incorporate into the soil, but it is a very good complement to the carbon in wood chips.
I guess same goes for the wood chips. Most people have a pest/ herbicide on their lawn year after year and that soaks up into the tree that is then cut down. And chipped. Hopefully in 3 years it's safe
I don't trust any industry for fertilizer even the coffee grounds can contain the bad guys. I have acreage and it's probably the best source of natural compost along with earthworms. Worm casings are good for growing stuff. All my land is raw fallowed land just have to stay away from under power lines some utility companies spray to keep weeds down. My pineapple plant grew good in my GA soil. It's just too heavy to move the pot into a warm area in the winter. 73
Good news to home owners: your useless lawn isnt useless. grass builds soil over several decades just from cutting the lawn, if you dont bag the clippings.
Lawns from old houses that have 40 year old grass have excellent soil under the grass. It builds up over time.
Thats why old house lawns end up 6 inches higher then the sidewalk. It built 6 inches of new soil. The stuff is just black gold and people pay to remove it to re level their lawn. Its a gift if you save the soil.
I contacted the city road department. They brought trucks of wood chips for free. I did buy them a big case of Gatoraid.
A little effort, every 2-3 days of turning your piles will turn your compost wait from 6 months down to a couple of weeks. Sure you have time, until you don't. If you take 1 year to prepare your soil, that is 1 year your not producing food, when you could have been producing food after a couple of weeks. When I moved onto my property, I had been previously hired to kill this property. So I had mowed the yard down very short, I had sprayed weed&feed and 40% glyphosphate the summer before I moved in under the owners orders. Then I got the opportunity to rent the property and I converted the area I had killed, which was nothing but a dead patch of dirt, into my garden and greenhouse area. That next summer we ate out of the garden, not the greatest harvests accross the board, but plenty tomatoes, zuccini, and lettuces. Only used compost I had made in spring to feed the garden. I coated the garden in 8" of leaves, ran my mower over them, and let winter settle in. End of winter I let my chickens turn over the garden for 2 weeks, weeding, fertilizing, tilling, and eating bugs. This year my garden is twice as dense and bountiful it was last year versus if I had waited a year to just build soil, I would have had my first food run this year and would have learned last years lessons this year, and not have been productice and bountiful for another year. So that is 2-3 years to acheive your goals instead of 1-3.
Pro tip on soil building, buy chickens. They compost faster then any method, plus free eggs.
Thank you for the information! Chickens are on my list of livestock to get eventually. Unfortunately, our county requires a permit for chickens and all available permits have been given out. Turning my pile more often just isn't an option as right now our temperatures are in triple digits with 90% humidity, and 100% mosquitoes, but come fall I'll be sure to turn it up!
@@foreverfoodforest How unfortunate. Chickens are such wonderful creatures. If 1/3 of humanity had a few chickens we could eliminate all the food wastes from landfills.
Best of luck.
Great ideas! However, I don't recommend using others leaves or lawn clippings unless you know they do not spray.
I've literally used chip drop 11 times. I've put close to 250 yards of mulch on earth 1/3 acre property in 2 1/2 years. It's been fantastic
Me too about 15 loads over several years, but I have five acres and six sons.
6 loads on a 1/4 here in Kansas City over the last 2 years. Such a helpful resource!
Probably works if you have that much space, but if you don't, that could be very problematic! I get her point in the comment... 😘🙏
I'm still waiting on a drop. I'm out in the sticks in NE Pennsylvania though. Kinda out of the way.
@@jamesrichard5290it’s rough
God bless you and thank you this is the kind of farming America needs desperately
This is good advice! I only have access to leaves (because my husband vetoed a mountain of wood chips!!) which are working really well. I like to shred them with a leaf mulcher because I've found that whole leaves create a mat that is harder to work with when planting my garden. I put my extra leaves in bags and poke air holes in the bag so the leaves decompose, not rot. It's so nice not to have to till my garden! (I'm an old lady!) I just pitchfork it a little to aerate. With healthier soil I have more songbirds and less pests. I have seen a 2 foot garter snake in my little garden. I just grit my teeth and leave it alone. I need the free bug-eating pest control!
I live on the most nutrient deficient coastal plain soil IN THE WORLD. It has taken 4 years to build up the soil enough to grow non native plants/fruit veg etc so this is great info thanks as it’s a never ending expensive task. It is just part and parcel of living in some areas of Australia but I am constantly jealous when I see people digging into their amazing quality soil on RUclips 😂
And I thought we had it bad here in Florida. Our "soil" is sand and any nutrients we add get washed away by the monsoon every year. I feel your struggle but it is possible!
Hello from Windermere, Florida zone 9b.
Excellent videos ❤👩🌾👍
I'm in a development near Disney. But I've been Gardening since I was 21 in 1971. I'm a Vermiculturalist since 2009. We all need to grow organic!
Garden What You've Got is my life motto-Use What You Have 👍
Nice to meet you
❤Peggy❤😊
I Had a great experience with chip drop. The problem is, they don't have many participants in my area (I'm on 50 acres at 5k elevation, 2 hours from the nearest city big enough for a box store) so I applied and got one drop by chance then nothing for over a year. The one drop was no where near what I needed, I had no problems using it. These are arborists etc, so it's going to be fresh mulch, meaning yes, it's going to be hot and will steam. If you live in a city in a tight space, a huge dump truck doesn't have many options for dumping them because they will sink in your yard, damage gas, water, power lines etc and may have to dump best the road at the front of your property. I encourage you to think it through logically before you ask for a chip drop, they are very up front about what to expect if you read the information they give. I highly recommend it. I've since just flagged down the guys I've seen locally doing tree work and have gotten 17 truck loads this summer so I also recommend that option!
Love the idea of letting leaves decomposed in the bag. I had good experience with Chip Drop. I needed a lot of wood chips and it would have cost a lot, plus I shared with 2 others neighbors, I had about 8 deliveries (free gym membership). I made a sign to let driver know where to drop it. A note on animal manure is to be careful, if you are trying to be organic, about pesticides in their feed plus drugs given to them.
It is like a free gym membership! Lol!
I am making my soil better by combining it (my soil is literally 100% white beach sand) with homemade compost and coco coir for my raised beds, grow pots and containers. My field gets a generous layer of compost covered with my native pine straw (because I also live in the piney woods). I make my own liquid fertilizer from wild grasses and leaf mold from under our forest oak trees. All of these things are free to me except I do occasionally buy some Bokashi bran for my compost as I don’t make enough of that to produce it myself though I know how to do that also. The coco coir is also purchased. I’m occasionally amending with bone meal and blood meal until I can transition to also making those myself as well. I will be making my own fish emulsion and fish meal soon as well. It’s all very low cost and my plants are so much more productive and healthy than last year when I was first starting my garden!
What you're doing is awesome! It's only gonna get better over time as you keep amending it and cultivating the microorganisms!
I live near the Grand Canyon, Az, have been building or rather growing the soil years now, with decent results, ( my black corn strain says so )... Buried a discarded smaller elk carcass for burial n the southwest corner of my corn field to sit a year and recover and purpose the soil therein... Just an idea
You are going to have amazing soil!
Don't forget about growing green manure cover crops like oats, beans, vetch, clover and cowpea. You can grown them from seed so they are cheap, they will develop good soil structure and a healthy eco system with the roots then chop and drop them and cover them with mulch or compost to trap heaps of nitrogen and other goodies into the soil. When the plants die the path the old roots made can let air in, hold rain water in the soil for a long time by letting it penetrate nice and deep, plus new plants can use the old root paths to rapidly grow their own. If you are able to collect seaweed (I guess its nearby since you have beach sand) it can be great to burry in to sand and also as a mulch or use in making compost tea as well. Just some suggestions, hope they help!
You should definitely use Chip Drop if you have the need for lots of chips. For me, I live in a rural area and I waited a very, very long time for Chip Drop to deliver, and when they did, all I got was one truck load. I ended up speaking to every arborist in my area, and so far I got about 6 truck loads, and I need a lot more.
Also, be careful with using plastic bags outside. If they are exposed to light and rain, they will break down into tiny pieces of plastic that you will never get out of your soil, and they're toxic.
Lastly, if you're going to get straw or manure, be sure you know if that straw is sprayed with herbicides or pesticides, and if the animal that produced the manure ate sprayed feed, because those chemicals will survive the composting process and they would kill your plants for as long as 7 years.
Nice video, but I actually love Chip Drop. Yes, it was a lot of wood chips, took several days to disperse, and did steam and stink a little, but I have a large yard that I am turning into many planting boarders, so it was worth it to me. In fact, I still have more areas that need wood chips and the areas where I did put them could use some more. I’m doing the no-dig method of laying down cardboard and putting several inches of chips over top. It is incredible how it has transformed my yard.
Absolutely my thoughts and gameplan, did the same thing and will def do again
Just signed up for a drop … thanks for the tip, I had no idea that was a thing
I've used Chip Drop for the past 3 years, and even though I have a relatively small homestead, I find I need more than one drop to cover everything. If you grow mushrooms in the woodchips, like winecaps, they will break down the woodchips in less than a year and greatly benefit the plants.
Confirm the cardboard and wood chips! We had bindweed for years, eliminated it in one fell swoop.
Chip Drop never worked for me, guess it only works for city folk.
Great video! One caution I would submit however with regards to manure, and that is the use of Grazon persistent herbicide used to keep weeds out of feed hay/straw. This stuff is horrific on the garden despite seeming to harmlessly pass through animal digestive tracts. Sadly it's near impossible to know whether or not the manure/hay/straw you procure has been treated with it. It can destroy a garden and is persistent, taking years to finally breakdown. There have been some remediation steps identified, but it's time consuming and heartbreaking to have to deal with this poison. So be warned, and be careful out there gardeners.
When I am gifted manure, hay or straw I always soak a bag of it in a couple gallons of water then water some sacrificial bean plants with that water for a few weeks before I use the material in my compost. (beans and tomatoes react to grazon really quickly and you'll know in a couple weeks if its clean). I had a slight issue when I first started gardening using some gifted hay as mulch on my tomato beds and it took 4 years of heavily amending that area with great compost, leaf mold worm castings until that soil tested good again.
And, if the horse has been wormed, the manure will kill worms in your soil.
@@cherylcook1942Really? Oh my goodness- well, ALL stables will have wormed their horses, surely?
I used some horse manure once (years ago). It didn’t harm the crops but, oh the grassy weeds!!
It took years to get rid of them. 😢😊
@@louisepeterson6626 Me too - there's gotta be a way to kill the seeds - I stopped using horse poop because of the weeds.
“Good soil at the root of your garden” love it!
The black racer snake is an excellent snake to have around. They love to kill and devour poisonous snakes.☺
I love maintaining a Food Forest! More, if it is a Forever Food Forest.
I am here for this! Exactly what I need right now. I have been doing hydroponics for 10 years and now I am trying to regenerate my soil and start a mini food forest. Thank you.
Love to hear it!
Nice vid 🙂 I could be wrong but I think you forgot to mention that fresh wood chips will leach nitrogen out of the soil if you just dump them on the ground as mulch.
Christina we need more videos!! You are awesome!
i have been blending my banana peels and other food waste rather than waiting for it to compost- my plants are very happy with it!
I do the same, every Saturday.
Definitely going to try this. I have been doing Bokashi.
Thank you for making it easy to understand. Great video, please keep up the good work.
Another informative filled video thumbs up again 👍🏻 keep ‘em coming!! Enjoying how easy this is to do !!
Hello Christina, thanks for your videos. I've watched a few of them. It's good to see a real garden. Love how you have an Aussie tree fern. Will keep watching. Trish from Wollongong Australia. 😊
Very Good Video!
Full Garden Tour! It's great seeing how others utilize their unique spaces.
Coming soon!
Glad I found your channel! I am new to gardening but really do not have the budget to keep buying big box store soils. I found a couple of arborists who are willing to bring me chips and I have got a ton of leaves come fall. I look forward to seeing your videos!
Wow! I learned SO much! Thank you!
Sharing!
This is one the best vids I've seen yet with the best info ..thank you
Great straightforward information. Thanks!
I am very happy with what you are doing, making your own compost with raw materials that are readily available in nature. it will keep the balance of nature sustainable, ❤️😍😍😍😍
I appreciate your humor and you explaining where to find everything (as a lay person/gardener this is very helpful!)!
Mulch is possible with good sense of humus!
You have a good sense of humous
Inspiring! Thanks ❤
Fantastic video good on ya!!!
You are very fun to watch. Cheers from Ottawa, Canada🍁
Great explanation and amazing content. Thank you
Gorgeous. I mean awesome.
Love to the concept of growing soil
I’ve been using the Berkeley 18 day compost method and it’s been amazing bc you don’t lose much compost volume like you do with cold compost
Thanks, that’s quite interesting and saves a LOT of time.
I use it too just because of the fast turn around and the huge amounts of compost I go through.
Great video thanks for sharing!
Great video. Thank you.
Well done, informative video.
I Love your video, you have a lot of great info. Keep those videos coming!
Paul Gautschi and his BACK TO EDEN method has certainly come in handy. Regards.
Useful info. Thanks
Very informative and thank you for sharing!
Hello, organic lady, God bless you, right doing❤
I've watched this video twice now, and it's inspired me greatly to take over soil production on our suburban land. We're in Brisbane, Australia, which is about the same distance from the equator as Orlando, Florida...so hopefully whatever works for you will work for us as well! We let our garden get away from us over the past few years and now we're taking great joy in getting it back into a proper working order, including a lot of tree/shrub trimming and then shredding everything we can that we've cut down. I'd already appointed myself the Compost King of our place (my wife handles the finer stuff, and I do the brute force stuff!), but now I'm gonna be the Soil Baron as well!
You have a beautiful backyard, especially the enormous tree.
ChipDrop is TOP TIER!!! The drop isn’t big enough if you ask me. I have a lot of land to cover. I don’t care what my neighbors think about the 2 piles on my front lawn. It breaks down quick enough…a month. 😂 Just move the pile to the back of your house. Horse manure is not always the best idea. If you don’t know where the hay that they eat comes from, you are probably introducing chemicals to your gardens via the new compost.
Thank you very much. I'm going to start growing my own soil
I love chip drop! I also have a full acre garden though, and a full orchard as well.
EXCELLENT INFORMATION. THANK YOU 😊
I love chip drop. It took a year or two to get some but they were great. Yes, I have a mountain but 5hey asked me how much I wanted. I have a huge yard and I have been sharing with lots of neighbors.
Thanks so much I have learnt so much from your video 😊
This is a great presentation! You put it together awesomely!
Glad you liked it!
Really nice Video! Very well explained..
So useful video, thanks you
Thanks for the video👍👌
I ordered a chip drop once..
O M G. Thank you for the great video!
Thank you, Im delighted. . .
Great, clear content delivered efficiently. Thank you so much for your tutorial. 😊
You're welcome! Happy growing!
I all my carbon, greens, and kitchen scraps into my chicken yard for them to help nature. It's almost a copy of Back to Eden method and I love it.
Keep sending, l do appreciate your video a lot!🧠💯💪👏
Great video beautifully plants ☘️❤❤❤👌👍🙏
Great content! Very nice camera and editing. Good luck with your projects!
More Please! Great approach: straight forward and informative with a wicked good sense of humor lingering just beneath the surface (pun intended!)
And great legs I was hoping to see more of.
Thanks for sharing great information 👍✌️🫶🌞💖
That was awesome
Very nice thanks a lot😁👏👏♥️
I have subscribed I have been very interested in learning this , Thank you Ontario, Canada
I just came across your video. I live in AZ. My property has a lot rock (landscaping). I’m in the progress of removing all the rock and replacing it with my own soil. With the help of other things that you described in this video. Thank you for sharing. You have a new follower. Bless up.❤
Thank you for the follow! My best friend lives in AZ!
Amazing information
Thanks Beautiful ❤❤❤
Great video , I have 5 good compost piles .Thanks for posting .
I bought a gasoline powered wood chipper, although I don't recommend it for everyone as they can be dangerous it was definitely a worthwhile investment for my small homestead
Hi Cristina, congratulations for your good gardening & permaculture practices. I also make my own soil from every kind of weed, branch & food scraps that I collect. I crush all weeds in a bioscredder and then I dispose a layer as mulch. Over time it becomes new substrate.
I like the idea of growing soil
Nice video thanks
Great video. I just came across your channel, and after watching a couple of your videos, I have to say that along with excellent content I enjoy your use of humor. I am also in Florida Zone 9b, but am limited to container gardening at this point. Keep up the good work!
Thank you and welcome! My first garden was a container garden until I learned how to work with Florida "soil".
👋 I’m another Florida zone 9b gardener !!
You are great as a gardening teacher. I love how much you know about plants, but with all respect let me tell you is very difficult to follow up because you have such a beautiful eyes which call my attention. You are the best.
Looks like this is a newer channel and off to a great start. I loved the video, subscribed, and am looking forward to more.
I love your videos, they are so helpful with my beginning stages of my garden 💖💖💖
I'm so glad!
I really like this video because it is fun, informative and easy to implement in smaller spaces.
Thank you for the great content!!!
Thanks! Glad you liked it!
Also have a look at using Coffee Grounds with the wood chip.
Thank you 🙂
The snake really threw me off lol, great vidoe
Quite a motivation
Good idea...thank you for sharing..wish you success and be healthy always..
I got a mountain of chips from chip drop and it was the most beautiful mulch I’ve ever seen. I highly recommend it if you have the space to use it.
Thank you 😊
Informative. Waiting for more on soil improvement.
I had a good experience with chip drop. Of course they called and told me when they're coming, and that mountain of wood chips, layered 1 foot high next to the fences, melted down to almost nothing in less than 3 months.
nice wellies
Thts wht I always based the thought of compost on...The Forrest through the trees 🌳....The Forrest through the trees...great vid...I learned something....1 PEOPLE...1 MIND....1 LOVE ❤️....1 NATION...1
Love from India ❤❤❤
Thank You so much!
edit: excess (fresh) grass clippings are *GREAT* for heating up a pile, too!
no clumps, water, and layer!!
Thank you for sharing I need all the help.i can get