Sustainable Soil Management Practices for the Garden

I used the methods described in the article A Better Way to Fertilize Your Garden: Homemade Organic Fertilizer for a couple of years to organically fertilize our newly constructed vegetable garden.  The article was published in Mother Earth News in the June/July 2006 edition and written by Steve Solomon.  By using the recipe for this organic fertilizer I obtained very good yields and our vegetables were very healthy.  I think this is a very good alternative to chemical fertilizers and a great technique for a new garden to give it an initial boost, but I would like to offer some sustainable soil management practices for soil building in the home garden that should eventually eliminate or greatly reduce having to add any fertilizer.

garden soil

 [Photo Credit, Soil by John!!! under Creative Commons License]

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Protecting Garden Soil with Fall Leaf Mulch

Fall provides a great opportunity for us to collect a mulch source that is free and is an important element in building our soil.  If at all possible, the soil in a garden should never be left exposed or bare for an extended period of time.  Whether you use cover crops, straw mulch, leaf mulch, shredded newspaper, or landscape fabric (not my first choice); mulching is vital to protecting garden soil.  Our strategy to provide soil protection for late fall and winter is to collect the massive amount of fallen leaves, mulch them, and apply them directly to the garden beds.

fall leaf mulch protecting garden soil[Mulching beds with fall leaves is one of our important soil building strategies]

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