How to Amend Your Soil for Fall and What We Use to Amend Ours

what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the my gardener channel i am so excited for today's video because in today's video i'm gonna be showing you all how to prepare your garden for fall now the question always comes up seems like every single year the question comes up luke i've got my summer garden done i want to plant a fall crop how do i amend my beds to get ready for fall or luke i pulled out my summer garden i'm not planning on planting a fall garden which you should by the way but you don't have to if you don't want to it's your garden your rules so totally up to you uh luke i pulled out my summer garden i'm not i'm not going to plant anything for fall but i want to get it ready for the next year how do i do that that's what we're going to do in today's video and i really hope that you guys are going to enjoy it now the first thing to start off with is one of the biggest mistakes i see people making is neglecting their soil now this obviously pertains you know directly to re-amending and re-mineralizing your soil and it's a huge mistake i see people making where they just assume i've got compost i just you know i just put my my beds and my gardens together i just grew one crop i should be able to get by you know a year or two without remineralizing or refreshing my beds yes you might get by a year or two and not really notice those results that are are bad but one of the things that's going on under the surface is that you're actually opening up your soil to a lot of bad things that you as a gardener do not want to have things like soil borne insects and diseases one of the biggest ones are nematodes soil-borne nematodes are so prevalent in depleted and malnourished soils there have been numerous studies shown that when you replenish your soil re-mineralize your soil and keep it fertile it actually deters nematodes by up to 75 percent nematodes like depleted soil they really like that anaerobic untouched just sad looking soil so nematodes are something you do not want especially if you're growing things like broccolis cabbages cauliflowers any of your brassicas they cause a disease called root knot and root knot essentially it basically disables the ability for the plant to uptake nutrients and it just gets super feeble and weak and then the crop is done for and the problem is is once you have nematodes it's very difficult to eradicate so yes you can get them and eradicate them but why not just prevent them in the first place the next thing that you're going to really welcome into your garden are soil borne funguses powdery mildew and blights to be specific septoria blight which is like like late blight on your tomatoes you can get fusarium wilt you can get a lot of you can get a lot of different blights as well as powdery mildews that start to breed in soil because they're soil borne oh and again just like nematodes they really like that kind of untouched stagnant soil that's not being maintained and really fertile because one of the things one of the pillars of organic gardening is that when you take care of your soil when you take care of your soil and keep it you know really nutritious and really fertile there is a symbiotic relationship that takes place in your soil where your plants feed off of the beneficial bacteria and fungi in your soil they help each other right and in a good ecosystem the beneficial bacteria and fungi they actually will keep the bad bacteria and fungi bad fungi being things like powdery mildews and blights they actually keep them at bay there is a balance whereas if you're not taking care of your soil more of those bad funguses like blights and powdery mildews and things like that can really take hold in your soil anyone that tells you you can't use too much compost or that you can use too much compost in your garden they should be well composted you cannot use too much compost in your garden we grow in 100 pure compost every single year this question comes up and it's can i use too much compost no you really can't you cannot use too much compost it is perfect soil it ph balances your soil to around seven which plants love it helps to give nutrients as well as a place for beneficial bacteria and fungi to call home in a good you know symbiotic relationship with those plants it's a great thing to have it's got organic matter which holds onto nutrients and water it's got you know fluff and aeration so it holds on to oxygen in the soil which is so important it's just a very very vital thing to have in your soil so even though our soil is nice and dark and i'll show you guys a close-up of our soil what we're going to do is we're going to come by here because my soil does not need to be topped off i just topped it off this spring what i'm looking to do is to do a general reamending of the soil bring more fertility and nutrients and minerals back into the soil i want to reamend so that i'm actually fostering that good ecology all right so the first soil amendment that we really love and totally stand by is worm castings we prefer a very high chitin content worm casting now what chitin is it comes from food scraps so primarily fruit and vegetable waste produces chitin now chitin helps with your soil health it helps with soil mic the microbes in the soil the beneficial bacteria and fungi use the chitin and it helps to create a much more well-balanced soil not all worm castings are created equal one that is high chitin is actually going to be far better than worm castings that come from high carbon worm castings that have a lot of carbon we're usually fed things like cardboard or paper scraps and that's basically the equivalent of you eating rice every single day rice isn't bad but it's just pure carbs it's not something that's actually going to sustain you and give you nutrients and vitality so fruit and vegetable scraps is like you eating a salad every day you know you should eat a salad you should eat more salad than you do things like rice because it has a lot more nutrients a lot more minerals in it and that's what you get from a high chitin diet so we prefer a high chitin worm castings and we actually do sell these worm castings over at mygardener.com and they are great i absolutely swear by them and we sell them by the bag full and a little bit goes a very long way what we'll do is we will either if we have plants growing we'll use the worm castings like let's say we have some perennials and we want to get the garden ready for fall we'll actually soak the worm castings and make a worm tea we use that to soak our perennials and really drench the soil in the case of our raised bed back here we would just take say this two pound two to two and a half pound bag and we'll spread it over the top of this entire raised bed that's about all the worm castings we need because we're not using this as a growing medium i think of worm castings less as a growing medium and more like a like a a supplement or a vitamin for your soil that's because there's so many nutrients and minerals packed into this as well as beneficial bacteria and fungi the beneficial bacteria and fungi found in worm castings is about seven times more than compost seven times more the next thing we really love is we love azomite i absolutely love azomite because it is a it's a ground rock dust and it provides so many trace minerals trace minerals are something that's depleted from our soil and when you look at your your compost so much compost comes from say grass clippings or wood chip mulch which is good but it's much like we talked about with with so much like we talked about with the worm castings where a lot of that is carbon based it's going to give your soil a good fluff it's going to give your soil good organic matter but it's not going to be super dense in minerals and minerals come from clay and so the azomite actually comes from a clay-based rock that they grind up and you actually get way more minerals that's why growing in clay is something that we say is a benefit as long as you can break it up as long as you can you know amend the clay to be soft enough to grow in and accept water accept roots and really become a growable medium clay is great that's why people down south and the west side of the state where there's a lot of clay they do very well because it's so mineral rich and that is what azomite provides and so in a raised bed of this size uh this bed is three feet by 12 feet so 36 square feet we're going to use about a pound and a half so about half this bag another thing that we absolutely swear by that we use as well as sell is trifecta plus now if we're going to plant something here we will apply a a heavy dosing of trifecta plus the reason why is because trifecta plus gives the it gives the beneficial bacteria and fungi this has been inoculated with beneficial bacteria and fungi colonies so it will give you all the benefits you're looking for there it also has high npk as well as trace minerals and so that's a very well-rounded feeding that's going to feed plants that you're going to plant here so we're actually going to plant radishes here and so we will definitely come back and we'll put some of this in the soil now i will not use this very liberally i won't you know spread this over top of the soil crazy if i'm if i'm not going to be planting anything here i might use a little bit but i use it i use it sparingly because you know if you're not growing anything there there's no sense in having it in the soil i'd apply it in the spring when you go to plant something the next thing that we use are humic acids now i love down to earth brand humic acids they're great i just so happen to grab this little one pound box because i i actually have a 50 pound bag on the way they sell big bags of this stuff and it just isn't here in time so i went to the local to my local garden center and just picked up the small box for a prop but uh this one pound box here will actually do probably about most of my raised bed here so i'll do one pound per 36 square feet and humic acids are great every living thing whether it's a fungus or a bacteria uses these amino are these humic acids and these acid compounds are so vital now i get the question luke will this raise the ph of my soil the answer is no this will not raise the ph of your soil this will not make it more acidic or sorry lower the ph raise your acidity this will not raise your acidity at all so you don't have to worry about doing a ph test or anything like that humic acids are vital and i recommend adding them and then the final thing that i love to add if you cannot find if you cannot find your azomite if you cannot find some source of trace minerals use kelp meal i love kelp meal and the reason why is because kelp comes from the ocean they mine this up and they actually dehydrate it and grind it down and they then they turn it into a like a meal a powder and i love kelp because kelp is a very rich source of trace minerals most trace minerals are found in the ocean because all of the land mass north america asia africa australia south america every body of of land runs into the ocean and when you have the runoff it dissolves in the water and when the kelp grows in the water it actually grows and takes up those minerals and so when you when you use it on your garden you're getting all of those minerals it's actually one of the highest concentrations of trace minerals that you can find it has a higher concentration than azomite the only downside is that it's a little bit more expensive than azomite is so if you can't find it i use this this also has a good amount of potassium as well as nitrogen so you're going to get a little bit of nutrients from this but i use this as my trace mineral source if i can't get my hands on some azomite okay so the first thing that i always do is i always kind of break up the top soil crust my bed has been bare for about a week and a half now since we harvested our potatoes and the thing that we need to do is we need to break up that crust because it really will help to accept the soil amendments that i'm going to use now this is not digging your soil people always ask well what if i go no dig what if i try to try to never irritate my soil you don't have to dig these in really deep and in fact they're better if you don't dig them deeper because you want them right where your plants are going to be if you dig them deep in your soil yeah your soil is going to be great eight inches down but there's very few roots to get eight inches down especially if you're starting with seedlings i prefer to mend the top layer of soil and let the soil let the soil amendment work down through my soil rather than flip it so you don't need to dig these in your soil so again i use about half this bag over these 36 square feet it's very dusty so i'm going downwind so it blows away from me and a little bit goes a very long way like i said so don't you have to go heavy on it now the next thing i'm going to use is my bag of humic acid now the humic acid i'm going to use the entire one pound i'm going to use the entire one pound over this raised bed here and again buy a bigger bag it's going to save you money and it's going to stretch a long ways i just i needed something for this video so the next thing i'm going to use are my worm castings i'm going to use this two pound bag over top of this over top of these 36 square feet and that is the last thing that i'm going to do to this raised bed if i'm not planting anything i'm just going to kind of work it into the soil by giving it a gentle raking and that's all i'm going to do to this raised bed but since i'm planting radishes here i want to give them some additional nutrients give them a really good jump start now i'm actually going to use some trifecta because i'm going to be planting something again if you're not planting anything you don't have to use trifecta because it would be kind of just a waste it'd sit in your soil and you might lose some of it throughout the throughout the winter so just keep that in mind all right so now we're going to use some trifecta all right there we go that is good right and so this is a three pound bag i used about half of it over the course of those 36 square feet so there you go it is that simple to re-amend your soil and the reasons to do it so i hope you guys enjoyed i hope you learned something new if you have any questions make sure to post them in the comments box below and as always this is luke from the mi gardener channel reminding you to grow big or go home and we'll catch you all later see ya bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 274,898

Keywords: azomite, gardening, Premiere_Elements_2018, fall, worm castings, amend, soil amend

Id: Fzah9EjoxuQ

Length: 14min 58sec (898 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020