Non-boring comments about homemade soil amendments
Spring, spring, spring, so gardeners can finally get their hands and pants dirty in their gardens again. If your winter garden fantasies are going to happen for real this season, now’s the time to get to work (unless you’re going to Germany). Dutiful gardening means attention to amending soil before seeds or transplants go in. Here are non-boring observations about homemade, inexpensive ways to enrich your soil.
I live on a dirt road. All the dust that settles on the side of the road is full of trace minerals because it was once a bunch of rocks. It has been exposed to vehicle exhaust, and I don’t know if that’s a problem. I don’t get much traffic, so any contamination might be minimal, and the dust full of minerals is just sitting there.
Scoop it up and decorate one bed at a time with dust which has spent dozens of years becoming dust. Also, your favorite quarry might not mind if you swept up after them. Rock dust would be a slow-release benefit, plus it aerates soil as it is mixed in.
Not only that, Nigel Palmer in The Regenerative Grower’s Guide to Garden Amendments claims granite dust has paramagnetic (!?!) properties which facilitate the flow of happy energy between soil and plants. If the House of Representatives met in a granite quarry, maybe something would get done. Who among us does not want to be paramagnetic!
Palmer also recommends making potions of a particular plant to feed next year’s plant. Plants collect minerals from the soil and store them in leaves, fruits and other parts, so he asserts, “Combining leaf mold, rainwater and damaged fruits may be the most sustainable, low-cost amendment process in the world!” He maintains a liquor made from leftover tomatoes, for example, would benefit next year’s tomatoes.
My experience has been to be less specific about where I would have applied my tomato liquor, not that I ever made any. I have, however, applied buckets of water which had soaked up the minerals from comfrey or oregano. Comfrey water provides concentrated calcium, phosphorous and potassium for soil.
Oregano water contains those elements plus iron and sodium. I don’t have nettles nearby, but I have fed nettle tea to indoor plants for a boost of iron, magnesium and zinc. Horsetail water would contain zinc and cool stuff like flavonoids and saponins, but you knew that. Soil knows what’s best for plants, and it considers all mineral discussions important. I’m just a gardener and soil knows best, and these amendment potions are easily available and inexpensive.
Speaking of potent potions, a mad scientist gardener can use an apple cider vinegar mixture to leach calcium, phosphorous and other minerals out of eggshells. Rinse the shells to clear out the googoo, crumble them into pieces and add to a vinegar solution. Your potion will be ready when the shells stop making bubbles. Sprinkle the solution around plants, and they might start singing “that’s the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it.” The shells can still be added to compost or buried between plants.
And (oh boy!) here’s another idea. Plants from non-polluted water sources have absorbed everything the water source collected on its journey. Except for pollutants, that’s a good thing. Those plants would transfer those elements to a compost bin or mulch pile where they can break down and join their close neighbors in the decomposing dance. All matter matters.
Speaking of compost, the most common homemade soil amendment is compost. Everybody knows about compost. Mix up leaves and plant parts of every color with vegetable and fruit waste from the kitchen, stir occasionally, layer more leaves and grass clippings along the way, and in time you’ll get dark brown magic for garden beds. Takes attention but not much work with valuable results, and making compost is a meditative operation.
The primary non-boring soil amendment necessary in a garden is attention. After that, puttering, weeding, moondancing and harvesting… fun, easy, cheap.