Improving Soil Health For a Higher Producing Vegetable Garden

Do you want a higher producing garden? With this video you will learn 6 essential ways to improve your vegetable gardens soil. Improve the soil health and you can increase your production by 200%! Lets improve our garden soils and increase production for self sufficiency, save money and time. If you are homesteading, soil health is so important to be self sustaining. Healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy planet!

Want to learn more about gardening? Check our websites blog out for more information on gardening, pest management, weed control, disease control and other organic gardening methods.

Our Website:
https://www.alisorganics.com

Our Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/AlisOrganics/

Our Etsy store:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/HandCraftFromTheFarm

Mailing Address:
760 Red Rock Road
St. George, Utah 84770

Our etsy store:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/HandCraftFromTheFarm

I also write a blog geared for our zone 8, which I would love to write more often, but life is busy! however, you may find some good resources here.
http://outstanding-in-the-garden.com

Our CSA, where we provide food for families on a weekly basis and we also donate a portion of our produce to Elders or Someone in need in our community to provide healthy fresh organic veggies.
https://desertsagecsa.com
00:00 Healthy soil can produce 200% more food
00:30 Compost is the most important soil additive
02:35 Compost tea introduces good microbes
04:58 Cover crops increase microbial life and protect soil
06:08 Use of organic fertilizer
07:47 Mulching protects soil and feeds at the same time
09:07 Cover soil w/leaves in the fall

Healthier soils can produce more food have less disease and can be more self- sustaining and isn’t that what we all want I’ll be going over six key things that you should do to improve the health of your garden soil when I first started my garden my soil was compacted hard as

A rock and it was completely lifeless this is exactly what my soil looked like and now my garden soil is nice and loose and rich and full of life compost is the best way to build soil structure and compost that’s been made aerobically is going to be the best

Compost to be using in your garden compost that’s been made aerobically is just compost that allows air to the center of the pile and by doing that you’re turning your compost often and this Heats it up this is also known as just hot composting as the compost

Starts to heat up there are certain types of good bacteria that become very active and the more active they become the more heat you start to get in your compost pile so this breaks down your compost pile a lot faster this compost is loaded with the good beneficial bacteria protozoa nematodes and feni

This is the best thing that you can do for your soil the best the compost inoculates the soil with all these great organisms and they act like an employee and they do what the boss tells them to do and the boss is the plants the boss

Or the plant might say hey I need need some phosphorus or some calcium so the employees gather up that phosphorus and calcium and deliver it to the plants or the boss so this is just simple soil biology compost not only nourishes the soil organisms but it helps hold that

Moisture in the soil making it to where you don’t have to water as often when we talk about living soil it’s more like what’s living in the soil than the soil itself so we don’t feed the plants or the soil rather we feed the organisms that live in that soil and then that

Feeds our plants you can add your compost directly into the soil through tillage or even by adding it over the top and using a digging Fork to just slightly loosen the soil and I actually prefer to just slightly loosen the soil rather than till it in because I try not

To disturb the food web as much as possible every time you disturb the food web it just takes time for it to network together again you can also put compost right over the top and then you can plant right in it you don’t even have to

Wait if you don’t have much compost and you have a large area to cover or you have a plant that’s in dire need and needs help immediately what can you do then compost tea is an excellent solution for this it goes a way and it’s fairly easy to make the compost tea

Helps out the soil by inoculating it with all types of microbes that in turn helps out those plants without all that bulk of compost compost tea is also best done aerobically that means introducing air into the tea while it’s being made you’ll put your compost in something

That’s like a tea bag permeable cloth works great tying it off on the top then you’re going to dunk it into some water some clean water you don’t want any water that has chlorine or chloramine chlorine and chloramine are meant to kill off these good organisms so it

Doesn’t make sense to be using any water that contains chlorine or chloramine you’ll need something like a fish p pum and an air bubbler and that air bubbler needs to be placed right underneath that compost bag that way that air percolates through the compost releasing all of those good organisms into the water

Making a great tea you want your tea to percolate for a few days and you just want it to be at ambient temperature you can add things like molasses kelp or even some fish fertilizers and this all helps feed those microorganisms once your tea is finished then you can it so

That it can go far and honestly as far as dilution rates when you’re doing a soil drench you don’t have to worry about it that much but if you’re using it directly on the plants then dilute it about 10 to one or a weak very weak tea

Solution look you could also add some micro risal fungi at the very end of your tea making process just make sure that you’re doing it within 1 hour of using your tea because you don’t want that fungi to sit in that water very long and you you also don’t want to

Spray these directly on the leaves because that micro resal fungi is for the soil not the leaves so just use it as a root drench I’ll be making a more indepth compost tea making video next week so make sure that you’re subscribed and hit the bell for the notification of

This video of when it comes out you may not think that diluted compost tea is very effective but if you were to look at it under a microscope and you see all of those employees ready to work you know it’s effective never crops protect your soil conserve water increase

Infiltration of rain water reduce soil erosion increase soil microbial life and modify soil temperatures the list goes on and on cover crops hold water in place better than any bare soil could this allows rainfall to deeply penetrate that soil maintaining the soil’s paracity cover crops can greatly reduce

The loss of soil moisture through evaporation by creating a living mulch even if your cover crop has gone through its life cycle and has died off and left there it too will still keep in that moisture just by keeping that soil from being exposed microbes love feeding on

The root exod dates of cover crops keeping them alive and active a bare ground doesn’t offer anything to your soil cover crops whether they’re dead or alive will offer an insulating barrier that buffers the soil temperature changes cover crops will keep your soil warmer during the the winter months by

Insulating it and cooler during the summer months just by shading it and your microbes will definitely benefit from a more stable temperature organic fertilizers can offer your soil microbes food in soils that might be lacking this is especially true when you’re building new raised beds with new soil that

Doesn’t usually have too much microbial life the great thing about organic fertilizers is their slow release and will last in your soil a long time when you’re fertilizing you’re not instantly feeding your plants you put it in the soil for the soil microbes to break it down making it available for the plants

To use up the nutrients that they need when they need it if the soil has everything that it needs the plant will be healthy no diseases and very few pests I like to feed less than the recommended amount but more often just to sustain those microbes throughout the growing season by feeding organic

Fertilizers this can stimulate the microbial life causing them to quickly increase in numbers and over time fertilizer will be less needed making a more sustainable soil organic fertilizers are derived from plants or animals they come from nature and their main job is to give the soil biology support these organic fertilizers need

To be in the soil in order for them to be able to break down you can do this in a couple of ways one you can sprinkle it over the surface and cover it up with a nice thick layer of compost this is this is what I prefer to do because I disturb

The soil web less this way the other you can sprinkle it over the surface and work it in with a cultivator rake or even a TR in a short time that organic fertilizer will start to get broke down by those microbes then it’ll be available for your plants to uptake

Those nutrients mulch is much like a cover crop it can either be living or organic matter that was once living and mulch is used just to cover the surface of your soil when using a mulch you do want it to be an organic mulch that was once living or is living black plastic

Is considered as a mulch but you don’t want to be using that because that’s not going to improve your soil that’s not going to increase the microbes that are in the soil it’s just going to cause them to decline compost is excellent to be using as a mulch it has all those

Microbes that are living in it and that just inoculates your soil increasing the microbial count grass clippings also make a great mulch but they need to be more on the dry side they do contain a lot of bacteria and usually 1 in layer is good enough you also want to make

Sure that no herbicide was used on the lawn that they came from mulching offers you a chance to protect your soil keep moisture in that soil but more than that it gives you a chance to add more organic matter back into that soil mulch’s main purpose is to protect the

Living soil what is bare soil well it’s not completely dead but it’s not as good as it could be if it was covered and over time if it’s not covered it will continue to decline pine needles and shredded leaves also make great mulches if you want to see your soil come to

Life then add a thick layer of shredded leaves in the fall time right over the top of your soil after just one month you can remove all of those leaves and look down into the soil and it’s moving you’ve got earthworms it’s dark it’s beautiful nice loose and moist this is

What all of us gardeners want to see and it’s super easy using leaves is one of the best ways to increase worm activity and fungal life one thing that I hear over and over again from people is their garden needs to rest their soil needs a break it needed it things weren’t

Producing so good so they leave their soil exposed uncovered left to bake so then what happens covering your soil with leaves compost or even ing a cover crop which are all easy to do are a lot healthier for it than just to leave it sit protecting that soil protects the

Soil biome that way you don’t have to spend time rebuilding those microbes all over again remember you have actual employees in your soil and if you don’t pay them they’re going to quit working keep that soil covered soil microbes need to be active so that you have

Healthy plants and that means they need a food source the Earth is incredible by carrying for it your garden will be successful God bless you your family and your homestead