I couldn’t sleep tonight, so I was watching gardening videos. I got inspired, and I decided to spread my rabbit manure compost over my garden.
I’m out in the dark with a flashlight mulching with this compost!
As crazy as this was, I did need to do this at some point. The benefit of mulching with compost instead of digging it in, is that every time it rains, compost tea fertilizes your plants. Plus, it keeps weeds down and helps the soil retain moisture.
As stated in a previous post, I do a Back to Eden method of gardening. Even though it hasn’t been super successful yet (totally user error), this method allowed me to plant a fairly large area this year. If I’d had to dig up the earth and do soil tests and weed and water and fertilize, my garden would be pretty small. With this, it’s almost a survival-of-the-fittest garden.
I will make this point though, my garden hasn’t been extremely successful yet because I have no topsoil. Gardening like this creates soil, but this is my first time gardening in this area, so I began with some sad clay. I didn’t bring anything in, and that’s why most things didn’t grow. I planted seeds into hard clay and expected baby plants to sprout. That’s not how it works.
More things came up than expected, though. There’ll lots of potatoes, sweet potatoes, mint, there was Swiss Chard, there were some tiny tiny beets, lots of chicory, a few tiny carrots, lots of garlic chives, and I think one of my Job’s Tears is growing, but maybe it’s grass. About 50% of my garden failed to thrive, but what is making it is doing great.
Frugal Treehugger 