Healthy Soil equals Healthy Plants and People

Patti Moreno, the Garden Girl, talks about the importance of healthy soil in your garden. Be sure to sign up for her newsletter at www.gardengirltv.com. Distributed by Tubemogul.

[Music Playing] Hi! I am Patty Moreno, the Garden Girl and today we are going to talk about soil. The best kind of soil that you want in your garden is organic soil. Soil that has been chemically fertilized actually depletes your soil of nutrients and all those things that you really want to get your plants growing and thriving in your garden. Here, I treat my soil with animal manure and also compost material. When this organic matter compost is actually called humus and that is where all the rich vitamins and nutrients that you need in your soil exist. Now, when you are starting off with your own garden, you want to make sure that you start your own compost. Almost 60% of all household waste is either recyclable or compostable. And virtually, none of it ever gets composted and ends up in a land fill. You want to stop that. In order to be a successful organic gardener, you also want to make sure that your soil is rich with worms. Worms digest the organic matter in your soil and leave behind rich worm castings that are actually more nutritious than the nutrients that took in to begin with. Worms also, as they dig through your soil, aerate the soil allowing your roots to just be able to penetrate through the soil and grab all those rich nutrients. If you want to know if you have good soil, get a shovel and start digging. If you see worms in there, then you got good soil. If you find no worms at all, them you got a lot of work to do. You got to buy some worms or dig some up from maybe a friend or neighbor’s yard and start adding organic compost into your raised bed. And in no time, your soil will be ready to go. Huh! So, I am finished tilling all the beds here and guess what? I do not need to go workout. I got my workout in my garden. Now, all the soil here in my garden, I built. I basically, built it by putting my chickens and my rabbits and housing them on top of here for about a period of a month each and then once I remove them from the bed, I added some soil. Soil has essential microbes in it that help in the composting process. Now, if you do not want to go through the trouble of building your own soil, you can get organic soil delivered. But make sure you do your research and make sure you find a company that actually is going to be delivering organic soil. You do not want the soil to be treated with any chemicals at all, because starting off with fresh organic soil is the best way to be the most successful organic gardener that you can be. I am Patty Moreno, the Garden Girl. Thanks for watching.