Spreading Wood and Chicken Bone Ashes for Mineral Supplementation. 3.24.2021

 Yesterday I spread a small bucket of woodstove ashes in one of the tomato beds and one of the sweetcorn beds.  I had to pull back the leaf mulch for the tomatoes.   I hand-tilled and turned over the corn bed.  That one is in the footprint of a former raised bed.  The raised bed was one that I had built the first summer here, 2012 or 2013.  I don't know whether being where a raised bed was, is good for the soil or not.  The soil here is low in calcium, good in potassium, low in phosphorus, low in magnesium.  The wood ashes are a combination of trees that grew here that were cut and burned for firewood, and the bones that resulted from making dog food from chicken thighs.  Those will be high in calcium, phosphorus, and trace minerals.  Potassium too from the wood ashes.  It kind of averages out to a decent mineral supplement for those vegetables.  Plus, the soil here is very acidic.  The ashes are alkaline, so moderate that.  I apply a dusting of ashes, and let it mellow for two or three months before using.

Potatoes should not be given alkaline supplements, so I did not apply in potato areas.

The bone fragments are still visible, but after burning them they are soft and fragile like chalk.  They break down very quickly.

After rains, turning the soil and tilling in, the minerals will be pretty evenly dispersed.

 

The effect of compost. Kitchen garden winter prep. 12.7.14

Untreated soil vs. soil with 2 1/2 years of compost and TLC.

Garden gold.  Chick house cleanings for the kitchen garden.

 Today I did some cleanup and winter prep for next Spring.  I don't like seeing the raised beds full of dead tomato and pepper plants and weeds and bean stalks.

Several of the raised beds have settled significantly.  I topped the off with soil from this raised bed.  That used 2/3 of the bed's soil.  The other 1/3 is perennial - Chinese chive, which I consolidated from this raised bed and another.

The difference is soil appearance is dramatic.  The native soil, on the left, is what the enriched soil, on the right, looked like 2  1/2 years ago.  The difference is 2 /12 years of adding chicken house compost, leaves, kitchen scrap compost, worm compost, coffee grounds....

I filled partially full with yard soil, then mixed in a wheelbarrow full of chicken house cleanings.  That is a year old, but dry so not composted.  Too rich to use immediately.  This being December, there will be 5 or 6 months to mellow before use.  Plan for this area is bush beans.

I also added a cup of lime based on last year's soil test result showing low pH and low calcium.

Then I topped off with more yard soil, then more chicken house cleanings.  Let the earthworms and bacteria and fungi do their thing now. 

Several of the beds are cleaned up now.  When spring comes, prep for planting will need minimal effort.

The other thing that needs to be done for these beds is better animal fencing.  That is another project for this winter.

For the beds that I topped off, I removed the larger, tougher plant stems to go into the compost heap.  I covered the cardboard/grass clipping mulch with a layer of improved soil.  No major digging, the soil is already well aerated and rich.

Cleanup half done.  12.7.14

My kitchen garden in winter.  12.7.14