I Soiled Myself (and I took photos so you can all watch)

[The English Cut]

Hi there folks,
Always on an economy drive, and surrounded by natural resources as I am, I've decided to have a go at making my own soil using as many free, locally sourced (ie on my own land if possible) ingredients as possible, buying only what I can't make for myself.

I've been fairly pleased with the results, so I thought I'd share the process here for all to see. This isn't intended as a 'How-To', just a 'How-I-Do', and when I say I'm pleased with the results, what I mean is that the soil looks good and the plants I potted into it are still alive and looking very healthy a week later!

I realize things could go tits-up at any moment and that'll be the moment to run for a pH tester and see what the problem is. Until such a time I won't be testing anything, I'm not really the techy sort - it's not really my thing. I've been cobbling together my soil mixes for years with reasonable results, occasionally testing pH, it always seems ok so I'm not too worried. With this mix the focus is really to get as much microbial/fungal life in there as possible and hope that sorts out any other imbalances. Fingers crossed then.

Here's a look at the finished product…

My recipe:

8 litres sieved Topsoil (from molehills in permanent pasture)
8 litres sieved leaf mold (from pasture edges bordering on ancient woodland)
2 litres Comfrey Manure mix (Well rotted FYM composted with fresh cut comfrey leaves & stems, chicken litter and Yarrow leaves.)
2 litres Kitchen Compost
600ml Worm humus
300ml Vompost (I'll explain later)
300ml Mixed grey & yellow sand
100ml Rudy Ray Moore

Then I mix in 4 liters each of Perlite and Vermiculite so it doesn't weigh a ton and get too waterlogged.

 

[The English Cut]

The raw materials

The raw materials

Topsoil

Molehills - turn problems into solutions. Thank you very much Mr Mole!
Top manure producer in the background.

Sieved molehill soil

 

[The English Cut]

Leaf mould/field compost
We collect leaves from the fields every autumn and compost them like this:

They take a few years to rot down this way so sometimes if I'm in dire need I'll go round the field edges where our land borders on ancient beech wood looking for the deepest deposits of leaf mould.

Looking for big examples of wild plants is a good guide - this lily was about three times the size of the others nearby:

And this is what came out of that hole, once sifted it's some of the best leaf mould I've ever seen, rust red and black in colour, light and spongy in texture, feels like coco coir:

 

[The English Cut]

Field Compost is what I call the rotted-down piles of brambles, ferns, grass and leaves left from clearing field edges with the brushcutter. I use a mulching blade that chops the stems up nicely, rake it all up into decent size piles and leave it for a couple of years. I believe it produces a more fungally-dominant compost, like the leaf mould, so I tend to use the two interchangeably depending on what I have available. This stuff always has loads of leaves in it anyway.

Here are some piles from last spring.

Digging inside I can see they're not ready yet.

This is inside a pile from at least 2 years ago.

and this is what it produced.

taking a break, will continue a little later... TEC.

 

[Bobmonk388]

thats some good soil there bro sounds like the base to my soil leaf mould and well rotted wood are my starting point nice work

 

[Easy7]

Thanks for sharing. I also enjoy using local soils and local humus. They impart a local flavor.

 

[The English Cut]

Raw Materials contd.

Raw Materials contd.

Hey there Bobmonk388 & Easy7, thanks for popping in and for the good vibes. I've cooked and eaten a nice veggie curry that I'll regret tomorrow and smoked a couple of bowls of last year's Pineapple Chunk grown in a version of this soil mix. Talk about local flavour…. intensely sweet and skunky. That should see me through the next hour before sleep takes me anyway. Now on with the show…

Manure

Sheep bedding from this winter. That's barley straw, plus quite a bit of hay and grain ends up in there too. It all looks quite clean and dry here but believe me, it's anything but.

Fresh Donkey nugs, I love this stuff. They tend to drop it in the same few places so it's easy to collect a good amount without too much work, although when I have the time I do quite enjoy wandering the fields, sack of shit in hand. It's a nice way to get to know your land a bit better, for one thing I've found loads of yarrow growing wild this way.

Rotted FYM from last year, Sheepshit, Donkeydung, Straw and Bracken. There's over 2 cubic metres here. This'll be used mainly in the veggie garden this summer.

Although at the end of the season I'll take some of this and layer it with cut comfrey leaves & stalks with a bit of chicken litter in a large (200L) drum or bin over the winter and use it in my soil mix for next year. I did the same for the last few years. This is what it looks like sieved.

 

[The English Cut]

Compost

Kitchen compost pile. I'm in the process of setting up a wormery so I won't have to buy worm humus anymore. Once that's up and running, most of the kitchen waste will go in there so this heap will end up being filled a lot less or with something else. We're getting organic oranges 50kg at a time from Valencia at the moment, so that's why there's so much orange peel in there. I didn't catch a proper cold yet this winter though.

Finished kitchen compost. The white bits are perlite from used seed compost. Overall I think it could use more organic matter but it's okay.

Sifted kitchen compost

 

[The English Cut]

not for the faint-hearted.

not for the faint-hearted.

Vompost
So called because going anywhere near the decomposing pile will frankly make you want to vomit. It's a pretty gruesome mix of waste products from animals we slaughter for home consumption, so it has blood, bones, feathers, heads, feet and entrails from the chickens; blood, bones, heads and entrails from any lambs or sheep I kill; Mussel and clam shells, fish bones, scales and entrails, prawn and crab shells. This all gets layered with straw, sawdust and wood ash/charcoal to keep the smell to a semi-bearable level and provide plenty of carbon, although it's downwind from the house so smell isn't generally a problem. It's also home to an army of carnivorous beetles, large, medium and small and in summer it's maggot central. Just lovely on a hot day. Judging from what I took out of the bottom this winter, I'd guess the decomposition process takes at least 2 years.

The finished, sieved product smells just like blood, fish & bone meal and I use it as a kind of diluted version, my reasoning being that given the amount of organic mater that get's layered with it, I doubt it's anywhere near as strong as blood, fish & bone meal. Also worth considering is that only the smaller bones will break down to anything small enough to end up in the final product. The remaining bones will probably end up in the bottom of the hole next time I plant a fruit tree. I'd half-expected them to attract unwanted attention from foxes, cats or dogs but they've sat in a sack outside for months completely unmolested. Probably a good thing If I'm going to put them under a tree. Fuck, I'm rambling now, sorry.

Emptying the bottom of the Vomposter.

Unsifted Vompost.

Sifted Vompost

 

[The English Cut]

Now for the ingredients I had to buy

Grey or quarry sand
(quarried about 5-6km away)

Yellow sand
(not sure about the origin but most likely within 50km)

Both types of sand have been sitting around here out in the rain for about 4 years so i figure any nasty salts etc will be long gone by now.

Worm Humus
(produced around 150km away)

Rudy Ray Moore (RIP)

Other things I'm thinking of trying, but I'm open to advice:
Neem meal, I have a tub on the way, I'll mix it into soil for future transplants and top-dress any plants that are already in soil.

Diatomaceous Earth - I'm not sure if it's best to mix this with the soil, sprinkle on the surface or just not use it at all, but ants are a problem in the polytunnel, plus this stuff contains silica which I am led to believe can be useful for a number of reasons, which brings me to another great source of silica…

Horsetail Meal - I've never seen this on sale anywhere but I was thinking of picking some Horsetail as soon as I see it growing here (early summer usually), drying it thoroughly and somehow grinding it to a meal and adding to the soil mix and voila! hopefully I won't need to spend time making Horsetail extract to spray on the plants to help avoid budrot. Anyone ever heard of such a thing?

Kelp Meal - I'm not too far from the sea so collecting seaweed in small quantities could be practical if I can combine the journey with something else. I'm not taking trips to the seaside just for the purpose of collecting seaweed though. I'm also unsure if I need to collect specific species or if they're all much of a muchness.
If I can't collect it myself, would folks say this is an absolute essential that's worth buying? I found some that's reasonably priced but I'm not sure if it's cheap for a reason.

 

[The English Cut]

Mixing Tech

Mixing Tech

Depending on how much i've got to mix, I either do my soil in the cement mixer or using 2 or 3 large buckets, stirring and tipping between buckets to mix it all together evenly.

For sifting/sieving this right here has been the set-up for the last 6 years up till a few days ago. Shaking & banging.

However looking at this pile of 300 litres of leaf mould drying a bit in the sun, I thought that perhaps I'd be needing an upgrade.

Thus was born the Super Simple Soil Sifter-matic (or something like that). Read on...

Take a 45 litre plastic bin, cut out the bottom.

Push in some steel wire mesh in, folding it so it fits but the tension keeps it in place.

 

[The English Cut]

Then I pushed the bin, bottom first, into the drum of the cement mixer, set the angle to about 45º and started the machine running, adding about 10 litres leaf mould to the bin, the idea being that the sifted leaf mould falls into the drum, leaving the larger bits in the bin. These will be used as mulch.

I tried it a few times with just the small mesh (5mm) in the bottom but it kept on getting clogged up with larger leaves so I added a second, larger mesh (10mm) above it, about halfway up the inside of the bin to catch the larger bits.

After trying it like this a while, I still wasn't happy with the results so I hit on the idea of including a few smallish, irregular-shaped stones in the bin, four in each mesh. These work by banging around, milling the softer, larger pieces and keeping the mesh from clogging up. In fact it works so well that if I leave it for 10 minutes or so, the stones break everything up so only a few bits end up left in the smaller mesh with the rest ending up in the drum.

End result

I'm really happy being able to sift soil whilst I get on with all my other little jobs around the garden, emptying the meshes and reloading the bin every 10 minutes or so. Getting loads more done this way. Only thing I've found is that it needs to be fairly dry to work properly, too wet and it all just clumps together, a good activity for sunny days then. I tested it on some Vo,post and it works nicely, the stones breaking the bones up very well. Next will be trying to sieve the rotted FYM, which tends to have some large clumps in it.

Well I think that's yer lot for now, I'll update the results from the plants I've got in the soil mix as and when there's something to report, I hope someone finds this useful in some way. Feel free to chime in with any positive contributions/thoughts/ideas/etc, for all I know I'm missing something fundamental here.

Also if anyone has any ideas on how best to use wood ash and soot in organic soil, I'd be really interested as I have plenty of both taking up space.

Remember, there's nothing even slightly scientific about this and I'm not claiming to be an expert, just feeling my way along. Thank you for tuning in, I hope you've had as much fun as I've had soiling myself. Peace, TEC

 

[The English Cut]

Quick status report

Quick status report

I just thought I'd show a few comparisons of some plants that have spent nearly a week in the soil mix, up till that pointt they were in a much lighter seed compost mix. They seem to have taken well to the change. They're in the polytunnel, a week into flowering.

These are Bangi Haze

Orient Express

 

[The English Cut]

Nepal Jam

Caribe

ok, I'm done-in now. one more bowl and bed...

 

[Mikell]

The rocks in the tumbler are genius. Very good read, and it looks like the plants are loving the mix so far.

I don't think kelp or any trendy ingredients are essential. Many are definitely a bonus, but this thread is a solid testament to sourcing local ingredients and creating great soil/healthy plants with what's available.

 

[unregistered190]

Thanks for sharing! Nice!

 

[siftedunity]

interesting.. tbh im clueless about soil as I grow hydro/coco but found this very interesting. and the plants definitely love it, the growth looks very healthy.

 

[ghostmade]

Straight up my new favorite thread

 

[The English Cut]

Welome along unregistered190 and siftedunity, thanks for checking it out.

Straight up my new favorite thread

Thanks, that's quite a thing to say, I 'm really happy you're enjoying!

 

[The English Cut]

The rocks in the tumbler are genius. Very good read, and it looks like the plants are loving the mix so far.

I don't think kelp or any trendy ingredients are essential. Many are definitely a bonus, but this thread is a solid testament to sourcing local ingredients and creating great soil/healthy plants with what's available.

Thanks Mikell, that's more or less my point of view as well, if what we're trying to do is recreate a forest floor kind of soil, then why on earth would we NEED seaweed? I'll stick with the original plan of collecting some if I'm in the right place at the right time, the kids'll love a day at the seaside and I might even have time to do some fishing.