Chicken Soup for the Soil

By Jean Fritz


Keeping Your Soil Healthy        already high in acid and you'd
                                 like to neutralize it, you    
Your soil is the most            can also add lime or wood     
important part of your garden,   ashes to your garden. Wood    
but too many people forget to    ashes are wickedly alkaline,  
nurture their soil. Soil is a    but after a season or two,    
living thing, containing         create an excellent haven for
microbes, fungi, insect life     earthworms and add enough     
and general creepy-crawlies      potash to the soil to grow    
vital to plant health and        wonderful root crops.         
vigor, as well as a receptacle                                 
for chemicals and trace          Finally, feed your fungi.     
elements. Doing a little soil    Really. Many stores           
prep every fall pays off each    specializing in products for  
and every harvest.               organic gardening and         
                                 sustainable agriculture sell  
First, add more organic          micorrhizal spores, which is a
matter. Use your rototiller or   fungus that helps soil        
your spade, and dig under        release its nutrients more    
frostbitten plant material,      easily. Micorrhiza needs to be
grass clippings, leaves, wood    fed in order to reproduce and 
chips, and compost. Avoid        survive the winter. Use a     
using any diseased plant         hose-end sprayer, and fill it
material as compost - burn it    halfway with gooey, blackstrap
first if there are no local      molasses. If you can find the 
restrictions on burning. If      sulphured kind, so much the   
you live near any livestock,     better. Fill the rest of the  
cover your garden with 1 - 2     sprayer with flat beer, and   
inches of uncomposted manure,    spray the solution over your  
then disguise that with other    garden beds. The sugar in the
organic materials, and let the   molasses feeds the existing   
whole thing winter over. A       fungi and beneficial bacteria
blanket of snow from December    in the soil, and the yeasts   
through March will turn all of   and enzymes in the beer add   
it into about inch of the       more.                         
most beautiful topsoil you can                                 
imagine.                         You'll literally make your    
                                 soil come alive, and that will
It's also time to think about    help your garden thrive next  
soil pH, or the acidity or       year.                         
alkalinity. The addition of                                    
organic materials can lower                                    
the pH, or make it more                                        
acidic. If your soil is          

About the author:
Jean Fritz is a farmer and freelance writer. She owns and operates KittyVista Organics, a small organic farm located east of Indianapolis which specializes in heirloom, open pollenated and unusual varieties of flowers and vegetables. Visit the KittyVista website at http://clik.to/kittyvista- kittyvista@yahoo.com

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