Think about feeding the soil. Some techniques such as lasagna gardening and sheet composting work on the idea of feeding the soil microbes. Rather than building a compost pile on the side of the garden, the items are composted in place.

Last year we built an outdoor bin for composting by worms and black soldier flies. Both can be fed to fish and chickens and, in our case, would be fed to the tilapia in our aquaponics system as well as our chickens.

I spent this past weekend visiting my Mother and daughter. The last morning the three of us enjoyed a walk through my Mother's garden. She has almost a half an acre of yard, part in a small orchard and the rest in lush gardens.
Last spring, my Mother decided she could no longer maintain her small garden pond. With the help of friends and some family members, they emptied the pond and pulled out the liner and other associated parts. They then filled the hole with a combination of compost and soil scraped off the orchard area in an effort to level it some.

What is soil? Most people call it dirt. It brings to mind pictures of children's dirty faces or dirty floors or worse yet, germs and bugs and other nasties. And, in some ways those pictures are correct. But soil is so much more.

Soil is comprised of minerals, organic matter, microorganisms, space and water
The minerals are what we normally think of when we consider "dirt". It is really broken down rock. The type of rock determines the type of minerals available in the soil. The texture can be very fine clay, slightly larger silt, gritty sand or even rocks of various sizes.

Harvesting natures bounty

Imagine with me for a moment... a walk in the forest during a rainstorm. The ground beneath your feet is wet and soft. You can hear the rain as it falls gently upon the trees above and slowly falls down to caress your cheek. The leaves and other debris on the ground soak up the new fallen rain and the excess sinks slowly down through the layers of the forest floor.

What's a Rain Garden?

A rain garden is built to hold and drain the water off of your roof and driveway. The plants in the garden are chosen because they can stand to have wet feet during rainy periods but are drought tolerant the rest of the year.

Composting, that magical process of turning waste from the yard into wonderful soil building, plant nurturing compost. The challenge is getting the "mix" just right. The goal of this article is to give you the nuts and bolts of composting.

What you'll need