If you're a new homesteader, or gardening on a new piece of land, finding enough fertile soil to build gardens with can be a challenge. This can be especially true if you happen to be working with a piece of land that's all ledge and rock, like one determined young homesteading couple I know.
If you can't afford to haul in truckloads of rich garden soil, don't despair! There are so many free and nearly-free ways to quickly build up your own nutrient-dense garden soil.
Here are some time-honored ways of doing this, that many scrappy farmers and homesteaders have used, to get bountiful gardens up and running, on a shoestring budget.
1. Mulch From Tree Trimmers
Usually in spring, tree crews go along the roads, trimming back branches from the power lines and making sure roadways stay clear. Those huge trucks fill up with chipped branches quickly and often companies are grateful for places to dump loads of wood chips, near the their working area.
If you see tree crews trimming nearby, try calling the company office, or simply stopping to talk with the crew. They may be delighted to bring you a big load of wood chips at no cost. Wood chips make a wonderful base layer for raised beds, and are a fantastic mulch that will eventually decompose into the soil, building it up and improving it.
2. Composted Chicken Bedding
If you have chickens, you've got a great source of garden-building material right on the floor of your chicken coop.
Chicken poop is a fairly hot manure, so you don't want to apply it to plants directly, but there's no reason you need to wait until next year to use it. Here's a guide to hot composting chicken manure so it's fully garden-ready in as little as 18 days.
4. Compost Food Scraps
If you're not composting all of the food scraps from your kitchen, your garden is definitely missing out!
Keeping a compost pile, or a compost tumbler, is one of the simplest low-effort ways to build up garden soil.
3. Offer to Clean Out Stalls
If there are horse or dairy goat barns nearby, they may be grateful for some occasional help cleaning out stalls, in exchange for the spent bedding.
That bedding breaks down into fantastic soil that will build up the fertility of the garden. I know some young homesteaders who bought a piece of land that was all ledge and rocks. Bartering cleaning help for stall bedding was one way they quickly were able to bring a lot of organic material onto their property for building up gardens in the first couple of years, without spending more than time and the gas to haul the bedding.
5. Leaves
Those fall leaves are a gold mine, for building up soil! When you rake them up in the fall, turn them right into the compost heap, or layer them thickly right on the gardens.
If you want to make sure they stay on the garden without blowing around, you can layer grass clippings on top, or even go ahead and till them into the soil before letting the gardens sit for winter.
6. Barter for Rabbit or Sheep Manure
The nice thing about rabbit and sheep manures is that they're "cold" manures. This means they can be applied directly to the garden without needing to age, and they won't burn the garden plants, the way fresh chicken or cow manure would.
If you don't have sheep or rabbits, and don't have a budget for soil amendments, it's worth checking in your local homestead bartering group. In my local group, we have folks with sheep and rabbits who offer feed bags filled with manure and are happy to barter for just about anything...fresh sourdough bread, homemade soap, duck eggs, you name it!
If you've yet to dive into the world of homestead bartering, it's truly a joy and such a fun way for homesteaders to help each other, without ever spending a dime.
7. Lawn Clippings
Every time you mow the lawn, you're harvesting a new round of soil-building material. As long as it's not treated with chemicals, lawn clippings are great for building up gardens.
Apply them fresh as a mulch layer around new plants, or add them to the compost pile to break down into nutrient-dense compost.
8. Ask at Your Local Transfer Station
These days, many transfer stations offer composting services, to help people keep their food scraps out of the landfill. The finished compost is usually then made available to gardeners as very low, or no cost.
If you don't see compost available at your transfer station, it's worth tracking down the manager to see if they already have a program you don't know about, or whether they might be able to get one started.
9. Give Hugelkultur a Try
Hugelkultur is a historic way of growing, and translated from German, the word means “mound culture.” It involves piling plant material, including a base of branches and logs, in a mound, covering the mound with layers of mulch and soil, and planting on top of the mound.
It's a great way to build up some naturally raised garden beds, without needing to bring in truck loads of soil. The layers underneath decompose, creating wonderful fertility to feed the plants, and woody base layers hold onto moisture, making this style of planting a great way to reduce the need for water input.
For a longer description, I like this article from our local Maine organic growers association.
10. Wood Ash
Wood ash is a wonderful soil amendment that can be added right to the compost heap, every time you clean out the wood stove. It contains calcium, potassium, magnesium, and other trace elements that can be a wonderful addition to garden soil.
You can even spread a layer directly on the garden in the spring, and till it right in. For more guidance about using wood ash in the home garden, this guide from the University of Wisconsin-Madison is helpful.
11. DIY Bone Meal
While it doesn't add a huge amount of bulk, homemade bone meal is another great way to build your soil's fertility, and is particularly a good source of calcium and phosphorus.
Bone meal in the gardening section can be pricy, especially if you're looking for a lot of it, but it's easy to make your own bone meal at home from leftover meat bones. Here's a tutorial that will walk you through it!
12. Seaweed
One thing I really miss about Island life, is having easy access to loads of seaweed for the garden.
If you live close enough to the ocean to take advantage of this wonderful natural mulch, by all means do. Seaweed breaks down well when turned into garden soil, adding wonderful loft and texture that helps growing plants. When applied to the surface, it makes a good mulch, smothering young weeds that try to crowd out your crop.
Another benefit of seaweed is that since it doesn't share any plant diseases with land plants, you know it's safe, and won't be bringing in any diseased plant material that might transfer to your own gardens.
13. Coffee Grounds
Coffee grounds are a great addition to the compost bed, and are safe to turn right into the garden soil, although you'll want to think of them as a soil amendment, and not go overboard.
Offering lots of nitrogen, this is a great soil-building material to add to those nitrogen loving crops like tomatoes and corn.
14. Green Manures
Green manure refers to the practice of seeing a garden area with a "manure crop" like clover or buckwheat, letting it grow partway, then tilling it into the soil for improved soil texture and fertility.
Usually there's a little cost involved, since you'd be buying the seeds, but you never know...sometimes larger growers have leftover seed they're willing to part with for almost nothing. (This is another instance where having a homestead bartering group can be helpful!) I once inherited a big boxful of green manure crop seeds from a local homesteader who was moving, and that was a great way to build up soil without letting unused seeds go to waste.
15. Shredded Cardboard
We've all seen the videos where gardeners use layers of cardboard as the foundation layer for garden paths or raised beds, but did you know you can actually even run dry cardboard through the shredder and compost it?
It's considered safe for the garden, since natural plant materials are generally what's used to bind the layers of most corrugated cardboard. Shredding it helps it to break down into light, usable soil much more quickly then just tossing it in a pile to compact. If you're low on bulk for filling up those garden beds, this is a free way of building up soil that's often overlooked!
Sometimes creating new gardens takes a little creativity, especially if you're on a budget, but where there's a will there's always a way. I hope these ways of scoring soil-building materials at low cost have been helpful, and wish you your best growing season yet!
Fun Ways to Add Whimsy to Any Garden
Want to transform your bit of earth into a magical paradise? Here are some inspiring ideas that add a bit of fun and whimsy to any garden space.
Sweet little simple touches make it more fun to spend time in the garden, and more time in the garden is good for both body and soul!
21 Traditional Must-Grow Plants for Home Medicinal Gardens
There's a wonderful movement toward growing things more like our great-grandmothers did, establishing kitchen gardens just outside the kitchen door, and carving out space for medicinal gardens.
Here's a list of 21 treasured plants that have historically been grown in any well-supplied home medicinal garden. Some of these were included in herbal texts dating back as far as the 1500's, so you know they have a long history!
Any of these can easily be grown by the home gardener with a little care.
Anna Chesley
Anna Chesley is a freelance writer living a homestead lifestyle, with a special love for family travel, old books, vintage skills, and seaside living. In addition to founding Salt In My Coffee, she runs the website, New England Family Life, as well as The 1800's Housewife, a website devoted to re-creating authentic 1800's recipes.
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