A4C Prepper Dan Making Soil and Bio-char Vlog3
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
144.77841
Summary
In this episode I talk about how you can make your own compost from leaves and composted manure to improve your vegetable yield and increase your yield in your raised beds and raised beds. I dig out some of the best soil I have in the woods and talk about what you can add to it to make it a really nice soil for your veggie garden.
Transcript
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well today we're gonna have kind of like a clean dirty talk we're gonna talk dirt
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in a lot of urban centers today you can go to local stores maybe a grocery store a garden
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center near you and you can buy bags of dirt pre-made but you really got to be careful with
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what's in those bags a lot of this stuff may say earth or dirt but when you actually open
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up the bag all kinds of stuff in there that you don't really know what it is I like to make my
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own now mind you I live on some acreage here so I've got the capacity to do that I have some
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livestock so I can make manure I've got a hardwood and softwood forest there's lots of leaf litter on
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the ground I've got a wood chipper and so I can make my own wood chips I can also it's got a big
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popper and I can also put some leaves in there really break stuff up but I'm going to show you
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a way that you can make your own as well and at least you can supplement what you can buy at the
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store if you absolutely have to and you can end up with a really nice composite soil to really increase
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your vegetable yield so let's come a little closer and I'll show you what I have so I have two big
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piles of manure here well really it's it's a mixture of manure it's a mixture of shredded newspaper that
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I also put in a chicken pen I do have some compost in here particularly on the other pile is where I
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start my things and this pile here has been here for about eight months now now throughout the winter
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when it would snow the snow would hardly even stay on this pile because it would heat up so much
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it's cooled down quite a bit but may be hard for you to see here but I see all kinds of little bugs
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crawling on here right now in this pile it looks kind of dry but when I pick it up here
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it's got a really nice consistency here there is quite a bit of organic matter in here but what you want
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with this kind of soil is you want to be able to make a ball and for it to have some consistency like
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this this will hold the moisture quite well in a raised bed which is where I do most of my gardening
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and just going in through here now I'm going to have to turn this over a little bit too because it
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hasn't quite decomposed quite enough I have been putting some fresh stuff in here but the further
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in I dig here the more the soil oh I do have some bark in here as well but the more the soil is really
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good and I'm going to be able to add this at least to the bottom of some of my my beds here and as
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you can see the soil down here is going to be a real nice additive to the new raised beds and I'm
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going to build this here nice and clumpy and this will hold some moisture so I'm going to be mixing this
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with some of the better soil that I have that I'm going to show you here in just a minute
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now this pile of dirt here may not look like much actually may look a little bit dry but when you look in
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here this is a mixture of a lot of dry leaves that I put in here last year a lot of composted manure and
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this is like really nice black dirt oh look there's some worms in here too and this is what you really
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want in here as well there's a little where did it go oh it just disappeared but this nice mixture here
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will hold hold the the moisture really really well and it will make a really nice addition to the soil
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mixture that I'm going to use it's got a lot of organic matter in here too that will keep decomposing
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just a little bit but it's nice and loamy it's nice and light now it still has some old roots in that
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that I'm going to filter out and that a few a few sticks as well but this is all help with the aeration of
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this pile as well and it's a sizable pile too I'm just going to back up here so you can see and I've moved
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this around with the bucket of my tractor quite a few times and it literally just sits in the woods here in
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a section that I had to dig out to get some dirt to level off a spot for my for my sawmill but it
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literally just sits in the woods it does get sun it's down the little woods road that I have but it's
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been baking for about a year and a half and there's probably enough in here to fill about I'm going to
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say about five raised beds that I'm going to be building and I use all kinds of leaf litter that I get down
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in the woods like this I just collect it put it through my wood chipper so it breaks down nice and
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small and again if you can just make a pile of something like this anywhere in your yard now I had
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this covered with a tarp also for I'm going to say about three months just to help it bake a little bit
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let me take another little bite in here and this just looked like a pile of leaves and mulch and all
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that but basically this is all it is and it turns into some nice really organic looking material just
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like that and I can see a bunch of worms in there as well
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well let's talk a little bit about biochar biochar is something i do a number of times during the year
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i've got a number of these five gallon buckets you can pick these up well you can look on
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uh this one's uh this one's getting a little bit rusty but what i do is i fill these with uh
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softwood or hardwood softwood is not as dense but just junk pieces of wood that i have laying
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around as you can see in my forest i've got all kinds but i do a lot of woodworking and i end up
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with a lot of pieces of just junk wood and what you want to do is you want to light this on fire
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and when your wood gets very white almost to the point where it's going to disintegrate and turn
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you douse it with water really quickly so that it turns into
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charcoal like this buried in the ground will not disintegrate it will not rot matter of fact it will
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so this is good for your garden but it has to be activated so this like this not going to do much
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for your garden so what you want to do is i've got some big pieces here that aren't quite burnt enough
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so i'll have to break these down but what you want to do is you want to break these pieces into smaller
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pieces so i've got a mallet here and what i do over here on this table is i just break these up into smaller
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pieces here and then they fall through the cracks so what i do is i take one of these bins
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i usually put put it down underneath and then i just scrape this all down until it falls down
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below and i'm not going to do that right now because i'm not ready to activate another another
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portion of it but what i'm going to do eventually with this is i'm going to fill this to about three
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quarters of the way then i'm going to take some fresh manure that i have now i've mentioned before i do
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have livestock here i've got chickens and i've got some rabbits but i'm going to take some fresh rabbit poop
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you may say i don't have rabbits so what do i do well you can go to your local
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grocery store right now or your farm supply store or wherever they're selling bag dirt and you can buy
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yourself a bag of sheep manure or bag of cow manure or if you know somebody that's got any kind of fresh
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manure you can buy a bag of that and you mix it in with this that's not possible you say
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well i don't want to gross you out but human urine is something you can use so a couple of bottles of
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that you save it up for a few days and you pour it over this mixture now you want small pieces okay
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this about this size is what you want okay and you pour it on this put a lid on it set it aside for
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about a month and that will activate it with good bacteria and what this is going to do is
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i mentioned this earlier a piece about this size if you were to unfold this with all of the cellular
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structure in this it would it would defend it would take up about the space of a football field with
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all of the cells the fiber cells all stretched out and this would hold all of the good bacteria in
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your garden your garden needs good bacteria the anaerobic bacteria in there to work in order to
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be activated in order to have some anaerobic activity in your garden so again i usually make three of these
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buckets at a time and i probably do this about four times a year now you don't need a lot in your garden
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you really don't this much here would probably do me about five big raised beds and by raised beds i
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mean four feet wide by eight feet long and once this is done you just basically scatter it in with
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your dirt mix it in leave it you don't have to keep replenishing this every year once this is done it's
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done you leave it for 50 years and i ain't going to be here in 50 years so i hope you find this helpful
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well thanks for joining me for another episode of uh dirt talk and we hope to see you next time so
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happy planting and hopefully next time we'll get into some real planting our weather's getting warmer
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here in the east coast and so thank you god bless you and god bless canada