How to Properly Re-Mineralize the Garden For Spring

Well hello everyone, welcome to another episode here on the My Gardener channel. In this episode we're going to re

mineralize

the soil behind us getting it ready for

spring

, so the first thing you want to do when you're remineralizing your soil, you want to make sure you're always putting in more than you're taking out. Your yields should never exceed your inputs and that's one of the biggest things

garden

ers struggle with is they don't understand how much energy and minerals. they took out of their soil to feed their family, so all that food that you took out of the premise in a perfect closed system there would be, you know, your biomass, all the plants that you grew and things like that would be returned to the soil in a perfect system , that happens, but in an organic

garden

, even in an organic garden or a normal garden, what happens is that we consume those products, which means that even if we take the plant life and we only take the fruits, you are still taking away something from the garden, even if you compost the plants, you're still taking the fruits and the tubers and whatever you're harvesting off the premise and that means you're taking minerals and nutrients. away from the garden so putting it back is crucial, that's why we do stress composting.

We have a big compost pile and everything we harvest, all that plant matter from there, goes into the compost pile where we were clearing the garden. day and taking things out for the end of the year and all of that goes into the compost pile that decomposes because all of those are inputs that we want to put the minerals back into the soil because it does its job. easier next year, so yeah, what we're going to do is do two things here: add rock dust and azomite because that adds the micronutrients and the trace elements that we talked about are so important for soil life and overall soil health. your soil and then we will also add our own compost.

You can also use compost that you can get from your local composting facility or even from Store-bought compost is great, but not all compost is created equal. I mean I would rather everyone make their own compost or buy it from a composting facility than buy it from a big box store. It's not the worst. in the world and I will say it's not the worst thing in the world to use something like topsoil or not using anything at all is worse, but using store compost, number one, you can't guarantee the source, I can't tell you that. you know where they come from you know what they are putting in it you can't know where it comes from and you simply can't there are many unknowns about it and it is also too decomposed one of the good things about homemade The compost that I will show you is rich in material organic, it is rich in humus, humus is something that not all compost has.

Humus is the type of exoskeleton left over from decomposed plants and in fact provides a home for beneficial bacteria and fungi, which is at the heart of a healthy garden and soil, if you want to maintain the health of your soil you must understand that a healthy garden starts with healthy soil and that the two go hand in hand, that being said, you have the humus that provides not only the beneficial bacteria and fungi, not only does it provide the organic matter that will provide minerals in the soil, but which will also provide a home for beneficial bacteria to thrive and can begin to break down the rock dust and azomite you can't have one without the other they go together they are very interconnected because rock dust is not available to plants there is a large amount of minerals here that are great for your plants and great for your garden and also great for you, but what about? is that many times people throw it into a garden and wonder why their plants still have micronutrient deficiencies or you or they wonder why their plants are not at one hundred percent of their capacity, the thing is that everything can be done well but if you don't have a home for the bacteria and fungi and you don't have bacteria and fungi there is nothing to break down the minerals here what the bacteria do is go out and search we call them miners they are miners that will extract the beneficial trace minerals and elements that are found in rock dust and other, you know, trace mineral supplements will come out, break them down and bring them back to the plant in the

spring

or when there is a plant growing and they will exchange that plant for trace minerals and nutrients in return of sugars that the plant creates through photosynthesis.

This symbiotic relationship is so essential in an organic garden and it is one of the reasons why an inorganic garden that promotes the use of a lot of synthetic chemicals and things like that harms soil life and that is why it depends so much of external feeding regiments. Many external sources of nutrients because it is not self-sustaining. This is not so close to a closed system. system like I would like, but again, when you take things away from the premise, there's really nothing you can do to give it back, instead, I mean, we're doing everything we can do when we compost, so that we don't .

I have to add so much rock dust, but it's much more self-sustaining than something like an inorganic growing system, where they spray the chemicals they use, use high salt fertilizers and things like that that kill soil life and kill bacteria. ground. biology, so yes, these two go hand in hand when you want to re

mineralize

your soil, it is paramount folks, it is absolutely paramount that you add both because your soil will deplete over time, you can't just say "well I'll do it." To get to it later, you have to get used to doing it every year so that the balance is maintained in your soil if you have a wild change where the bacteria say wait, there is nothing and then you lose a lot of life.

All the soil life will die off nicely and then you add a bunch of stuff. Well, you've already lost much of the soil life, so it takes a long time for soil bacteria to get back up to the numbers needed to thrive. again and again it's this constant swinging back and forth, this pendulum is not so good for a successful garden, whereas if you constantly do a spring, summer or spring and fall, spring and fall regimen, you remineralize in the spring , you remineralize in In the fall, you keep the garden and the soil healthy, you will have a healthy garden, every year, guaranteed, so let's throw things into the garden and then the final step will be in the fall, when we have some fall leaves What are we going to throw away? fall leaves on top, always, always, people have to cover the ground, whether it's with a cover crop, whether it's with perennials or with leaves, a tarp or whatever, straw, you need something that adds a Protective barrier.

It's going to isolate the bacteria, it's going to keep them from being exposed to extreme temperatures, it's going to help with compaction, it's going to help with all of that, so that's the final step we'll do later, but we don't have any leaves. Now, that's coming in the fall, so whenever I apply rock powder it's great, it's great to load it up, but I find that sometimes people are a little bit over the top, a little bit, it lasts a long time. This way, especially if you have been maintaining the health of your garden, I always recommend that if you are doing this for the first time, put it on heavier and then use it lighter because once the minerals are in your soil, they are not The micronutrients and trace elements don't get depleted as much as nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, things like that, so you have to replace those minerals a lot more than trace minerals, so in addition to this 48 square foot bed here I added I added about I would say maybe three and four pounds on that bed and I always work downwind it's never good to breathe this stuff in if you have a dust mask hand I always always always recommend a dust mask dust, which is a very good practice, no, you are not breathing those fine particles and also, the finer the particles, the better we will always get micronized rock dust because the micronized rock dust will be available to the plants.

Much, much faster because the surface area is much larger, obviously the smaller or smaller the surface area, the longer it will take for the micronutrient or the microbes and bacteria to break down the material, allowing the micronutrients. available plant, so it's never, ever a good idea to add big chunks of river rock and things like that and then all we're going to do is just put a decent porsche or a decent amount of homemade compost on top of the bed. I don't need much to prepare it for spring because we will continue in the spring with more, but it is important to give the soil bacteria something to thrive, something to enjoy during the winter. so you have to remember that your soil doesn't go on vacation just because you go to Florida sometimes in the winter doesn't mean that the soil bacteria go with you, the soil bacteria that have to stay in the soil where they are and So by giving them a place to call home and by taking care of them, you'll make sure that your soil is healthy in the spring, so that's all there is to it if you do these two things, your uh, your garden.

You'll be ready to rock in the spring, that's how you remineralize and prepare your garden for spring, just make sure you always always cover your soil with something, whether it's a cover crop, put some cover crop seeds in there. some leaves in there or, you know, perennials, it doesn't matter, just make sure there's something to cover the ground so your garden stays nice and loose and airy and ready to go in the spring, as always. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you learned something new. Share this video if you find it with a lot of information that helps our channel grow, like it also helps our channel grow and even let us know in the comment box. what you enjoyed in this video and that really helps us grow because it allows us to create content for future episodes and learn where we need to improve so anyway I hope you enjoyed hopefully you learned. something new and as always we'll talk to each other then see you goodbye