Growing A Healthy Soil

One of the elements of small-scale, sustainable farming is trying to reduce the amount of compost you have to purchase to improve the fertility of your soil. We have a small flock of fine wool sheep and alpacas that we keep for this purpose. They provide us with top quality wool for spinning and felting, but also with lots of wonderful manure. Alpacas are unique....they prefer to pick a spot in the pasture to use as a latrine. At some point (only they know why!), they decide that spot is filled to capacity and they choose another area to begin using. This makes the collection process pretty simple! We've heard of other alpaca owners who routinely use a shop vacuum every weekend to collect the pellets to use in their compost piles. We find a shovel and wheelbarrow suit our needs.

Another way we try to improve the health and fertility of our soil is by growing green manure cover crops. Green manures are often a mix of two or more types of seed - oats, buckwheat, winter rye, sudangrass, hairy vetch, etc. These are allowed to grow and then are either cut and tilled into the soil or just tilled in without removing the top growth of the plant. Nutrients are released into the topsoil as the green manure decomposes. Each type of plant adds something unique to the soil. The legumes (vetch, peas, alfalfa, etc.) add nitrogen to the soil.

Having a healthy, vital soil is our top priority. Healthy soil means healthy plants and healthy plants don't have as many disease and insect problems. That's critically important when growing produce without using pesticides!