Easy Growing And Organic Waste Sweetens Your Soil

Don’t throw away your organic matter buy an inexpensive composter and use your waste….Grownthego.com uses all it’s waste material and is going Green all the way

Easy Growing Composter

Organic Matter – easy growing for a kitchen garden from your kitchen waste

One of the easiest way to add nutrients to your garden clay soil is with compost from your organic kitchen waste.    Simple composters can be purchased often free or for under $50 and there is zero maintenance, so make your organic matter for free.  Here’s how you can use it.   Clay particles are not the only particles in the soil that contribute to CEC (cation exchange capacity, see previous article).  Organic matter, more specifically humus particles, also offer negatively charged sites that can store plant nutrients in the soil.  Organic matter (OM) is the term used to describe the plant and animal derived components of soil.  There are many different sources of OM and they exist in many different forms.  Leaves, wood chips, manure, weeds (also known as green manure) and kitchen waste are just a few.  Microorganisms in the soil feed on OM, breaking it down to smaller and smaller particles.  The final destination of OM is humus, a small, stable, negatively charged particle that has a high water and nutrient storing capacity.   Thus humus also contributes to a soil’s CEC (cation exchange capacity).  Generally speaking, a soil with a high clay content and large amounts of OM will have a high CEC, while sandy soils with little OM have low CEC’s.  This is an important distinction to make about our soil, as the two soil types need to be managed very differently.

Since soils with low CEC’s can only hold limited amounts of nutrients, fertilizing applications should be kept to small quantities because any added nutrients that can not be held in the soil will quickly wash down through the soil.  This downward movement of excess nutrients through soil is called leaching and it can be a contributing factor in water pollution – not to mention a waste of money!

Green Sherpa Grow On The Go

Much like how soils at either end of the texture spectrum (clay-sand) can be advantageous or disadvantageous for a gardener, CEC at either range of the spectrum can be beneficial or problematic given the specific circumstance.  Soils with a high CEC (keep in mind if your soil has a high clay content and lot’s of organic matter it will have a high CEC) offer the obvious of advantage of being able to store lot’s of nutrients.  However, because these soils hold larger quantities of nutrients when imbalances occur they require larger amounts of amendments to correct than soils with low CEC‘s that have similar imbalances.

Related posts:

1. Soil You Need for Easy Growing; Grow on the Go Here’s some great dirt on soils to grow your own...
2. Soil texture – Grow on the Go, What You Need to Know Soil Texture, get the soil texture right and your onto...
3. Easy Gardening: Container Garden & Your Soil Grown on the Go, principles of water and soil for...
4. Soil for your pleasure: Grow on the Go The real dirt on soils for all your plants…   I...
5. Grow on the Go: Dirt, ions and pH all you need to know to grow your own Cat ion Exchange Capacity for grow on the go; easy...