Importing Fertility into The garden

A video where I talk about importing fertility into the garden and what I'm trying to do to produce more from my own land. 

What do you do to improve the fertility of your soil in your garden?

8 Tons Of Black Gold!

I know I'm lucky when it comes to my family. Even luckier when my dad comes over on a Sunday morning to visit his grand daughters and brings 8 tons of muck with him! It was a welcome bonus and I know that manure is something I'm lacking when it comes to being self sufficient.

 As the ground is still quite wet we had to dump it in the next field over to the garden but it will be worth the walk with the wheel barrow, as some of this muck is lovely and well rotted. 

The strawy bits I will remove and leave for another year to rot down and the rest will go into the garden or the orchard to feed all my plants and improve the soil.

One day I'd like to be in a situation where I'm not having to import muck like this to make my garden grow, instead having animals here to produce it for me (myself included when I get round to building a composting toilet). 

I'm still trying to improve the soil at the moment from the quite heavy clay so I'm having to use more than I would normally, but it's handy having a father who is a farmer and can bring large quantities for me - even if it was a surprise! So with this and the wood chip I've got most of what I need for the gardening year, except potting compost which is something I'm going to have to work on producing myself. 

How much muck does everyone use in their homestead each year?

Cow Muck

 My amazing dad brought me some muck round the other night. Around 6 tons he recons but I think it could be quite a bit more!


Lucky I don't have to move it from here!

Our plans did change some what on where we were going to tip it when the trailer sank in to it's axle going across the second field! We decided that was the best (and only) place for it to go.

Can you see where he's been?

 Luckily he came with the loader and bucket so he could move it from there and dump it in the veg garden. This meant a lot less barrowing for me which was good as there is a lot of muck to move.


All the soft fruit has had a good mulch of well rotted muck

Still quite a bit to spread on the garden!

As this garden was just grass on a clay soil before I need to add a lot of well rotted material over the next few years to make it easy to work so this is just the beginning.
Anyone else getting bulk amounts of compost or muck to add to their veg patch?