Each time we plant a new vegetable garden our harvests get a little bit bigger. I know we can do better, though. A lot better.
I thought about what we needed to change when planting our fall garden, and I realized (if you are a master gardener, this might give you a nice chuckle)......
...it's all about the soil - duh!
Here are a few ideas I picked up over the past few weeks about how to to get the quality soil I need without spending a lot of money:
- Horse Poo. I was shocked to find all the listings for FREE horse manure on craigslist. As tempted as we were (seriously), we were a little worried about having a big pile of poo in our backyard with two young boys running around.
- Soil by the Truckload. The next best thing we could find to the free horse poo was a $10 truckload of soil from Cypress Creek Landscape Supply. It actually contained some manure and appeared very rich. We borrowed a truck and put our oldest boy to work shoveling soil into the garden (of course, my husband did most of it). It took two truckloads to fill our 4' x 8' garden.
- Compost. Creating rich soil of your own for FREE is great incentive for saving all those kitchen scraps. Of course, it's also nice to reduce the amount of trash that goes to the landfill.
- Half-Off Broken Bags. I've been told (but haven't tried it yet) that you can get bags of soil half-off at Lowes and Home Depot if the bags are broken.
