Jun '24 (edited) • How to: EXTREME Plant Quality
5 STEPS TO AN INSANELY LUSH GARDEN!
You want that garden lush, thick, fat, popping, juicy and generally flippin sick all round. It’s pretty easy but there are a few steps so we’ll start with the beginning and finish with the end, not to mention chuck in a juicy middle bit kinda like that fat bit on an earthworm just more swole with knowledge.
The start of all that fat juicy foliage and luscious flowers starts with the soil. So calm down and hold off with the bejonias and filendrins for a minute.
At first glance, it may seem boring and featureless. The soil however is the key to it all. It is an incredibly complex system of many forms of life and systems happening together. Depending on the environment, the unique qualities of each soil differ.
If you want lush plants, you need lush soil. If the area you hope to work does not already have lush plants, chances are you’re soil needs improving and has likely degraded over time.
A garden totally can be a self sustaining system that keeps itself healthy by recycling nutrients and creating a varied ecosystem. All the players in the ecosystem contribute to its performance. The more players working in unison, the better the garden.
There can be detrimental players too. The way we determine what characters dominate is creating a system that the helpful players favour and prosper. By players I mean all the aspects of a natural ecosystem, minus large animals in this scenario due to it being a garden but whatever if you have large animals in your garden that’s cool I guess maybe, I dunno could be, could not be depending on the animal. I mean look if it’s hippos I’d say forget gardening those boys can run 60kmh on land and swim 30kmh underwater, thats OP for a 3 ton animal.
Anyway, soil.
Step 1: You gotta get a bunch of nice organic stuff into the soil. Think creatively, what do you have access to a lot off? Horse shit? Cow shit? Dry leaves? Lawn clippings? Gran a bunch and pile it in an area of the garden where you can keep it covered with a tarp or whatever works, and leave it in the sun. Turn the pile 1 time per week. It should be loose and airy and moist. Over the first 3 weeks chuck in kitchen scraps as you get them. But after week 3 stop adding stuff. Just keep turning one a week until 5 or 6 weeks.
Ideally start another pile 3 weeks in, that way you’ll have a good supply. This intensity is only needed for the first 4 months or so then the applications can be halved or more as the system develops it’s own sustainability.
Step 2: evenly distribute this bulk load of compost over all the soil you wish to work with. About 2cm thick at least. Mix it into the soil one spade depth. Do this every 3 weeks.
Step 3: as soon as the first compost application has been mixed in, plant a varied cover crop. Depending on season and location. Eg: mixed beans and ground cover legumes work great. Leave the weeds that pop up too. They are pioneers, they fix poor soil, let them work.
Step 4: let the cover crops grow until they are too thick eg for the example above that would be about 30cm tall and packed in thick. OR until the local weeds are about to seed, whatever comes first. NOTE do not let local weeds go to seed! This will fill the soil with weeds we no longer need creating loads of work. Now smash everything down! Use a machete, big scissors, a stick, whatever. Just smash them all down.
Step 5: start planting stuff! This next step is a whole other topic as we’ll need to mindfully select what we plant as we want an ecosystem to develop and that needs variety of plant types. If we look at the permaculture perspective, we have ground covers, herbaceous level, bush, shrub, tree and vine levels. They all create a sustained system. We’ll tget into that in the next addition. Thanks for reading!
Warrick
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5 STEPS TO AN INSANELY LUSH GARDEN!
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