Healthy soil is the hidden ingredient

I started my gardening adventure with vegetables in pots. It was perfect, plants gave amazing yield, but required too detailed care and attention every day (or sometimes 2-3 times a day in a hot dry summer day). When I have moved to planting in soil I was shocked how worse the plants are doing. Same tomatoes giving 10-15 kg per plant yield in pots were under 3kg in soil. They got more disease issues, more pests (slugs and snails!).

After talking to fellow natural hobby farmers I realized the soil quality was garbage (lack of earth worms and insects), and there were severe drainage and water holding issues: weirdly the soil didn't hold water but it drained way too slow too. So, ehen it rained it was swamped for days but when it got dry none of that water stayed at the top 1 meters of the soil. I'm lucky to find amazing help from local natural farmers, so I got natural green compost (no animal products/byproducts). I have been introduced to no-dig farming too. So first year I started by applying 20cm thick compost on top soil, after putting a layer of old paper boxes against weeds. Then planted my seedlings on these, with worm poop and for some phosphate loving plants bat guano as fertilizers around the plants, topping of with hemp mulch and cacao shell mulch as topping. When this soil has sunken enough, topped off with 2-3 cm compost and mulched again. I have sprinkled insect friendly flowers to attract insects too. This was an amazing succes with not only plants flourishing, fighting diseases much better and resulting in an amazing yield. I didn't need to water as often as before (4x less frequent than before in the soil, 8x less frequent than in the pot). After year 3 I stopped all fertilization and introduced cover crops that could be used as mulch and fertilizer at the same time.

This process though is not linear. I still have plants which are not successful at all. I can grow juicy tasty watermelons in a northern European country but no parsnips or carrots or cauliflowers yet. This is what I love though, I'm interacting with a living microbiome rather than executing lab experiments. Failures are keeping it interesting and improving learning.

That was a great read. This is what I hope to achieve too. I know what you mean about some crops that won’t grow at all, for me, it’s carrots. They are never more than a couple of centimetres long. Deeply frustrating. I’ve tried lots, including making the soil loose, making it compact, adding sand, etc.

Also Aloe Vera, absolutely the most frustrating house plants I’ve ever had.

You're probably over watering the aloe. Try growing carrots using a straw bale with soil added to a v cut in the center as a planter.

Why do you find Aloe Vera frustrating? I mean, it grows quickly and requires very little maintenance. I suppose that could be seen as "frustrating" in the sense that it needs to be divided or thinned out regularly.

When you say that you put a layer of old paper boxes against weeds, does that mean you put the broken down boxes first, and the put the compost on the top? If so, were the seedlings able to sink their roots through the paper boxes and go deeper into the ground?

Also, what cover crops did you introduce?

I just put them dry, not broken, and overlapping between the boxes such that they cover the surface fully. And yes, the roots can go down, but weeds cannot go past that easily. The theory is yhe upwards growth is weak but downwards growth of the roots are much stronger and they can puncture a wet paper box.

Cover crops: clover, buckwheat and winter rye. Cut before seeding and lay them flat over the surface.

I could see this being the reason your carrots didn't grow well though. If the carrots tap root struggles a bit through the cardboard it could mess up devlopment. I think this is why they say not to transplant carrots. The tap root bottoms out quickly and struggles to recover.

Glad you found it interesting!

It goes so quick with enough care, it's so fascinating. It's impossible to find any place without a lot of worms now.

I have the same issue with carrots. Parsnips are so much more harder though, they just don't grow any root at all!

Oh carrots were in a deep compost bed (40cm) first. They only grew like 2cm long roots, nowhere near the box.

Cardboard doesn’t last long when it’s wet, but long enough to smoother the plants beneath it. There’s something about it that attracts the fungi that break down wood fiber. And the continuous surface allows it to spread quickly.

Typical problem with aloe is overwatering. And modern potting soil often is loaded with sphagnum, which stays wet too long, and then when it dries it becomes hydrophobic so watering the plant doesn’t wet the entire soil.

Aloe does better in terra cotta pots and cactus mix. Even if you overwater it it won’t stay wet long.

I had the opposite experience. I had rented a house that had an empty patch of dirt and asked the landlord if we could plant some vegetables there (which I didn't have a lot of experience in). My older neighbor saw me and said that we had great soil in our neighborhood but I didn't really think about it. The vegetables grew amazingly well, we had way too many tomatoes and tons of broccoli that kept growing back and more. I barely took any care with it after planting, other than very sporadic watering and harvesting.

The next year we moved from that house to a new place, where we couldn't plant directly in the ground but the landlord was happy for us to use pots and planters. I eagerly planted my broccoli again thinking we'd have the same endless supply... but this time it barely produced anything and looked nothing like the last year. I bought some kind of soil bags from the gardening store after asking an employee which would be good for vegetable pots and planters. Something about the pots or the soil or otherwise made a gigantic difference even though we had moved probably less than a mile distance wise.

I'm a very amateur gardener so I may have made some other mistakes, but I think I treated the plants very similarly both years.

We use a Lomi to convert our organic waste into compost I can add to my worm farm

and then from the worm farm, mix with outdoor soil and grow in that. A automated a flood and drain system with our fish and cultivate nitrogen fixing bacteria with that, and water the plants with this water every couple of days.

Using these two approaches I have not had to buy any nutrients in years and our soil is doing well.

https://lomi.com/?srsltid=AfmBOor2uvg1DJ2J1E6rXh-8L3iAqzeSD0...

I agree. I do not water them and they grow crazy!

Only water when the feeling of guilt at not watering them is overwhelming.

Pretty much. :)

From what I know, first year after a lomg pause is always amazing. Farmers are paid to let the soil rest 1 year.

Why get an electric powered gadget made of plastic and proprietary soft/hardware that will 100% for sure end in a dump in less than 20 years when all you need is a good ol compost bin?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bXZG-kzlhPY

I was originally pretty skeptical of the Lomi as well after seeing this very same video. But my friend got us one and we have been using it for a while now. Sure, it has the same parts as a breadmaker, and it's mostly just drying out and cutting down the organic material into more useful sizes, exactly like he says, but when you put in the enzymes and have it run its dirt cycle it does actually produce meaningfully good compost all with much lower footprint a garden composting setup. I'm not sure I'd pay to buy one new, but but it's not a scam.

Just to clear up what sounds like a simple misunderstanding, because you mentioned being in Europe: in the US (can’t speak for other English speaking countries) to “break down” box is to flatten it, not break it like to destroy or tear apart. As in “help me break down these boxes for recycling”.

Forgive me if you got that, it just sounded like you were talking past each other.

Just remember that any positive effect you might achieve by a lifetime of composting is grossly negated by the production, usage, and inevitable way to the landfill of this thing. Startups like these are part of the problem, not the solution.

Lomi doesn't really "compost" your scraps, it dehydrates and grinds them. The actual compost activity happens (on an accelerated timeline, due to the pre-processing) in the soil you amend with your Lomi "compost." It's good marketing though

That could be true, but maybe OP's goal isn't making a positive impact on the global scale.

This makes sense as pots require very high precision of soil composition and water management. You need good drainage but a water reservoir under the pots with some kind of wick to keep it watering from the bottom. Also the size of the pot you need is huge compared to your intuition. A single tomato plant requires more than 100L of soil, 30% of which should be perlite, you need some pebbles for better drainage mixed in, and more than 50% should be compost. This often isn't enough for a tomato, so you need to add slow release fertilizers at different levels of soil. In a warm day (> 30C) you need to give 5L of water in the morning and in the evening. The water should stay in the pot but not flood it. Ah, also, they cannot handle cold as good as in soil either. So the pots should be moved indoors when it's too cold, and require shielding from a lot of wind.

If you prepare the pot, soil etc properly, you can get good results. It's very repeatable as it's a very precise recipe. If you put potting soil in a pot randomly it won't work at all.

Exactly this

Space is the main reason. We live in the city and the amount of organic waste we (family of 4 + numerous pets) produce is staggering. additionally meat attracts animals. This I run an overnight cycle and I can add it to my compost heap and let it degrade more and no issues with rodents and other animals who dig through food waste. after using this device, in the future I would always grind/break up my organic waste as fine as possible just to save space.

it allows us to get all our organic and bio plastic waste for a big family with pets, including most bones once we have cooked stock from it, in a compost heap in the city.

we tried composting before and the volume of organic waste we produced was too much and we had to dispose a lot of our waste in general trash (our location has no organic waste disposal that runs in our neighborhood) meant animals ripped our curb side bags open.

I am not a degrowther to save the planet either, so a company putting compostable products in place of plastic ones seems like good economic activity.

I water weekly, and even in the winter leave for 4 months!

I overwater before going, and when I come back sone of it is mildly brown. A week later with water replenishment, it's almost all green again.

Makes sense for a desert plant.

Interesting that you mentioned compost without animal products, then bat guano. Isn't guano harvesting fairly unsustainable and damaging to bat colonies?

Only if you're using bad math and discounting the impact of the retail compost and fertilizer offset by these devices.

These devices reach impact parity in a few years (2 to 10 depending on the electronics and how much they're used).

A properly selected variety adapted to your climate needs both less soil, less water and and a lot less maintenance (still daily care but nothing crazy).

Just throw your scrapes and buy compost then, it'll be cheaper and easier. The city already transforms bio waste in gas and compost anyways, and much more efficiently than what you can do at home given the scale.

This is another "I'm doing my part" gimmick that solves literally nothing when you look under the hood

Yes, variety matters a lot. I've managed to grow tomatoes quite well in pots located outside in Northern European climate, simply by picking a traditional variety that is known to be easy to grow. (In Germany it's known as "Bonner Beste" if anyone is interested). It doesn't even require that much upkeep.

I've had tomatoes grown successfully, with decent yield in pots that take maybe 30L of soil, and without any perlite. It isn't that hard if we're talking about hobbyist stuff, where results don't have to be ideal but just "good enough". Picking a variety that is hardy and forgiving, and a place with enough warmth and sunlight (at least in the North) is the most important part.

What you explain sounds similar to just having a high clay content. Water doesn’t soak in well. Not all earth is good soil to begin with is the lesson, you need to know what your starting with and amend. Unless you’re using potting mix in a pot, this is usually engineered to be excellent by professionals and explains the success

our city has no bio waste. we make all our own dried fruit, eat mostly fresh from market (so little to no plastic for our veggies), but an immense amount of organic waste.

True. What I went for was extremely good yield, like 10-15kg per plant. That requires a lot of foilsge growth early on and proper pruning + a lot of water later on. Just good enough isn't that hard, though still the depth of yhe pot should be enough for root development.

every region has different soil

High clay can by itself be quite problematic, especially reclaimed soil from sea and river deltas (so called polders) here in the Netherlands. These lands are very dense clay to begin with, rich with nutrients but not great for root growth and holding water. Sand is added for the former, and groubd water level is managed to max 1m underground for the latter. Nowadays with long stretches of dry weather (> 2 weeks no rain) this is becoming a huge problem as traditionally the issue always was drainage, ie getting rid of the water as fast as possible.

There's an interesting read about a polder in English here, especially the mechanical soil improvement section is worthwhile: https://www.canonnoordoostpolder.nl/en/land/cultivation

True. I wasn't really avoiding animal products but the idea was to not flood the soil with nitrogen. Bat guano is indeed bot great, which I stopped using after learning. Great thing about ot is thomoug high potassium and phosphate. This was necessary for my watermelons.

I've read that pigeon guano is also great. I didn't do any research on its environmental impact though, as I don't need it at the moment.

Oh I totally misunderstood that. Thanks for the clarification.

You're not wrong. I think people just like to feel like they're doing their part, even if it's not actually a net benefit.