I need to build new garden beds for next year. These will be raised beds in the front yard, and some in the rows between the fruit trees in the orchard.
Before I can start making the garden beds, though, I have to muck out the goat barn and the winter chicken house.
Why, one might ask, must I muck out the barns first?
Because there is a veritable gold mine in manure, ammonia and rotted hay and straw in a semi-composted state in those barns.
The garden beds can’t be composed of just dirt. They need the “food” that will attract the right kind of microbial life that will promote the cation action necessary to draw out much-needed minerals and, even some things off of the periodic chart… Remember potassium, phosphorous, copper, zinc, sulfur, and other items on that chart??? They are all important to… our health. They are necessary for the plants’ health, which, if good, will thrive and produce vegetables and/or fruit that are high in the nutrients that our bodies need. And without the little bacteria and microbes that release these metals and minerals for the plants to use, we would get produce that doesn’t have much “substance”, from a nutritional point of view.
So, I have to muck out the barns first, so that the muck and mire can finish composting (along with other goodies I will throw into the “microbial soup”) so that it will be ready to go into the “dirt” I put in the beds.
Then, when it’s all mixed together, it will make good soil – instead of just “dirt”.