When we first installed our current market garden, which is where your vegetables are grown, it was mostly hard red clay on the top of a hill. The first year some of the bean plants didn't get much over 6 inches tall and only had a few measly beans on them. But the next growing season and since then we started adding an ingredient that transformed the hard soil into a beautiful, dark, workable soil. That ingredient is COMPOST.
Compost is well decomposed organic matter that adds life, water holding capacity, drainage, nutrients, and health to the soil. Over the years we have purchased some compost from local providers and most recently we have been making in in large piles right in the garden area. For most crops we plant we add a fine layer of rough compost over the beds that acts as a refined mulch.
It is such a joy to work a garden with rich, fertile soil and to see it undergo such a dramatic change from the hard-packed dirt it used to be. We like to say that we are 'redeeming the dirt'!
Your support has enabled us to be able to do this and we appreciate it (and so does our land!). Thank you!
