Saturday Morning With Jack Tame

Improving Your soil   Mid-winter isn’t a great time to start digging in your sodden soil. It can be quite fragile, yet it provides us with organic materials that can:  1) Sequester carbon 2) Store moisture   3) Retain fertility   4) Grow trees that provide us with oxygen   5) Be a home to an amazing biodiversity   6) Feed us (vegie gardens!!)    Mulching and adding is the thing to do in winter.  Pea straw is a fab cover that suppresses weeds and keeps things “warm” in winter. It slowly breaks down it becomes humus and dark organic matter which is perfect! Pea straw should ideally be 20 cm thick.   Chipped branches and sawdust-like material do that too, but they often “steal” some Nitrogen from the soil to help it break down. A handful of Urea (50% Nitrogen) will speed that up and keep your soil fertile.  Old leaf-mold or dried, compressed leaves from last autumn are excellent cover too - like pea-straw.   Compost from your carbon-cycle compost bin is a step-up from just “mulch”. It contains a variety of nutri