Zoo Poo & Other Soil Amendments

by Terri Carter
May 4 2013

This is week 3 with Habesha and we are learning about soil.  When I thought about soil, I really did not think of all the different things that you can add to your soil to make it richer.  In fact I did not think much about the soil except that you gotta have some to plant in. It is much deeper than that my farm friends.  Good soil to a gardener is like water for a fish, it is necessary for good growth and happy plants.  Most of the time we just go and get a bag of soil from a gardening center.  That is easy to get that big bag of souped up miracle growing soil that claim to have all the good things already in it to make plants grow well.  That is fine to do so especially if you don't know much about soil but as you learn more about soil, you will start to see that you can add good stuff to your soil without paying for much.  A good bag of soil will run you about $8 a bag and I can go through 10 bags or more easily in a season.  That gets to be expensive after a while so I suggest that you too learn how to make your own soil.

In the picture above, Cashawn has a wheelbarrow of good soil which he calls zoo poo.  He got it from Zoo Atlanta and it is manure from the animals. The zoo poo did not smell bad because it has been aged. In other words, he did not just run behind a elephant and scoop up the poo and bring it in the next day.  The longer it ages, the better. This poo has been aged and mixed with some other soil. We may not all be able to get access to zoo poo but you may know someone who has a few farm animals and they may be willing to work with you.  Rabbit and chicken poo is also very good if you can get some.  These animals eat plant based diets so they make good poo. Do not go and use your dog or cat poo, they eat meat.   If you don't know any animals, no worries  you can find other things to add into your soil to make it like soil gold.

The easiest way is to make a compost pile and compost your lawn clipping and plant scraps from your kitchen.  This is pretty much free. It does not take a long time to get some good stuff ready to be used in your garden.  Other ways of getting some conditioners into your soil include wood ash, which is just burned up wood.  I cut down some small trees and bushes and I burned them. I used the ash from this fire and added it into the garden.  That too was free after I paid my friend to cut down the small trees. There is another free idea.  You can use saw dust in the garden too.  If you know someone who cuts down trees for a living, you could ask for the sawdust left or the sawdust from a construction  site where they are using wood.  Don't let them trick you and ask you to pay for something that they are going to throw out anyway unless it is a really great cheap price.

When adding amendments to the soil, you should also know about the pH of the soil so that you know what you are working with.  I would not worry too too much about this in the beginning if you are starting with some type of expensive potting mix.  This pH thing becomes important when you have been growing in the same spot for a while and you are depleting your soil's nutrients.  I would also suggest that you consider trying mushroom compost and manure which you can purchase bagged.  I like to make a cocktail of all the good stuff that I can find and I mix it all together.  My secret is to use worm casings to start seeds in. Finding this stuff may be difficult.  It is just the poo from worms and it is so good and rich for plants. It is too expensive to put directly into the garden but great for starting your precious heirloom seeds in.  They will love you for it.