Unlock the secret to thriving gardens through soil building — Rootsy’s soil building hub offers easy, sustainable composting methods that turn ordinary kitchen and yard waste into “black gold.” Whether you’re starting with a backyard compost pile, vermicomposting indoors, or building nutrient-rich soil layers (think lasagna or Back-to-Eden style), our hands-on tutorials and frugal hacks help you enrich your garden organically.
We also explore ways to boost fertility with cover crops, green manures, and even nutrient-dense additions like chicken and livestock litter—all while teaching you how to balance green nitrogen-rich scraps with brown carbon-rich materials, encourage beneficial microorganisms, and avoid common composting problems like odors or pests.
There’s no doubt about it, plants need food. These 11 free natural fertilizers can be found in most homes. Let’s stop throwing them away and instead use them to feed the vegetable garden. We all want to get the best harvest we can from our vegetable garden and it seems logical that the more fertilizer …
Building healthy soil takes time, in fact, it can take year. But there are things you can do to speed it a long like using worm castings to nourish your plants and build healthy soil. What are Worm Castings In a nutshell, worm castings are worm manure or poop if you ask a young child. …
The foundation of every garden is healthy soil. Healthy soil gives you fruit and vegetables full of nutrients, protects your plants during droughts, and supplies you with a wonderful harvest. But don’t worry. I’m here to teach you how to build healthy soil the easy and cheap way. Yes, there’s still some work involved, but …
Cover crops are an easy way to suppress weeds, build soil and attract beneficial insects. Learn how to grow buckwheat, Austrian peas, rye, oats, and hairy vetch to cover bare soil and use as green manure. There are times in the gardening year when the ground is bare, and the ground doesn’t like to be …
Improving soil with chicken litter is an organic method for feeding your garden and a way to use your used livestock bedding. One of the perks of homesteading is that you can use waste from one area to enhance or grow another area. We are excited to have Erica of Living Life in Rural Iowa …