 Good morning. My name is Kendra Sakamoto. I'm one of the librarians here at West Vancouver Memorial Library. Okay, I know that we are all in different places this morning, but I would like to acknowledge that I am here today on the traditional ancestral and unceded territory of the Squamish Nation, the Slewa Tooth Nation, and the Musqueam Nation. For me, gardening is all about connecting with the land. Just yesterday, I was doing some gardening on the library's rooftop gardens, Whiteway to Maywick, and I just feel so incredibly grateful to work on this land that the Coast Salish peoples have been the careful caretakers of since time immemorial. I personally strive to be a mindful steward of these lands and these waters and follow respectfully in the footsteps of those who have come before me. So today is the first in our Garden Talks series as we start to think about spring and the warmer weather. It is sunny where I am, so that helps, and I'm so delighted today to welcome Arzina Hamir to talk about the critically important gardening piece, soil, and compost. Arzina works as an organic farmer and a local government politician. She has degrees in crop science and sustainable agriculture. She's worked internationally with small-scale farmers all around the world and extensively across BC. She and her family run Amara Farm, a 25-acre certified organic farm in Courtney, BC. And welcome, Arzina. Thank you, and thank you for having me. Lovely to see you, Kendra, and have the opportunity to speak to gardeners about soils. So I'm going to share my screen. And yeah, so today we're going to be talking about soils and, you know, it's often an overlooked part of gardening. And I have to admit, having done my degree in agriculture in the late 80s and early 90s, soils I think we're often looked at as this inert medium that you just put seed and fertilizer in and things just grow and the soil is just there to kind of hold your plants. And we've learned just so much more about the importance of all of the components of soil and how having a healthy soil is really the foundation of growing healthy plants. So I am, as Kendra mentioned, a certified organic grower. My husband and I run Amara Farm in the unceded traditional territory of the Comox people on the east coast of Vancouver Island. And when we moved here in 2012, you know, some of the things that we had to reckon with was a very different soil. I have a very particular soil type. It's a loam, high levels of silt in my soil. And I was used to working in soils in Richmond, which are high clay. And I know many of you who are tuning in are probably from the North Shore, where you may have more gravelly soils that are well draining. So we're going to talk today about all of the components of soil, both the physical and the non physical, and then talk about how to maintain a healthy soil. So let's get at it. And during the presentation, I'm going to take breaks just to check in and see if people have questions. So if a question arises, feel free to put it into the Q&A. And Kendra will read it out. And you know, I'll be able to answer it at the time. So don't worry about trying to hold things until the very end. So just a little bit about me, as Kendra mentioned, I'm a certified organic grower. We have a 26 acre vegetable and fruit farm. Of that, eight acres is in forest, which is incredibly important for the pollinators on our farm. And we have two acres in vegetables and another three acres in mixed berry and nut crops. So I grow about 48 different types of fruits and vegetables, from asparagus to zucchini and kind of everything in between. And for me, I love the part that I love about growing food is that it's both a science and an art. We'll learn a little bit about the science. And then the art part is kind of like the programming of what we're going to grow this year and what it's going to look like and how we enhance the beauty of the farm. So that's the type of farming that I do. We are primarily doing most of our work by hand. We do have a little bit of tractor support when jobs are really big. But for the most part, we are mostly farming by hand, which we'll talk about like what the benefits of that are. So I'm going back. What really is soil? When you go out into your gardens and you see this brownish, maybe grayish material that's in your yards, often we can get kind of carried away with like the physical, like what I see is this brown stuff. But what really is this material that's beneath our feet? It's actually composed of four very distinct ingredients, I would call them. So we have the mineral component, you know, the physical aspect of soil. We have the organic matter, which is provides that carbon based support for the soil. There is also the biology that's associated with that carbon area. So things that you can see like earthworms and maybe black beetles. And then the unseen, the microbiology, the bacteria, the fungi, the protozoas that we're learning are all incredibly important to helping to feed the plants that we want to grow, but also just to be a healthy soil. And then let's not forget about the things that we don't see or the unseen, which is the air pockets. Air and oxygen are so incredibly important for growing healthy plants and maintaining a good garden. So I don't want to forget that it's both the physical, the seen and the unseen that we need to maintain a really healthy soil. So when we talk about the mineral component of soil, often what soil scientists will do is when they take samples of soil, they will, first of all, sieve out anything that's big and chunky and gravelly. Anything larger than two millimeters is generally taken out. So the gravel component is extracted. And then they want to look at the components that are either sand, silt, or clay. Those are the three major types of soil particles that make up your soil texture. The sand, and if you can think of just a sandy beach, sand is actually the largest of the components. It's got the biggest particle size. And some of the features of sandy sand itself or very sandy soils is that they drain really well. They allow, they don't hold moisture well. They allow for really good drainage. And if you have a very sandy soil, you can generally grow carrots really well and root vegetables that need that deep soil that doesn't have a lot of compaction. Sandy soils are very resistant to compaction. They're kind of like the springiest kind of soil that we have. Now the next particle size down, the smaller size is silt. Silt is generally found in areas that have rivers that flood and deposit this material called silt. And that's an area that I actually live in. I live in a river delta. Portuguese creek is just at the western edge of my property. And over the millennia, when beavers built dams in my area, the water would flood the land and deposit a very high percentage of silt. So my soil is made up of 40% of silt. Silt is a much finer particle size. So it's able to hold moisture quite well. It still allows some drainage. So that's a great point. But it does absorb moisture way better than sand does. And then lastly, we have a soil component of clay. Clay is the smallest particle size of the mineral component of soil. Clay particles are so tiny that they're microscopic. You can't generally see them. An individual clay particle from the naked eye. Clay holds on to moisture incredibly well. In some cases, almost too well. But if you have a clay soil, you generally don't have to water as much as a silt soil and definitely not as much as a sandy soil. So those small, small particles means there is just a small amount of air pockets. And so the clay hangs on to moisture really, really well. Now, these are the three components of soil. Generally, nobody has 100% sand or 100% silt or 100% clay. It's a combination of these three. I'm going to pause there and just see if there are any questions, particularly about the mineral component of soil. Yep. So just a reminder, you can enter any questions you have into the Q&A. So we do have one question. How many inches does fresh air go into the soil? Ooh. I would say like in soils, the way soil scientists look at your soil is in what's called horizons. There's layers of your soil. There's an A horizon at the very top, which is mostly made up of like all of the leaf material and the grass and has a lot of carbon. It's the layer that has the most interference with humans. Like we control that layer quite a lot. The B horizon has a mixture of some of like what earthworms bring down into the soil. So the A and B horizon both have a fairly high percentage of oxygen. And the depth of that really depends on how you manage your soil. Compaction is kind of the enemy of healthy soil. And if you compact your soil, you generally are pressing all the air pockets out of it. And that's really hard for plants to grow in. It creates anaerobic or non-oxygen areas. And that type of soil generally floods because not only does air not come into the soil, but water has nowhere to go. So the depth of where oxygen comes into your soil really depends on how you manage it, I would say. In general, I would say probably eight inches, six to eight inches is what normally you find in kind of the urban environments. I would say in the prairies, in the grasslands, where you have deeply rooted grasses, the air pockets that are formed because grass roots kind of burrow deep into the soil and then die back, those can go down feet. And it's quite incredible. So it's really dependent on the type of soil, what grows there, and how it's managed. So I hope that answers that question. So how can I determine the mineral components of my soil? Oh, super. Yes. Okay. I think I have the next slide is going to answer just that. Yes. Okay. So there's two ways to figure out what your soil texture is. And that's actually what we're talking about. The combination of clay and silt and sand is what makes up the texture of your soil. You can do that in a couple of ways. You can take a sample of your soil and send it to a soil lab, and they will assess, you know, through sieving methods, the percentage of clay silt and sand and give you that, give you those numbers back. Now that obviously has a cost to it. And while you're doing that, you probably will want to test for your nitrogen and your phosphorus and your other, you know, fertility, pH probably. So I highly do recommend if you are really enjoying gardening and want to sort of know what's happening in your soil, that you do at least one soil test every few years, just to get an idea of what's happening. Now, obviously, you don't, once your soil, once your texture is analyzed, you don't have to reanalyze that. That doesn't change. However, if you want to just get a quick idea of what kind of soil texture you have, you can take a handful of your soil and you probably want to go down no more than six inches, and you can take samples from around your garden. Or if you know you've got like a really wet patch in the back or a really sandy patch in your front yard, take separate samples and place the water, place the soil in a jar and fill it up, shake it up, and then just allow it to naturally settle. Because what happens is the bigger particles, the sand particles, settle almost immediately. They're big and heavy. The silt layer, as you can see in the slide, can take a couple of hours to finally deposit. The clay layer can actually take a week plus sometimes to settle, but when it does, it will give you like a visual percentage of what you have. So judging by this photo that I just grabbed off of the internet, I am looking at probably a 60% sand and then a 20% silt, or yeah, or and then a 20% clay about-ish, right? You're within five percentage and the clay looks a little bit more like maybe 25. So maybe 25 clay, 15 silt, and then the rest in sand. And that gives you an idea of percentage-wise of the makeup of that. So this is a really easy way you can do that with your kids. It's a really nice visual way of figuring out what you have. Often what you'll also see floating in the top, which will never really settle, is the organic matter, like all the dark stuff. That you don't have to worry about. That's not what's creating your soil texture, like the base soil texture. It's really the mineral component. So I hope that answers that. Any other questions on soil texture and the makeup of all the bits of your soil? Yeah. So the last one here is how do you determine the mineral components in like retail soil bags and how does that impact your plants and soil? You mean you can do the same test in whatever soil you come across. The thing is I generally don't see garden centers selling soil. They generally will sell compost or manure, bagged manure. I still don't understand why people buy soil by the mineral component. I know that happens here in the Comox Valley. People will buy soil primarily to fill their garden beds. If they're building raised beds and they need bulk material, just something cheap to fill a bed, that generally is what's called quote-unquote top soil, but is generally something that's scraped off of a construction site and sold to one of these soil providers. If that's not what you're going for, if you are wanting to maintain fertility in your garden, you will not want to be buying just soil. The soils on the west coast and coastal BC have very little nutrition in amongst themselves. It's very different from the prairies and I think that's probably like I do have a lot of neighbors and people here in my community who've moved here from Alberta and who don't understand why they can't just start gardening without a lot of nutrition added to it and partly it's because prairie soils are not leached out the way that we don't have as much rain in the prairies and they are inherently fertile because they've just had millennia of grass growing. The soils on the west coast are very different and so if you are purchasing some kind of product to increase the fertility in your garden, you will not want to purchase soil. You will want to purchase compost or manure something with fertility. If you're trying to just fill a bed then yes, that's what you're going to want and if that's the case then you can do this type of test just to see what it is you're getting. Generally you don't have a choice but it's nice to know what you're getting so absolutely you can use this type of test or you can send a sample to a soil lab and they can give you the analysis. Is there an ideal proportion for growing vegetables? Yes, yes there is. I love it. My next slide. I anticipated these questions. So when you have your percentages of sand, silt, and clay, what you can do is and this is something you can look up on the internet. It's called a soil texture triangle and it allows you to then classify your soil based on these are already classifications that the soil science community has come up with. So what you can see on each side are on one side it's your percentage of sand on the top left is percentage of clay and then the top right is percentages of silt and for the most part these don't change. On all triangles clay is on the left silt on the right sand on the bottom. But always double check because who knows sometimes I guess I don't know different different folks want to change it up but this is what you know this is how what the makeup of it is and then what you want to do is you know based on either your your shaking experiment or what you get from a soil lab you will then go along one of the sides. So let's let's use my soil. I have a 40 percent silt on my property so if you can see my cursor I would want to start over here where it's silt 40 percent and then I also have 40 percent clay so what you would do is follow the 40 here until it intersects with the 40 clay. So if you can see here 40 over over here so we are over kind of in this section and let's see that hasn't turned out right because I am I am actually alone so 40 percent oh apologies I'm not 40 percent clay I'm only 20 that's why this wasn't working see it so I'm 40 percent clay and 40 percent sand apologies so I am actually alone and loam soils tend to be some of the best soils for growing vegetables they've got a lot of water holding capacity they also hold a lot of nutrients well um however um they can like in my case um where we have a lot of rain in the winter months they can flood so you have to be really careful with that and in the springtime um heavier soils either on the loam side or heading up towards the clay side over here um they take a really long time to warm up in the springtime so we often are one of the last farms to start planting where I have all of my farming friends in comox who have a lot more gravelier sandier soils that are more on this side um they can start planting weeks if not months before me because the water drains really quickly and then their soil warms up in the springtime much better um so there are pluses and minuses to all of the different types of soil textures um as I mentioned before sandy or soils don't hold moisture really well oops sorry let me go back to that um they um they drain really quickly as I mentioned warm up really quickly but you are constantly having to keep watering them so you really need a good watering system if you have a sandy soil they're nice and deep as I mentioned you can grow um carrots really well on a sandy soil but the water is a huge issue on the opposite side if you have a heavier clay type of soil like I did in Richmond where I started farming again it holds moisture really well you almost never have to water it but it's it's a colder soil and you have to be really careful with um kind of disturbing the soil when it's wet if anyone's ever done pottery um with clay I mean this is the same material right pottery clay and soil clay same thing and as you may know like once when you um when you handle a high percentage of clay you know you get that um very shiny sheen on on clay that is actually the clay compacting and and creating that shiny surface it's and in pottery it's amazing that's what you want to see because it hardens really nicely and you can create pottery but you don't want to create pottery in your soil if you are creating pottery when it dries out it creates this impervious layer that both moisture and roots can't break through and so if you have a clay soil yes it holds moisture it holds um fertilizer and fertility extremely well um you know clay soils are one of the few soils that can grow heavy feeders like cabbage and broccoli so so well but you have to be so careful with waiting until they are properly dried out before you can work with them so it requires a lot more patience and understanding of heavy soil so I hope that answered like um yeah it's nice to be in in this area but you know again pluses and minuses I don't I can grow good carrots that are like maybe six inches long but past that like I they don't do well I I do have front farming friends who can grow beautiful eight to twelve inch carrots because their soils are so much more sandier um the thing is you once you have an idea of your soil texture this is not really something you want to change um you kind of want to live with what you have and just understand how to work with it rather than trying to bring in sand ories like I don't even think you can purchase cells but you don't really want like it would be incredibly expensive for you to try and change your soil texture by bringing in a material like sand it's not helpful sand on its own provides no nutrients um if you think that you're going to help with the drainage of your soil by adding sand without the presence of organic matter and we're going to go into this in a little bit more detail later adding sand into soil and mixing it in really only creates concrete you know it doesn't help the situation um so I am not a big proponent of being bringing in minerals to change the texture and the drainage in your soil there are much better ways of doing that um and I see more questions so I hope I'm like oh have I have I have I hit a nerve with folks um yeah so one of the questions is um how does this all relate to potting soils and when you're growing in pots oh good question so the thing is potting mixes have no mineral content they are what we call soil less soil dash less soilless mixtures um there's no actual soil in them um they're primarily here in canada peak based um and then they have perlite and vermiculite added into them and there's a reason for that um one of it is um just the heaviness of soil putting actual ground garden soil into pots if you've ever tried it your pot is incredibly heavy and then the next thing is pots um especially if they're on your balcony or they're somewhere warm when they dry out you know um they do dry out they they have a very limited amount of soil in them that after a certain period of time if you don't keep watering the soil dries out and um peat moss can withstand that wet and dry cycle over and over again um quite a lot soil like garden soil when it dries out especially if it's got any amount of clay in it um you will get a hard hard clump in there and it just does not perform well in containers so this is why the industry has moved primarily to peat base although now we're starting to see a little bit more coconut coir but there's no actual soil in a potting mix okay so should you can you be adding potting soil to your garden beds is there any benefit to that um I I like I like where you're going um because potting soil is basically carbon-based it's peat moss but it's expensive um like I and I buy um bales of of um potting mix for my farm we use about 20 bales of potting mix a year I know one of those bales is about 70 dollars and to put it onto my my soil again really really expensive so there are better ways and and we'll talk about what that is um but your your thought um the way that the direction you're going is is exactly right to improve your soil whether it's sandy or clay or it doesn't hold moisture doesn't hold nutrients the answer really lies in the organic matter and adding that instead of trying to add mineral content yeah okay so I think last question on this topic yeah can you just do another example of how to figure out your soil on the chart absolutely so and sorry I I flubbed it with mine let's go back to like what this one was I think we had I'm calculating 60 sand 15 silt and 25 clay right that equals 100 I'm pretty sure okay so let's do it on the the texture so we had sand at about 60 60 percent okay and then and because this triangle doesn't do like 65 15 let's go with I think we said 20 clay so if you can see my cursor 60 sand here and then where is 20 clay it's over here right so where those two intersect so you really only need two numbers when you're doing this um it will automatically kind of figure out what the third one is so you're between a sandy loam and a sandy clay loam if if you can see where those two intersect um and that's giving you and probably because um the silt content is a little bit higher than the clay content I would say you are probably more in this in this sandy loam area so that's how you kind of figure out the name of what you've got and understand that on this side high sand on this side high clay and on the side high silt so that's your texture over here um if anyone wants to if anyone knows their soil texture and wants us to figure it out right now you can also put it into the chat and we can do another calculation um based on if you've got numbers and I don't mind coming scrolling back to this if if you want to have a a figure out I hope that answered how to do that that um calculation so choose one of the sides so we did the you know that side um for a sandy loam and if it had to just been 40 percent sand like it had been a lot less so let's say 40 percent sand and um let's let's pick a number um 20 percent silt so where's my cursor 40 percent sand and 20 percent silt is over here can you see that so this silt is over here and so you would have been between a clay and a clay loam so I hope that that answers you can play around with it just follow follow the lines the lines generally intersect um you only need you start with one of the numbers and then with the second one you look at where that line intersects and and they all have an intersection so yeah and the third number obviously you don't necessarily have to plug in because just because of math it it automatically assumes that the rest of the percentage to 100 is that that's our number okay are we good to go Kendra I think we are yeah okay so I mean what this exercise is is for you is a it enables you just to understand you know the percentages of what makes up the mineral content of your soil and that's primarily telling you the water holding capacity um and the drainage kind of the physical side of things there are other aspects though to your soil and the big one we kind of alluded to this already is the organic matter and the biology in your soil and this is really where the health of your soil comes and shines through so when we talk about organic matter what makes up that chocolatey brownish color in your soil it can come from plant residues and that's both above ground like leaf matter like leaves dropping from the trees on your property um you know grass that that dies back and comes comes forward and it's also the roots of your plants that if you're growing a lot of flowers and vegetables um any of the root material that's left in the soil and is allowed to decompose that um can also will also add to the organic matter it can come from you purchasing or making your own compost and I do have a few slides at the end talking about how to do this so don't worry we're going to get to how to make compost but adding compost um is another infusion of primarily organic matter into your soil manure is a another great source of both organic matter and nutrients as well manure generally has up to six percent nitrogen if you're just you know generally using um steer or cow manure um usually has a good amount of phosphorus so those two are the major ingredients required in in soil fertility um yeah there those are your macro ingredients nitrogen and phosphorus um mulches so a mulch is any material that's placed on the surface of the soil and it can be that used for primarily two reasons um to prevent evaporation from happening in your soil um and also to um prevent weeds from coming up and kind of creating havoc in your garden so that's generally why a lot of people use mulches um but they if they are organic based and not all of them are we we do have a number of plastic mulches that we use on our farm and lift up at the end of season um they don't obviously provide any organic matter but in our um a mulch like straw or hay or even coffee grounds um that is organic matter that's coming into the soil and helping to build um the amount of carbon in in organic matter so we skipped any questions about um sources of organic matter for your soil I didn't mention like another great mulch as leaves putting keeping the leaves on your garden or if you if you know anything about me I would have been like when I lived in the lower mainland um I was the one who went around in the fall and when people had raked up their leaves nicely and put them in bags I would be grabbing everybody's bags um because the leaves are such a great resource in the garden um as a mulch they don't have any weeds on them they help you know keep moisture in um so they're such a great ingredient to add to your garden I would go to Starbucks all the time and grab their coffee grounds because most guard most coffee um places do uh provide coffee grounds for free for gardeners and I see questions coming up a lot so I'll I'll I'll just pause there and if folks have ideas or questions about types of organic matter or or anything else that we've covered so far yeah um okay so how do you feel about mushroom manure is it really a manure oh so such a good interesting question right um yeah because we think of of chicken manure and horse manure and cow manure we know that it's come from the backside of of one of those animals right mushroom manure does not um it is generally um so in the lower mainland it's generally chicken manure that's been composted first to destroy all of the um current microbes that live in the soil because mushrooms need to have a fairly sterile medium to grow on they need the nutrients but you know you can't have other microorganisms growing along with mushrooms especially the edible ones you only want your edible mushroom to survive so it's a sterilized um generally chicken manure that has now um grown a crop of mushrooms um mushrooms are not a generally like a heavy feeding plant so um mushroom compost will still have nutrients left in it um so there's some pros and cons to it and I I have used um you know quantity of mushroom manure when I farmed in the lower mainland the nice thing about it is because it goes through that sterilization process before mushrooms are grown in it um it's generally weed free like you don't have weeds coming up the way that you can if you use like if you go to a horse farm and just shovel horse manure there are some interesting grasses and things that will come up in your garden because um you know the it hasn't been sterilized the the thing is it does have a you know mushroom manure does have a good amount of nutrients still especially for growing you know just your your regular vegetables um the only thing sometimes I found um certain farms I mean it depends how you're getting it if it's bagged it'll be nice and clean I did have a load of very low cost mushroom manure that had all kinds of garbage in it that I had to take out myself including like latex gloves and all kinds of things so just be careful about where you're sourcing it from I guess is is my comment but yeah it is a it is a nice source of both fertility and organic matter for a home partner okay um a couple people have this question should mulch and leaves be removed in the spring to prevent wood bugs and slugs yeah that's the only thing right those those two are the the big issue in the springtime when we want ours either our seedlings or our seeds to be sprouting so um on certain crops I leave the mulch year round um on garlic or any kind of perennial around any trees um anything that's like a fairly tough kind of plant I leave the mulch there most ornamentals as well except possests because they do get decimated by slugs if you do have like young seedlings that you're transplanting or if you're direct seeding like at this time of the year it's going to be tea time you will probably want to just um you'll rake away or create some space between your seedling and the edge of the mulch just to give your your seeds some time to grow above the line where they can really get attacked by wood bugs and and slugs so yeah I do in the springtime recommend pulling back mulch in order to give those susceptible seedlings some time to outgrow but then you know there comes a time usually in June when you know it starts to get really warm that you want that mulch back in order to help um keep soil moisture in and to keep the weeds from from popping up everywhere so I don't get rid of it entirely I just pull it back either with a rake or you know however you want to do it and provide a space so that like especially for slugs I find that if they have to crawl over anything hot and dry that exposes them to birds and and you that they're less likely to want to to attack your seedlings but you know at a certain time yeah slugs are kind of everywhere and it's often time that you have to go out at night and punch through them um but yeah yeah okay um what about cover crops um well we'll talk about cover crops in a bit but that is another fantastic way of including um organic matter into your soil um for those who don't haven't heard that term before a cover crop is um something that you seed in your garden that you're not really going to harvest much from you're primarily growing it to add carbon and add plant residue um to absorb maybe some of the nutrients that are left over some cover crops like um fall rye um or fall oats are fantastic at doing that so if you have leftover nutrients that you don't want to wash away through the winter months those two crops particularly are great um some of the cover crops are nitrogen fixing like peas or vetch and they can actually add nutrients to the soil um so they are you generally do this in the fall once your your garden is done or there are some cover crops that you can put down in the summer months that are quick and grow really quickly and just are taking up um providing a weed barrier basically um competing with the weeds and then you turn them under when you want to plant again and those crops could be things like buckwheat or fecilia um and that's maybe one that most people haven't heard of fecilia is um is a purple fantastic um looking cover crop crimson clover is also a nice summer cover crop as well so they're generally two two camps for cover crops and they are also really fantastic at adding organic matter into the soil great um our grass cuttings good for mulch absolutely and you know just and don't worry about like grass because most people cut grass before it flowers right so grass grass clippings are fantastic mulch um I use a ton of them all the time in fact last summer when we had that extended drought um where I had what 12 weeks of not no rain uh at my place I had about a foot of grass clippings that had accumulated over time um over the summer months and I only watered rice when once when I when I transplanted my crops into that into that field and then you know a week later one more time and then that was it the rest I mean it was really the grass clippings keeping the moisture in um nothing seeded out of the grass clippings so if you have access to grass clippings um and you know what went into them mildly worry about grabbing other people's grass clippings it's something that I didn't do is that there are still gardeners out there that use um either themselves a weed and feed service or you know pay for that and you know the feed side of things you know usually it's a chemical fertilizer that's that's added but it's really the weed side of it that you have to worry about because that is a herbicide that is often applied at the same time to prevent non-grass um species from germinating and growing and that's mostly what my garden is so just be careful you know if it's your own grass clippings absolutely and you know what went into them but um just be aware not to use grass clippings that have had weed and feed exposed to them okay I'm kind of leads into the next question when you're taking leaves from all your neighbors yes what if the leaves is there a risk of you know disease um eggs of of bugs I don't necessarily want that kind of thing yeah so um the nice thing is that many few people actually spray their their um you know their trees a they're too big and b like there's generally it's just not done so there's very little risk of that um you know last year we saw a lot of um powdery mildew showing up especially on maple trees and the large leaf plants the nice thing about powdery mildew is that it does not survive on um on tissue that's not living so um the fact that it's off off of leaves which are are generally dead it's not going to continue living and the other nice thing about leaf diseases from trees is that they're generally very very specific to that species of plant so a powdery mildew from a maple tree will not create powdery mildew on a pea because we know peas are also susceptible to powdery mildew or to squash and pumpkins it's a totally different species of fungus that infects um the cucumber cucumber bit family squash and and um and pumpkin then the species of fungus that creates powdery mildew in in maple trees so no there's no worry that way um between tree you know um what you're seeing on on tree leaves and your vegetable or flower garden so yeah yeah um is cedar tree litter okay for mulching yeah you know um uh the short answer is yes you can use cedar um tree mulch in in your garden and with any type of woody material the important part is to not bury that material into the soil so um like unlike I guess straw and um say coffee grounds that's that generally is light and kind of sits on the surface of the soil anyways and over time um it does break down uh cedar tree and any you know any tree if you've got shredded tree tree bits that have been that you've been shredding on your property or have been gifted to you um that material should stay on the surface of the soil um so because if it does get buried into the soil it will start to compost and it will draw nutrients from the soil into the composting process because it's just so high in carbon um so that's the only thing you have to be um just a little bit careful of is not doing any kind of rototilling or any kind of burying of woody debris into your soil now as the wood breaks down it will attract a lot of wood bugs so in general I see most gardeners put like cedar or fur um types of sawdust down in their pathways um rather than on the beds themselves just because of that wood bug issue um you know when a lot of seedlings are young like um tomato pepper uh sadly wood bugs love chewing on them so once they're older wood bugs tend to not really um go after them but young plants are pretty susceptible to wood bugs so that's just the one thing to worry about and interestingly you know most people know cedar as um a tree that really doesn't that is long lasting that doesn't rot um and they think that it's not safe to use in your garden but you know talking to some of the other gardening experts and farming experts in this area that have tried um they've successfully grown like even squash in a mulch of cedar um and and it's doable and they didn't see any any type of negative impact of of you know you think of cedar as being a really oily tree but uh it didn't seem to impact so if that's what you've got then yeah use it okay um our vegetable peels and other you know fruit peels a good mulch yeah I mean there's nothing physically wrong with using peels um or any type of woody debris on the top of your soil um the only thing is that it can be a bit of an attractant to um raccoons other rodents that kind of thing which is why generally they're composted first before they're put it out into the garden so that they're transformed it is something that looks more like what's in this photo than the actual peel itself but I mean if that's not a worry for you then you can absolutely just put those things right into the garden in fact orange peels are have been known to deter cats so if you have a neighbor cat that likes to dig in your garden orange peels are supposedly like that oil the orange oil is something the cats don't really like so yeah interesting I know in west Vancouver um and probably where you are too you know bears are a big concern so yeah putting out your peels and any food uncomposed it's it's yeah really encourages those bears to come to your property just be aware yeah um should you be putting tomato plants in with your compost oh good question so I love all these questions the the worry with tomato plants if you've only um had something like powdery mildew that we mentioned before that doesn't survive on um dead debris you're fine if however you have had any symptoms of late blight which is a very common disease on tomatoes it um that's what caused like it it moves between tomatoes and potatoes that's what caused um the irish potato famine it will live on dead tissue and so it's not something that should be composted at home you should send that out with your municipal compost instead so just be aware that of what diseases have shown up um on your plants like I would say last year when we had that extremely warm and dry fall the occurrence of of late blight would have probably been incredibly minimal and you would have been safe to put your tomatoes into your compost but if we do get a wet fall um where late blight shows up it's probably best to you know send that out to municipal compost and that segues right into the next question is that municipal compost a good source for your garden absolutely yeah I mean um mostly it's you know vegetable compost and um woody debris uh like you know trimmings that either services or or home gardeners have sent to to be composted so it's again um most uh municipal composting systems do what's called a hot compost and we'll talk about what that is which generally kills off any weed seeds or any of your like I I do a cold composting system and I generally get like volunteer tomatoes and melons and squash all kinds of things popping up in my own home compost you generally don't get that in the municipal compost so it's nice the only negative I would say and this happens in my own garden compost is sometimes those vegetable stickers show up right and you just you just have to pick those out but it happens in my own compost because we often miss some of those labels on our orange peels and and the outside of the banana peels so sometimes that that can show up but I haven't seen any kind of negative coming out of the compost and just if you are going to purchase compost um make sure that it is the vegetable and kitchen scrap compost not the biosolid compost because some some regions do sell you know that that type of compost which is um what's come out of the sewage treatment system so it's human sewage which has been hot composted there's no you know microbes or anything like that but I I'm generally not um recommending people put that on their food growing areas it's okay for ornamental areas but I yeah not not on your food growing areas but kitchen compost and you know there are two different streams that is perfectly safe to put in your garden great um I think we're good on this topic for now okay great thanks great questions everyone so thank you for for bringing those up okay so why we're gonna now talk about air pockets because you know if you go back to that slide where we had all the components of your soil we had the mineral component the organic matter and biology and then we had air right and I just want to stress how important air is in your soil so one of the main reasons you want air is that soil at plant roots need air around them they actually do um respire they need to be able to take up oxygen and so those air pockets are really important for that reason the other reason is that air having air pockets means that your soil has drained and the roots are not sitting in water so when your plant roots do sit in water that's where you can often have the occurrence of diseases happening um your the roots just aren't able to survive um they're in an anaerobic environment they often die off and so those air pockets are incredibly important um for the plants to survive so you can have a soil that's more like a brick that has very little air pockets in it um it has what's called a high bulk density and that may be a terminology that if you ever get your soil tested it might come up high bulk density is not a good thing what you want is more of a sponge type of soil something that does have lots of air pockets for your plant roots to grow and for oxygen um to be able to not just support your plants but also the biology of your soil you know a lot of the beneficial bacteria and and fungi do need that oxygen too so you know you want to have a high pore space um just so that roots can penetrate water can drain those are the two main reasons why why air pockets are so important so when you look at soil structure having a lot of air pockets like having big particles that drain that have a lot of air pockets around them allow plants to really fill that space with their roots and grow when those air pockets are minimized um either from the texture of the soil itself like what we talked about having a high amount of clay um where the particles are teeny teeny and there's not a lot of air around them or because um the soil has been worked wet um for a number of years can cause on the right side of this slide can cause crust to form at different layers which makes it really hard for roots to penetrate and it also makes it really difficult for water to make its way deep into the soil so what you want to see more is what's here left a nice airy friable soil now the thing is um what most gardeners do to try and create this like airy soil is to rototill you know their their garden to kind of what they think is break up the soil and infuse a lot of oxygen in them in the soil what tends to happen though is that most rototillers are working at like a 12 inch depth you know and they're constantly you're going 12 inch 12 inch 12 inch at the level where the blade of the rototiller hits the soil you start to actually create a crusted layer and you can actually cause what's called a hard pan pan a hard pan by working your soil especially when it's too wet at a consistent level all the time um so you think that you're creating a nice fluffy high um porosity soil but it's only doing so at one level and creating a crust lower down so this is one of the reasons why um we're starting to recommend more of a what's called a no till gardening system where um you you only till when you absolutely need to with a rototiller and try and do a lot more work using a fork just to break up the soil and to aerate it rather than flipping and constantly flipping the soil um when you don't flip the soil um a lot what ends up happening is that the biology helps to create those air pockets for you and the primary source of that work is earthworms um earthworms hate it when you rototill your soil first of all they themselves get rototill to shreds and so you destroy a lot of earthworms in the layers that you you rototill and the disturbance is really hard on them so by by doing less of that type of disturbance you're giving um the the um soil biology a chance to create those air pockets and those furrows more naturally so you know I'm I'm sort of revealing a little bit about myself I'm a pretty lazy gardener and farmer if I don't have to do a lot of heavy duty work I I don't want to so wherever possible I try and do a no till system of just only lightly forking if I have to um but not disturbing the soil I think the only time that we really have to do is soil disturbance if is the initial year like if we are converting um a field that is in hay or grass into a vegetable field that first year we may rototill especially if we haven't had time to come in and put down sheet mulch material but that's kind of the only time that we bring out the tractor to do a big rototill so that the rest of the time we're we're using other techniques so that we maintain this good soil structure I'm going to pause there because I know I've kind of probably um looked at some folks or like caused a bit of like oh so um questions yeah so what do you do when your soil is compacted and how do you improve those air pockets so um there's a couple of ways that you can improve um again I'm going to come back to organic matter not only is it fantastic for that sandy soil and absorbing um good amounts of moisture in a heavier soil like a clay soil or like a loam soil where I am adding layers of organic matter to the top of the soil um is a great way of just increasing the porosity so things like grass clippings and straw and and coffee grounds and compost they eventually do get incorporated into the soil has anyone ever seen when earthworms come up and and create castings on the surface of the soil it's happening right about now at this time of the year I have yeah yeah so basically what they're doing is they're pulling a lot of the organic matter that naturally falls to the surface of the soil and they're bringing it down and they're consuming it and then they're pooping it up at the top so they're creating all of these kinds of tunnels in the soil by mixing the stuff that's on the top they're bringing it down eating it coming back pooping grabbing more material and so they're doing a natural type of rotatilling and the more organic matter and organic material you have the more type of of microbes that will do this work for you so that's one is increase the amount of organic matter that you have in your soil the second one is to try and protect your soil over the winter months so that it doesn't compact and you don't have to bring out the rotatiller and so the mulch is another another reason why you want to mulch is that it it absorbs those heavy heavy rain drops instead of the rain falling directly onto your soil and compacting it and that happens like on the west coast it's incredible the amount of force that rain has on the surface of the soil and it just over the months you know over time it just creates its constant bashing of your soil putting a layer of mulch absorbs that high impact and allows the water to just slowly then trickle into the soil so it helps maintain those air pockets as well and then you know come spring time if you do feel that you're like especially if you're planting something like carrots or any kind of vegetable that needs a really fine sort of structure to the soil instead of putting a rotatiller in a garden fork or a broad fork putting it into the soil wiggling it but not flipping as much as you can try not to disturb the soil and you can obviously the first inch or so if you've got weeds growing that you can hoe off or weed off but try not to flip this this this area as much as possible so those would be you know a few techniques to use so do all these same rules apply in raised garden beds and you know contained garden planters you know yeah I mean over time like a raised garden bed than the first few years you'll notice notice it's a very fluffy environment in fact you probably need to water a lot a lot because you know if as you've put in material you've added a lot of oxygen over time though I find that the material in garden beds and in larger pots settles and you do want to work that like you want to lessen the amount that you're standing in the bed or rotatilling into the bed better to just add layers of of organic material on the top rather than try and get in there and do rotatilling so yeah it's a little bit different it all depends on what material went into your your raised bed but I would say over time those beds also do start to compact and so trying at you know not to walk on on them as we try not to walk on most of our garden beds and maintain that that porosity so yeah it's still important even in raised beds okay so when your garden borders a forest in this case a cedar forest which we have a few around here yeah um and you're going to pull up tree roots should that be tilled what any atrix that's that's hard one because it's amazing the amount of nutrients and moisture that cedar roots will pull out of your garden and I've had with us struggle and fight with those cedar roots and I can tell you I mean it's not sad it's a great thing that our cedar trees are survival win um amazing root system that will out compete your poor vegetables anytime so if that is the the issue in your garden you may want to consider a raised bed but and I don't normally recommend having a raised bed with a bottom on it but in this situation to prevent those cedar roots from coming up into your garden boxes and they will um having some kind of either plastic bottom um or some kind of solid bottom and then that requires you to have quite a high raised bed like six inches of soil is not enough to grow most vegetables maybe some salad greens but that's about it like you will want to have at least eight inches 12 and if you can two feet um you know but that's just the the one struggle if that's the only garden can go on the edge of the forest where the tree roots are coming from yeah just create a bed and then have cedar roots make their way in you just it's not a winning game there so that's half beginners um with us with salad ones it's probably the way to go so similarly if you're bordering um black walnut trees should that not be in your garden yeah the one is the one trees that lay that you don't want to give um black walnut gives off a substance called dug lone that is a natural plant inhibitor so you want to not be in the tree like the drip line of the tree like where the the leaves naturally fall because both the leaves and the roots exude juggy lone so if you are going to out to collect plant leaves don't collect um black walnut that's another um no so be a far enough away that you don't have that impact happening on your plant so yeah great um and if you want to add worms to help aerate your soil yeah where can you get them and is there a best time of year to add them well i think you would probably want to well take the ways you can get eight best ways to start creating your compost because worms naturally just appear and and then as you put that compost into your not only exactly on your nutrients but you're adding the worms too if that's not fewer if it's going to do a bit of time um if you know it's farms first manure is one of the few minuers that are up here like the park carbonation ratio 25 to one that compost incredibly quickly and it's kind of up here um and especially the regular worms so those worms love that warm composty um environment you'll find a lot of worms that way um now that there's pros and cons so those types of worms um love like the top layer of soil where it's nice and warm it's really the earthworms that are the ones a little bit slower but the colder colder soil um that is generally found in your garden so trying to encourage those types of worms basically you build it and they will come so if there's no enough food for them in the soil so a lot of organic matter a lot of nutrients they will just magically appear earthworms multiply incredibly quickly so yeah having the right having a good amount of organic matter and then not compounding your soil reducing the amount of um disturbance um your your soils will naturally start to have worms appear um so I wouldn't buy them because it's probably the best way to say that because either you can get them for free you know out of course manure or through your compost or if you just create the right environment for them they will come right okay I think that's it on this topic okay great I'm glad to see so many questions thanks everybody so I hope you know I kind of recommended um some of the good ways of moving forward um to manage your soil so that you're not compacting it especially if you've got a really heavy clay soil which is the most susceptible to contracting um using less disturbance increasing your the organic matter in your soil another really great way of technique of increasing the amount of air pockets and organic matters when you are finished for the gardening season instead of pulling out the plants roots and all if you can slice your plants here um compost the top but leave the roots in the soil over the winter as they dissolve all of these roots once they um you know compost have these root channels will still be here and these are fantastic little pathways for worms to move in so that's another nice technique of how to increase the soil um structure and and really benefit the soil so rather than pulling out your roots leave them there and they will slowly decompose over the winter so you know we've talked about trying to build um healthy soil so just some some of the of the ways we've already discussed so lots of organic matter that's probably the key way of building healthy soil not working the soil when it's wet um especially if you've got a heavy clay soil or you know even a loam soil with a lot of silt you have to be really careful not to work it so that you prevent um the compaction layer the hard pan layer or just like you know the formation of pottery in your inner soil um and you do that and just reducing tillage overall really helps to build a better more porous soil because naturally the soil microbes will form proper channels and and ability for for air and moisture to move through the soil if you can through the winter months try not to leave your soil bare we talked about cover cropping planting something specifically um to to grow through the winter months we talked about mulching putting down either a plastic or um a plant-based material so that you know a tarp if you can't didn't get time to to cover crop that's something that you can put onto your soil again just to absorb the shock and the impact of the raindrops through the winter months but living so living roots year-round um especially in the winter months are really the best option so if you can either cover crop or and who doesn't want this grow vegetables through the winter and you know we live in an environment um sort of southwestern bc that you can grow um vegetables through the winter months and there's lots of great information on what those vegetables do and the timing west coast seeds is a great resource their catalog has the planting calendar so highly recommend that and as i mentioned mulching to maintain cool soil and protect it so we've talked about um cover cropping you know growing that sacrificial plant um to increase the organic matter reduce weeds um mulching here's that example of putting down some kind of material over the soil um just to protect it from the heat of the sun from the impact of the the raindrops and then here's the you know the type of forking that you can do if you want if you feel that your soil is too compacted and needs a bit of air this is the tool that i would recommend rather than a rototiller i will just pause now okay um our moss is good as a cover crop ooh good question i don't see why not i mean if the moss is just growing in your garden yeah let it grow um it's not doing anything negative the thing is moss does indicate a very low pH in your soil so if you do have a lot of moss um it's it usually means that your soil is quite acidic um that is probably shady and may require um some more drainage so generally mosses don't grow in very well draining soil like you almost never see moss on a sandy soil but on a heavy on a clay or soil or where water sits for a while moss can grow but i mean moss is great as a alternative lawn so if that's what you have like yay celebrate i mean it's lovely under your feet you don't have to mow it there's lots of benefits to that so i'm not one that says you know to get rid of the moss just so that you can grow grass just so that you can keep mowing it so yay if that's what moss is if moss is growing and if you don't mind it let it grow um but it is generally an indicator of um yeah soil acidity uh low light levels um yeah so if that's if that's something that worries you like you can you can adjust the app but just know that it often is an indicator of something else okay and what do you do with your cover crops at the end of the season yeah that's that's another good question so um often gardeners will till under the and i know this just goes against everything i just said said to you right like to disturb your soil so um with fall rye that is one of the issues how to stop the crop from growing so you can grow whatever else that you want um which is one of the reasons like we generally only grow fall rye if we are wanting to harvest the grain that's the following year because it is very difficult to to kill it so what we do is we plant cover crops that we know will either die out with frost and create a mat of leafy material so for us um winter peas or what are called um austrian austrian peas um those generally will die out by about december because we get minus 17 where we are but in the meantime like from august september when we seed that cover crop um the plant is absorbing nitrogen and adding it to the soil um and even that we know when the cover crop dies and you know the vines cover the soil that's a mulch so that's that's fantastic the other cover crops like buckwheat um we instead of rhodotilling it we allow it to start flowering but before the the seeds set we go in and we just weed whack it down cut it off let all of that leaf litter fall down to the to the surface of the soil and that's pretty much the buckwheat done um so you know mowing it rather than rhodotilling it um that's what we go after and that would work with um for example um the crimson clover because once it starts to flower it is now in it's not in vegetative mode anymore it won't regrow um same with the facelia um similar method if you did um want to stick with like a fallow rye or um a winter like a oats um just know that um you can you can mow it um fallow rye is a little bit tougher you may need to mow it a few times um or you know pulling it up sadly that's one of the the only ways to to really terminate fall rye it's it's a tough one to grow so know that you know that is part of the the the the catch 22 um growing that cover crop but then trying to incorporate it or um providing that space for you to be able to grow whatever else you wanted to grow there um those are the choices that you have to make when you're deciding what cover crop to grow okay and what about soil chemistry should you be doing something about your low or high ph soil yeah yeah so um great questions most it really depends on um what you're trying to grow if you are a vegetable gardener most vegetables prefer to be in the ph range of about 5.5 to 6.5 so slightly acidic um but not overly so um our soils here net naturally have a ph of 5.2 so we do have to add uh lime every year the ideal time to lime is actually in the fall because um your regular calcium carbonate just the chalk kind of lime even the fine stuff takes months to change ph and if it's um fall or winter applied by spring the ph will have been adjusted adding lime now it it will eventually change the ph but not for the young young seedlings but sadly spring is when lime is available right i see the bags of lime now out in in front of many stores so grab it when you can and apply it whenever it's available if you can stockpile some lime for the fall um apply it then uh the only vegetable that doesn't appreciate having lime put down is potatoes um because there is a scab disease that can impact potatoes that um doesn't like it when the ph is too low so scab um to prevent scab you keep your soil acidic um so you generally don't plant your potatoes in soil that you've just lined it's okay if it was lined a few years ago by now that calcium will be gone but yeah the the ph is important for nutrient availability and to prevent certain diseases um so adjusting it according to what you're going to grow is important yeah um on the flower side it's not quite as important on the ornamental side certain plants like the azalea rotos prefer more acidic ph so adding some sulfur if your ph is on the high side is maybe something that you might want to consider depending on where you are so that's that's the importance of having your soil tested and knowing what ph you have that's probably one of the biggest reasons I recommend doing at least a soil test once every few years it's the ph yeah okay um there's no more cover crop specific questions okay right and I see we only have a few minutes left so let's skedaddle so um this we're coming to the end anyways I just wanted to talk about composting because um we've already mentioned a great way of introducing organic matter of also invigorating the biology of soil um so if you if you're not sure if you haven't had like good success um often it's just the biology in your soil is is out of whack um think of your soil biology similar to what your gut biology is like there it is actually also called um a microbiome so by making compost um you are kind of creating like it's almost like making sauerkraut or probiotics for your soil so apart from just putting in nutrients and recycling all the stuff that comes out of your garden it really is a great invigorator for for the biology of your soil the nice thing about making your own compost is that you know exactly what ingredients went into it so that's another huge benefit um basically creating compost requires you to look at carbon and nitrogen layers in your soil most people think of like the kitchen waste like what's in the photo as compost but actually the most important thing is to figure out what carbon are you going to put into your compost the carbon is that dry brownie material that will create the air pockets that are important for making an aerobic compost were probably sadly as we all see if you keep uh buckets of edgy scraps around too long in your kitchen you know they can get mushy and liquidy and create this not so nice smell that is an actually an indicator that you've created an anaerobic environment just that liquid forming at the bottom of your bucket um so having the brown ingredients helps to first of all absorb all the moisture but it creates those air pockets so that you can have a proper aerobic composting system so I've listed some just very basic um brown ingredients that you know most of us may have access to um leaves are probably going to be one of your biggest things and stock filing leaves in an urban environment highly recommend um but don't overlook you know paper especially newspaper um and straw if you can find it and you know what cardboard that that's another ingredient oops sorry and in your greens um yeah your your food scraps from your kitchen manure grass clippings off apple pellets um those are some of the things that you can add that have a little bit more nitrogen in them and are they're actually there to help you break down the brown ingredients so um think of compost as you know these this is your these are like if you ever have made a fire you know these are your large pieces of wood and the greens are like your fire starter this is what really quickens and speeds up the composting process is having these things but you want to make sure you have enough brown because you want to have a nice long strong fire not something that's just green and you know um birds up really quickly um and if you have only greens in a compost pile you will often have anaerobic pockets so yeah it's just not nice to have um the smells that come up from just having greens um so often what we'll want to do is create layer so this is a typical composter that you can find in most urban environments I would say the important part is the base putting a base layer of like of sticks and twigs and high carbon that will eventually absorb all of the liquids that kind of drip out from the green layers so bottom having high carbon and then and maybe shredded um paper leaves leaves all of that thing at the bottom and then you make lasagna layers you know a green layer a brown layer a green layer in between if you have soil or finished compost from another pile you could put a thin layer in between just to inoculate um and get the process started once you have layers like this you then have a choice depends on how strong your back is you can either do hot composting which requires a lot of turning of your composting of your compost layers mixing the layers up adding lots of oxygen um there's some benefits you know when your compost pile really heats up kills a lot of the weed seeds kills a lot of the tomato and and um pumpkin seeds will kill any pathogens it's fast the thing is it it does create or does require a lot of physical energy like turning compost pile I have to say is one of my least favorite jobs you can get um compost diggers that you just plunge into the compost pile and and it and as you pull out it moves material from the bottom up but that won't allow you to do a hot compost to do a hot compost you actually have to do a lot of flipping of material um from one bay to another or from one bin to another so it's fast you get some great compost within like a month um but it's turning every three or four days whereas cold composting which is kind of like yeah I do that mostly creating the layers and then letting it sit um allowing the earthworms to do a lot of the work and then eventually the bottom layers are done it requires you to take off the top layers to get to the bottom but yeah you end up with compost which will have you know seeds of pumpkins and tomatoes and all kinds of things come up in but um yeah if you don't mind that it's it's a much easier way of doing it so really depends on um your ability to turn and your your time availability as well um yeah pros and cons to both and and both are great I think composting is just something everybody should be doing um even when I lived in an urban environment I never gave my veggie scraps to the municipality this that was gold man