Welcome to Feed 505! To get this blog fired up I wanted to share a personal project of my own from last spring that I undertook to enhance my family's ability to grow more food in our backyard this upcoming season! This type of post is just one example of many that are welcome here on this site! I hope you enjoy and feel free to share!
My final project for my Sustainability in Film class at UNM was focused on remediating the sand in our backyard in Albuquerque and transitioning it to arable soil. I have been remediating this area over the last two years of living at this house with the intention of being able to grow food in our backyard. After starting our no dig beds in the center of the plot, I spent many hours learning about different remediation methods historically used in Albuquerque. I spoke with local farmers, local composting organizations, nurseries, land remediation companies, and my own professors of Sustainability Studies at UNM. I tested different methods around the beds in small plots by combining various soil add ins with different cover crops. Based off my experiences preparing the other spaces around the garden beds and the knowledge gained from my community, I combined it all to complete this last section.
There's a variety of ways to effectively remediate land. The methods I chose are intended to inject a high quantity of rich organic matter into the earth fast. It is not necessary to use bagged products for a remediation project. Due to being unable to remove the sand from the plot, I determined that using a combination of commercially produced products (mulch, compost, and potting soil) would most effectively jumpstart the nitrogen cycle in the dirt and begin the healthy growth of new bacterial and fungal colonies resulting in the creation of soil.
Here are the photos documenting my process:
1. The sandy dirt between the garden beds and cinderblock walls is the space I remediated for this project.
2. To enhance the biodiversity early on, I used a combination of cypress mulch, two kinds of finished compost, and organic potting soil.
3. I also added processed chicken poop from our own birds.
4. I then began the arduous task of tilling the sand by hand to about 12 inches down across the entire plot. This was intended to remove as much waste and micro plastics (as I like to call them Anthropocene tumbleweeds) as possible before I added the good stuff.
5. Once I was satisfied with the amount of waste I had removed and had broken up the hardest pieces of earth, I began to mix in the chicken poop, composts, and mulch. Like baking, adding things in small quantities and thoroughly mixing is an effective means to achieving a good mix while avoiding clumps of material. Adding chicken poop, compost, and mulch will change the consistency of the dirt and inject organic matter that can begin to break down. The acidity from the compost will mix with Albuquerque’s alkaline earth helping to breakdown silty clay-based chunks. The mulch will reduce the compaction rate of the freshly tilled earth increasing its ability to retain water and enhancing the growth of new life.
6. As you can see now, the color of the dirt is starting to change, getting darker and just looking happier.
7. After mixing the chicken poop, composts, and mulch into the deepest parts I tilled, I added the potting soil and mixed again. This organic potting soil has a small amount of fertilizer that will help enhance the nutritional composition of the dirt in the beginning stages of this project. There will be no more inorganic inputs added.
8. After the potting soil was mixed, I spread two kinds of barley over the plot. An heirloom barley whose seeds came from a farm in town, and a common barley purchased from the company Botanical Interests (this is not an endorsement). The goal of which being to see which barley will be more successful here in combination with my techniques.
9. I then sprinkled a thin layer of mulch over the barley seeds and watered everything in the evening. Barley is known to pull nitrogen out of soil and be relatively drought tolerant. My goal is to grow a successful crop to maturity that will pull most of the nitrogen out the fertilizer from the potting soil I added. I will then slash and till the barley back into the earth at the end of the growing season. This will allow the barley to break down into the, now what can be called soil, and return any nutrients it pulled out back into the earth. The plot will need to be tilled at the beginning of the next two growing seasons allowing any new plant growth, either unintentional or not, to be tucked into the soil and add to its composition. Ideally, three growing seasons from now, this plot will no longer need to be tilled and will be able to have different plants thoughtfully cycled through it on a seasonal basis.
10. I hope that after we leave this house, those that follow will recognize the effort put into healing this land and feel motivated and empowered to continue the legacy. A new goal of mine is to plant a garden everywhere I call home so that I might live in peace knowing that by healing the land, I’m also healing myself.
Thanks for reading, welcome to the blog :)
Bro could you do this in my yard??