Victory Garden Nursery

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With healthy compost and Worm Castings. you can dramatically improve your soil's health and your garden's productivity.

WORM CASTINGS are different from compost. The best worm castings are black and very fine with no foreign material. We use Agrowinn products and have found it to be the best - by far!

WHAT IS COMPOST?

Compost is basically old plant material that has been broken down by micro organisms. Compost is best when it has aged. The best compost is a deep brownish color with an earthy smell. Screened compost is good for planting veggies but some texture is important for the soil in general. Ideally, your soil should have a combination of large and small pore spaces or “texture”. Organic matter is the key because it encourages the formation of aggregate, or “crumbs", or soil. Organic matter also absorbs water and retains it until it is needed by plant roots.

While some gardeners and landscapers may be blessed with great soil, most of us garden in soil that is less than perfect. If your soil has too much clay, is too sandy, too acid or alkaline, don't despair. Turning a poor soil into a plant-friendly soil is not difficult to do, once you understand the components of a healthy soil.

Soil is composed of weathered rock and organic matter, water and air. But the hidden "magic" in a healthy soil is the organisms—small animals, worms, insects and microbes—that flourish when the other soil elements are in balance.

Soil life. Soil organisms include the bacteria and fungi, protozoa and nematodes, mites, springtails, earthworms and other tiny creatures found in healthy soil. These organisms are essential for plant growth. They help convert organic matter and soil minerals into the vitamins, hormones, disease-suppressing compounds and nutrients that plants need to grow.

Their excretions also help to bind soil particles into the small aggregates that make a soil loose and crumbly. As a gardener, your job is to create the ideal conditions for these soil organisms to do their work. This means providing them with an abundant source of food (the carbohydrates in organic matter), oxygen (present in a well-aerated soil), and water (an adequate but not excessive amount).

Air... A healthy soil is about 25 percent air and oxygen. Insects microbes, earthworms and soil life require this much air to live. The air in soil is also an important source of the atmospheric nitrogen that is utilized by plants.

Well-aerated soil has plenty of pore space between the soil particles or crumbs. Fine soil particles (clay or silt) have tiny spaces between them - in some cases too small for air to penetrate. Soil composed of large particles, like sand, has large pore spaces and contains plenty of air. But, too much air can cause organic matter to decompose too quickly and water drain away.

To ensure that there is a balanced supply of air in your soil, add plenty of organic matter, avoid stepping in the growing beds or compacting the soil with heavy equipment and never work the soil when it is too wet.

We can you show the best compost methods and uses for your garden. Our garden here in Encinitas does very well with our compost and organic methods.

Composting in North county San Diego Encinitas and Carlsbad is just starting to catch on.

CHICKEN FEED

We have several chickens on our little nursery farm property here in Encinitas. Their diet is diverse with 3 types of feed. We feed them the best Organic chicken feed we can get, but try to keep it local.

Spent grain is a great local resource we offer to our neighbors for their chickens.

We encourage you to come by, dump your compost, and pick up some spent grain for your chickens!

We also give our chickens food waste like Fruits and veggies from local grocery stores. The excess ends up in our compost bin and compost piles.

Our chickens help keep the grub population down as we let them forage all through the property. Our garden however is fenced off because chickens love to tear up the soil when looking for bugs and grubs.