Permaculture - our compost and fertilizers
Our soil is black & beautiful, full of air and life, and we feed it with compost and natural fertilizer to keep it like that.
Compost
We don't have much kitchen waste for the compost heap because the dogs, cats, rabbits and chickens eat most of it. But the things that do make it to the compost heap, ferment first in our fermenting compost box. When the bacteria have done their job, we can fill around 4 wine bottles with liquid compost!
The liquid compost we use with water 1:10 when we water specific plants in the garden.
Our chickens have straw in their chicken coup and when we clean it, we bring the straw & chicken shit to the "long term compost box".
Our rabbits live on sawdust (from our sawing machine) and straw (from the neighbours). When we clean their housing, we can put the dirty sawdust, straw and rabbit shit directly in the garden as rich mulch.
Fertilizer
Besides the liquid compost that comes from the fermenting compost boxes, we like to make "soups" for the garden.
The base of the soup is nettles, with which we add other herbs when we need them (onion, garlic, mint, dill...).
When we have leaf eating bugs on our kale or collards, we add garlic and red hot chilli pepper to the fertilizer.
We use our wood ash (from beach wood, acacia, oak, sweet chestnut, plum and cherry) on the compost heap or directly in the garden (but only in winter).
Wood ash is a natural source of potassium and trace elements and it has a liming effect. Our soil is quite acidic so wood ash is a good help.
Kaolin clay
In early spring we apply a thin layer of the white clay (kaolin) from (deep in) our soil on the fruit tree trunks, to reflect the early sunlight and make the trees bloom a bit later (when there's less chance on night frost). The kaolin is also a repellent for bugs.
