1
Tropical Vegetables and Other Edibles / Re: Your secret soil ingredients
« on: March 19, 2018, 04:56:41 PM »
I also live in South Florida and our "soil" is horrible. The best think you can do is add everything you can to the soil to build it up. Being straight sand, it needs anything you can give it to hold moisture. Mulch is essential in South Florida in order to build as healthy a soil as you can get here. Any grass clippings (as long as you don't use all kinds of chemicals on your lawn), cardboard, leaves, etc. I like to layer. When I was making my beds I did not find one worm. Now I just move the woodchips and there are worms all over. You said you planted banana trees? That's great. Once a tree produces it dies and more come up to take its place. Chop up the old banana trees and add them to your garden. Banana trees hold a ton of water and are great to add to your soil. Also planting pigeon peas near your garden helps a lot. It's an excellent nitrogen producer and makes a great living trellis for climbing plants. Not to mention the peas. My kids love to eat them fresh in the garden.