What's going on everyone?

What's going on everyone? Welcome back to the Epic Gardening Podcast. We are kicking off another

topic on soil and that's going to be the focus of the next two episodes because I have

Paul from Alyke Gardens on the show. So Paul owns Alyke Gardens. It's a local San Diego

So, so, Paul owns Alyke Gardens. It's a local San Diego Soil Company and the focus really is on creating really high quality soil mixes to support a regenerative

No-Till style approach to farming and gardening and so you guys know that's up my alley and And Paul, I thought what we could talk about today.

We talked yesterday about my experience growing in the Freya's mix

that you guys produce and the results that resulted from that.

And what I thought would be really cool is to now go back to the beginning

and talk about how you guys thought through the creation of the mix.

How did you, what was the logic behind why things are in it why things are not in it and

maybe we could just talk about it from the ground up great yeah thanks Kevin

let's see so let's talk about soil formulation. With the raised bed gardens, it's very important to, and

no-till should provide adequate organic matter, good aeration, excellent drainage, good drainage to allow for the

percolation of water to prevent dry spots. And so what we did was we took the approach to first put an excellent compost in the soil and then figure out,

okay, exactly how much needs to be in there for healthy growth and to support quite a few different crops.

Crops that have higher nitrogen requirements or broad leafy veggies, row crops all the way to herbaceous plants and cannabis.

And so we wanted to have a make a soil that can support quite a few of those and so starting with the

compost the compost that we use has excellent poor space and that means that you've got micro and macro aggregates that hold the soil together and what that allows us for for aeration.

Now, aeration is so important in soil because the biology that make

minerals plant available are aerobic so they require they require oxygen now to to supplement that and achieve good drainage

we use pumice stone and perlite to you know to allow the water to percolate through and drain properly.

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