What do you add to the soil when the instructions say "add organic matter"?

1. 81

   Patsybellposted 7 years ago

   What do you add to the soil when the instructions say "add organic matter"?
   
   Add organic matter can mean kitchen scraps, cotton meal, grass clippings, hay or horse manure. What do you use to add organic matter?

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2. 70

   LoisRyan13903posted 7 years ago

   My husband is the main gardener-vegetable garden.  He has several composts and uses kitchen scraps such as spoiled, vegetables and fruit, peelings and coffee grounds.  He also uses grass clippings, leaves.  Once in a while we may get hay from a friend and we sometimes use horse manure-but that is once in a blue moon.

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3. 86

   Jackie Lynnleyposted 7 years ago

   Coffee grounds and eggs shells along with vegetable scraps are my main organic matter. Especially the coffee grounds do I add to help keep bugs away in addition to nutrition.
   I have some going now for next spring. Can never get too much, can we?

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4. 82

   snakeslaneposted 7 years ago

   I use seaweed, gathered from the beach after a storm. I also use bone meal, and sometimes steer or mushroom manure

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5. 82

   Melissa A Smithposted 7 years ago

   Used animal bedding, hay and Chacoan mara poop.

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6. 84

   annartposted 7 years ago

   I use compost from the garden (grass & cuttings etc.) or peat compost from the local area (Somerset Levels).  Apparently used ground coffee can be beneficial too, even just to put round the base of a plant.

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7. 98

   Glenis Rixposted 7 years ago

   Luckily there are stables nearby, so I sometimes persuade my son to collect well-rotted horse manure. Other times I buy sacks of multi-purpose compost from the garden centre.

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8. 0

   RTalloniposted 7 years ago

   Coffee grounds and rabbit droppings combine to make beneficial additions to soil in need of additional organic matter.

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9. 76

   Diana Leeposted 7 years ago

   Living in a rural area where farmland and forest are abundant I can tell you a mix of barnyard dirt and some from the forest floor make any plant thrive, it was my late grandmother's secret to a green thumb.

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