Making soil for growing fruit & veg

[HorseyMel]

I don't have much soil in the garden, but I need to make a load to fill dustbins - in which I'm going to plant fruit trees and squashes.

I have a load of fresh horse manure and, come autumn, I will have lots of lots of leaves.

Can I layer these two ingredients up in bins/rubble bags and rot it down? Will that create a growing medium in its own right (which is what I'm aiming for) - or does it just create a mulch for spreading on soil?

If the latter, what do I need to do to make a growing medium?

Many thanks

I would add some brown cardboard, egg boxes etc to it. As welnl as grass cuttings, veg & fruit peelings.

I don't think leaf and horse manure on their own will be great to be honest.

Leaf litter makes brilliant soil, but takes a few years to rot down sufficiently. Horse manure will also need to be well rotted or it can burn the roots. They will also decrease massively in volume as they decompose, so if you plant into it while it's still rotting you will be constantly topping up at the top and I'm not sure many plants will cope with that.

You want the horse manure to be well-rotted.
The leaves should rot if you put them in a black bag with some perforations with a bit of damp soil in it and leave them there for about a year.

If you make compost you need a compost heap or bin, and you add lots to it - grass clippings, shredded brown cardboard ...
How to Make Compost - BBC Gardeners World Magazine

It's not complicated or difficult, just slow, and a huge pile of compostable matter doesn't make a lot of compost.

Making enough soil to fill multiple bins will take a lot of time. You would need to start making compost, using left over food, egg shells, pulpy cardboard (absorbent corrugated cardboard ripped up, egg boxes etc), grass cuttings, autumn leaves (better if you can mow them up so they're shredded by the mower). This will rot down to make compost, but it will take 1-3 years depending on conditions and will drastically decrease in volume, so you need to start with more than you'd think, or do it in batches, which lengthens the time.

Once you have your compost, would could mix in the manure, which may already be well-rotted, or will need to wait until it is well-rotted.:

The mix of compost and manure will make a very rich soil. You may want to buy some sand to mix through to loosen it a bit.

Our local Facebook often has adverts for topsoil people don't want any more, or you can buy top soil and compost from builders merchants/DIY shops/garden centres. This will be by far your quickest and easiest option.

Thanks for all the replies.

Best short term option seems to be to blend some scavenged topsoil and manure. That's more or less what I have done so far - mixed bulk bags of compost with manure - to "supercharge" it and make it go further. It is just that I don't have more compost and don't massively want to buy more bulk bags of it if I can help it.

I'll probably also mix a load of stuff up in rubble bags and see how long it takes to rot down. For the learning - and I'm sure I can use it in the future.

Thanks again

Make sure you get some worms in there, they will break down the leaf matter etc.

@HorseyMel , if you are using the fresh manure mix, wait until your plants are quite strong before planting them in it. Things like marrows and squashes will b
probably be fine as long it isn't too strong.

With the worms, invite them and they will come.

With the leaf mould in bags, I think they need to be damp, and a bit of soil or manure will speed it along.

I put large twigs/small branches in a pile for the wildlife, and they take a long time to break down.

Gardening means always learning.

Sounds like a plan- but keep the leaves separate to the other stuff. They rot down differently mostly decomposed by fungi, rather than the bacteria/worms combo of manure and other compost. Leaves in plastic bags for future leaf mould as others have suggested (lovely stuff for improving soil structure, not much fertility).

Re making compost, we have to mix greens and browns, right?

Manure is green. I have sh1tloads of that, so that's fine.

Browns are basically dead leaves and card/paper? The leaves are best left out of the mix. Twigs etc take too long to rot, so that just leaves paper/card? So I have to layer up a load of paper and card with various green stuff like manure, grass cuttings and veg cuttings/greenery.

Is that basically the jist of it?
Or are there other good browns that can be used/that I might be able to get a load of easily?

Browns are all things that have some structure. So a bundle of weeds will include some brown amongst the green. Don’t get overly hooked on proportion, just dont let get too thick any layer that can get waterlogged, mainly grass mowings and thick layers of cardboard.

I fill my compost bins with leaves and top them up with left over bags and by the time it's all rotted down the bin is only about a quarter full - it's amazing how much things rot down and it does take time whatever way you do it. It takes up to two years.

When you say you don't have much soil in the garden what do you mean? Is the garden tiny or do you have a patio or is the soil layer very thin? I'd say much easier than growing things in bins - and I really can't imagine a fruit tree in a bin - would be to use what space you have in the garden and think carefully about what would work there.

I've found raspberries are pretty easy to grow in any soil and don't need a lot of space, if you have a border, even a thin one they'd be great for that. The other thing that might work and be easier than bins is raised beds or a growing table. Definitely check out growing tables! Either solution would be great for strawberries which don't have deep roots and are again very easy to grown and spread so you always have new plants. I grow perennial leaves in my tables, wild rocket, land cress and also the annual chinese giant red leaf mustard leaves which are easy to grow and have big leaves.

Hugel beds (something like that) involve putting logs/branches at the bottom, twigs on top, then shredded cardboard, leaves, veg scraps, paper and manure.

Then compost and soil on top. As it breaks down, the nutrients become available to the plants. The wood at the bottom absorbs water and releases it slowly as needed. Yes, it sinks. You add compost at the top to replace it and it trickles down.

Worth a thought? If you build it now, you could plant in it in the autumn.

Or do annual crops this year and trees next after a top up

Manure is 'greenish'- a big pile of that would rot down brilliantly on its own. The green/brown advice really amounts to 'don't make a big pile of grass clippings and soft leaves with nothing to break it up. Paper, egg boxes, sawdust from pet bedding are all good to mix with those. But plenty of manure.... a good high heap and that's job done.

@napody Thanks. Yes, I'm chilling out and just mixing these sorts of things and I think it will be fine.

I've been watching a bit of Charles Dowding lately (my favourite Gardening Grandad!) and he seems quite chilled out about a lot of things. Seems to be a lot of scope to use what you have/do what comes easily for your situation. I'll probably build up a couple of rubble bags of different stuff which will rot at different speeds