Real humus is a valuable and expensive fertilizer. You can have it in your garden in sufficient quantities all the time. You just have to do it right.
You need to dig a hole in your garden or put together a large wooden box. In this pit (box), put all plant debris, spoiled food, and so on, periodically pouring water and adding sawdust or earth (in layers). It is important to compact all plant residues as often as possible, trampling with your feet. Thus, the pit (box) will gradually fill up, and everything in there will rot. To get a real, mature humus, it needs to be given a good exposure. As a rule, plant residues completely rot in 3-4 years, so such an exposure is needed. It is best to have 2-3 pits or boxes on your site. This will allow you to avoid the need to remove the lower layers of the finished fertilizer from the pit (box) every year, and then put the unripe waste back.
After three or four years, the humus will ripen and there will be real fertilizer, you can use it for its intended purpose.
But, as you understand, in value it will still be much inferior to real manure humus. Where can I get it for people who do not keep livestock on their plots, and even more so for city people who have their own summer cottages?
Can be bought in stores, farms and state farms specializing in cattle. But it will be very expensive.
It will be much cheaper to buy fresh manure (if, of course, it is possible to do this) and leave it in a pile for several years. That’s when you get a real and very valuable humus.
For reference. In large livestock farms, the slurry is hauled out by tractor carts directly from under the conveyors, which exit the farm and pump the slurry through the conveyor system. This manure falls out in specially designated places.
There are whole deposits of this humus, which lies there for many years. You can take it completely free of charge, of course, you must first ask permission and think over the transport issue.
More in an advantageous position are those gardeners who have plots next to these farms. They have the opportunity to bring such liquid manure directly to their site at a completely bargain price (100 rubles per cart). Tractor drivers will gladly dump a cart for them and get money for it. And one cart is more than enough for the whole site. And if you bring a cart every year, then there will always be humus. It is clear that the manure will be ready only after a few seasons.
Still mature humus can be unearthed in places where there is a lot of rotten wood (sawmills, abandoned destroyed wooden buildings, once dumped into heaps of waste wood and woodworking). Over the years, the wood has rotted and turned into valuable humus. There are many such places in any settlement (or near it), including the urban area. The task is to find these places and take the finished fertilizer.
Many summer residents use humus taken from the forest for their land plots, the so-called forest litter. A layer of litter (occurs up to 20 centimeters thick) consists of rotten leaves, branches and vegetation. This layer must be cut off with a shovel and transported to your garden. Also a very valuable fertilizer that is available to most summer residents and gardeners.
I also want to say about one source of humus – these are swamps. In these places, at a depth, peat lies, and above it – humus. If you have the opportunity to take it, then you can say lucky. This humus brought to the site should be folded in a heap, add land, sawdust, liquid manure to it in layers and left for a couple of years (not forgetting to periodically shed with water). After this time, humus will ripen and will be ready to use.
