Which organic matter?

Hi to all you knowledgeable people

Soon I'll be starting to dig my new vegetable patch (clay) and I have been advised by you to incorporate plenty of organic matter. Can I use any farmyard matter, or does it have to be horse muck only?

Cheers:

 

Hi Kipwad. You can use anything organic. Organic, in this sense, means derived from growing living things.

This includes all types of manure (horse, cow, chicken, elephant etc). It also includes plant material ie composted plants, straw, hay etc.

It also includes wood and paper based material (all of which come from trees) - ie newspapers, cardboard, wood chippings sawdust etc. I would not use glossy highly coloured magazines etc as some of the pigments might come from expensive heavy metals, which are poisonous. But any newsprint or cheap paper material would be fine. Wood chippings and sawdust are good organic material, but wood takes a long time to rot down, so its better not to use it.

Ideally everything should be well rotted, as the process of rotting takes some of the nitrogen and goodness out of the soil in the short term. In the long term it puts it all back and more. But I have no problem with semi rotted stuff.

If you think logically about it, there is a good reason why you should add organic matter. In a wood in the wild, trees and plants grow and rot and new ones grow from the rotted remains of the old ones. Ie the organic material is being recycled by nature. Nothing is added and nothing is taken away. The same too goes for the flower garden. If you cut back all your plants, compost them and return the compost to the garden, nothing is taken away. So you don't really need to feed a flower garden as long as the old growth is allowed to rot and return to the garden.

The same would go for your veg patch if you allowed all the veg and fruit to rot and return to the soil. But you don't. You take it away and eat it. Consequently you must add organic matter to replace what you take away and eat.