Jim Kingdon wrote:
Are there any truly organic soil amendments out there that I might be
able to find locally, easily?

Well, the most local is your own property. So there's the whole green
manure thing (grow a cover crop, usually a nitrogen fixer, and dig it
into the soil (or compost it, if you want to go the no-till or
less-till route)).

That's a problem though. My property is a concrete slab about 10x16.


Then there's any number of waste items (when I worked in a peanut
butter factory, which was also a farm, we had peanut skins, although
that's sort of a bad example because we fed those to the cows).

Animal manures are another route. Maybe see who is selling animal
products at the local farmer's market and ask them? That's more
likely to meet your standards for "truly organic" (which, I think,
exceed the legal definition).

I'll check into that. A friend of mine has some chickens, but I'll have
to see what she feeds them.


Straw (which you can compost) is available a lot of places. There's
bagged tree bark (which takes a long time to decompose). etc.

I'm not really saying these particular ideas are especially good. But
my point is that there are lot of ways to introduce organic matter,
and nutrients, into the soil. It is just a matter of figuring out
what is available around you (another reason to go local is that some
of these aren't very rich in nitrogen and other nutrients, so you need
a lot of them).

I'll be putting in a compost bin, but I needed something to get going
for some stuff I'm going to be potting soon. This will be container
gardening.