Organic raised bed soil

A mulch layer (1–3 cm thick) is absolutely recommended for several reasons. First, it protects your soil from drying out too quickly by preventing water from simply evaporating. Second, the mulch material supplies nutrients for the microbial life in your soil. For example, our Bio Faser mainly consists of stable straw from dried organic cattle manure and is a perfect long-term nitrogen source for large pots or raised beds.

You can also incorporate all plant waste into your mulch layer. The use of so-called “cover crops,” meaning ground-covering plants, is practiced in living soil cultivation and is also hotly debated (especially indoors).

Advantages of sowing a cover crop like clover include: the soil is naturally covered, and the withered ground cover becomes part of the living soil again. Some ground covers, such as most clover species, are legumes that can fix nitrogen from the air and make it available in the soil, keeping the bed lush and green.

However, there are also disadvantages that should not be overlooked. For one, you shouldn’t use too many different or labor-intensive plants—the cover crop shouldn’t require more work than the main crop. Also, depending on where you live, cover crops may attract or introduce pests and diseases, which can be problematic.

Our Terra Preta Schwarzerde can be used in both field beds and raised beds. To ensure long-term fertility for all crops, we recommend a layer thickness of 20–30 cm combined with a permanent layer of mulch. Almost any organic material can be used as mulch, e.g. grass clippings, wood chips or our organic fiber Bio Faser.

When used in raised beds, the lower section can be filled with existing soil or our organic raised bed soil Bio Hochbeeterde. Layering, as practised in hugelkultur, is not recommended here, as this would simply require regular top-ups of Schwarzerde. As a general rule, the soil ecosystem should be disturbed as little as possible by digging (no till).

Pieces of wood are a natural component of our compost and do not constitute a quality defect. All our products are screened using a trommel screen during processing. A specific mesh size is used to remove coarser particles. However, individual pieces of wood may remain in the product if their diameter is smaller than the respective mesh size. This is due to technical constraints and is also a reflection of our conscious commitment to gentle, nature-friendly processing.

We firmly believe that plastics have no place in nature and therefore have no place in our soils either. That is why we invest a great deal of time, money and energy into keeping our products free from contaminants. We deeply regret it when, despite our best efforts, very occasional plastic particles find their way into our products.

In this regard, we would like to give you a brief insight into some of our quality assurance measures:

Selection of raw materials: We use only regional tree and shrub cuttings, as well as controlled sludge (e.g. from jam production and milk processing), to produce our compost. We have made a conscious decision not to use the contents of organic waste bins, as these contain vast quantities of packaging materials, plastic bags and other contaminants.

Inspection on delivery: Unfortunately, it is a widespread social problem that waste is often carelessly discarded in the natural environment. Consequently, tree and shrub cuttings are sometimes contaminated with plastic. The raw materials delivered are always checked by our staff for contaminants. Obvious contaminants such as plastic flower pots or similar items are sorted out by hand before processing. In cases of severe contamination, acceptance is consistently refused.

Technical processing: Despite careful raw material selection and inspection, we cannot entirely prevent isolated pieces of plastic from entering the raw material mix for our compost. To separate these particles before processing into the final product, the finished compost is sieved using a defined mesh size.

External quality controls: Our composts is inspected several times a year by external, independent testing bodies. A key component of these inspections is the sampling and laboratory analysis of the compost. The test results are published on our website to ensure the greatest possible transparency. The analysis also examines the compost for contaminants (see ‘Table 3: Test results for dietary fibre’). Compliance with the Austrian Compost Ordinance is certified in Chapter ‘4. Compost Assessment’ through classification into Quality Class A+ (our organic compost Bio Kompost) or Quality Class A (conventional compost). Plastics in particular are extremely difficult to separate due to their material properties (e.g. low weight, low resistance to mechanical stress, non-magnetic…). Even more intensive technical processing of our compost to separate the last, very isolated plastic particles (according to compost test results < 0.2%) is by no means proportionate to the associated environmental impacts (e.g. CO2 emissions from the additional energy consumption). As a company committed to environmental sustainability, we could not condone this. Furthermore, to our knowledge, there is currently no process that allows for the complete separation of plastics. We therefore ask that any plastic parts found be removed by hand. We would also be delighted to invite you to visit our premises in person to see for yourself. Once a year (on 1 May), as part of our open day, we even offer free guided tours with our CEO Gerald Dunst, during which all our work processes are demonstrated and explained. As a company dedicated to the sensible recycling and recovery of biogenic waste on a daily basis, we take our responsibility towards nature very seriously!