Dirt Worhsiper

I bought a compost thermometer. I know that this is a trivial thing, but I have been frustrated by not having compost cook enough to kill my weed seeds and also wanted to dork out on Compost a little more. It takes temps in the 150-160 range to sufficiently kill most weeds-and that can be rather difficult in a backyard operation, but given the amount of compost I process (LY upwards of 5 yards) I think I can have a go at it.

First learning's-I need waaaaaay more nitrogen than I I typically put in my piles. What I had assumed was a "hot" pile using the terribly unscientific method of sticking some rebar in it for 15 minutes was actually only about 110 degrees. This is a nice active pile that will make a really fine finished compost, but will not kill many weed seeds. Nitrogen is what makes piles cook, and mine was distinctly lacking. My reading had led me to assume that the 25 gallons of coffee ground gorp from the Coffee Shop was about a 20:1 ratio of nitrogen to carbon (which is what coffee grounds are)-about perfect. Unfortunately it appears I was greatly undervaluing the amount of carbon from the paper filters and occasional napkins-even with the odd banana peel and tomato end they throw in.

So this past month I have begun harvesting (ok, bagging) the grass clippings from the thickest areas of my lawn, and I even got a first cutting off the 60' stretch of Red Clover and Comfrey I put in for a compost garden-one pass filled the bag!. Adding these to the pile by dusting the green matter about 1/2" thick for every 3-4" of compost as I turn it weekly has allowed me to hit 130-140 degrees even as the air temps have dipped to the 40's overnight. Seeing as this is on a pile that is 85% done, I have high hopes for next year.

Here is a brief of a typical cycle from turn to turn on my pile:

Day 0 110 degrees and falling, time to turn!
Day 0.5 80 Degrees after the turn-no activity
Day 1-3 Temps climbing slow but steady to 130
Day 3-4 Temp peak in the 130-140 range
Day 5-6 Temps slip to 110-120 as nitrogen is exhausted
Day 7 (0) 110 degrees and falling, time to turn!

As an aside, turning it weekly and adding this much pure green matter seriously speeds up the process-if it wasn't for the corn stalks and thicker garden stalks this batch would be all but done in about 4-6 weeks. Turning it this often also keeps the pile sweet smelling, and allows you to quickly react to a pile that is too wet or dry-it should be damp to the touch like a sponge. Plus I just love getting out there in my pile and visiting the pill bugs and centipedes that live on the edges, and feeling the warm, humid air thick with life waft up at me as I fork the pile open.

Composting is religion to me. After reading that you can already assume I am not a very religious man, but let me explain a little. Here I can, in a very real way, participate in the Divine. I am not a very creative person-art never came easy for me-but in composting I can take crude matter-garbage to most people, and by following the rituals of Nature turn that refuse into one of the most life sustaining structures on Earth: hummus. And in doing so I am quite literally making a tiny piece of the world a better place.

Jesus broke loaves and fishes, I turn my manure pile.
We both do miracles.

Be the Change.

Stumble It!

Tree Hugging Dirt Worshiper

So the newest breed of livestock farmers are starting to refer to themselves as Grass Farmers, and many Organic Farmers are proud to claim a bio-intensive form of agriculture-farming with nature rather than fighting it. And now one of my favorite bumper stickers (the title of this post) is taking on a new meaning now that I have finished Volume 1 of David Jacke's Edible Forest Gardens.

I know I have stated that in something like my last 3 posts, but forging through 350 pages of what is essentially an Ecology Textbook takes some doing. Don't get me wrong-the book was incredibly enjoyable and I learned an immense amount about, well, Edible Forest Gardens. It did get rough at times, as I was looking for a "how to" for temperate permaculture, which Vol 1 is not (though it looks like Vol 2 [en route] is). Vol 1 is rather a statement of the vision and theory behind forest gardening (creating self-sustaining perennial agriculture) while giving the reader (student?) a more than cursory understanding of the principles of the science of Ecology. The book is valuable if for no other reason than their incredibly thorough appendix titled their Top 100 Useful Plants. Wow.

As I stated in my last post, the biggest take away for me was in the 100 pages or so that deal with ecology. That is a good thing, because after 100 pages on ecology you need a tid bit or two! I will try to paraphrase my aha! here. Many of us aspiring orchardists have heard that a grassy understory can be detrimental to apple trees. I have heard numerous reasons why, but the main reasons center around resource squabbling between the shallow rooted apple tree and the shallow rooted turf grasses. That kind-of made sense, but it never felt truly right to me-too simplistic. Jacke clues his readers in on a relatively new frontier of soil ecology- the ratios of bacteria to fungus in the soil horizons as another possible reason.

Without getting too technical, grass or freshly disturbed areas typically have a very high bacteria to fungus ratio-there is typically little carbon material in the soils for the fungus to feed on and bacteria are more flexible on the relatively higher nitrogen levels in the organic matter in either disturbed sites or under sod. However, trees, and even shrubs and many perennials, have evolved to live in a mutually beneficial existence with various fungus and one (mycorrhizal) in particular is turning out to be one of the absolute powerhouses of the forest. Basically the fungus lives on or near the roots of the trees and in an exchange similar to rhibosomal bacteria in legumes, gives nutrients and water to the tree for sugar intensive root secretions. Sounds neat and all but why should we care? Here is the tidbit that blew my mind: take a table spoon or two of really good old growth soil. In that dollop of soil there may be as many as 40 miles worth of mycelial "hairs" and, in the soil, nutrient uptake is all about surface area. Dang!

But here is the kicker: the fungus is sensitive-every know "-cide" has shown to be damaging to it including the more innocuous ones like Round-Up. So if you live in a new subdivision like me and have dead subsoil, or are living in virtually any other developed soil on Earth you almost certainly have a soil dead to fungus. This is essentially forcing our trees and gardens to try to soldier on alone uphill with one leg chained to a 50lb chunk of lead. Not only are we missing an essential component of the decomposer web in our soils, we have also hamstrung our gardens by taking away one of their staunchest allies.

So I will be running an experiment in my lawn and some of my gardens this year. I have ordered mycorrhizal fungus inoculants for both my veggies and my lawn from Fungi.com and will keep you posted on the results.

Speaking of Fungi.com, they offer an immense line of fungus products allowing you to grow your own edible mushrooms. Some, like the Shitake, need a log to be inoculated and then placed in contact with the soil, but several others would like nothing more to live in (and aggressively decompose) the wood chip mulch in your perennial beds. In return they will give you a harvest every year for the next several years or more. Loathe turning your compost bin and have some time on your hands? Inoculate the pile (or a round bale of straw!) with their The Garden Giant™ (Stropharia rugoso-annulata) and sit back as you harvest some utterly immense mushrooms while the fungus turns the carbon into compost. Fukuoka would be pleased!!

I plan on inoculating the mulch layers of my sheet compost with the Stropharia and perhaps some others as soon as the beds go in next week if for no other reason than to see a 3' mushroom!

-Beo

Stumble It!

Waste Not...

A funny thing happened on the way to Good harvest over the past 2 months. We managed to hit our waste goal of one grocery bag of garbage! An unexpected but very welcome side effect of us buying much more bulk items and more fresh produce is that the packaging (which gets chucked) from our groceries is done to almost zero. Combine that with our intense commitment to composting and our Worm Bin and about the only thing that makes it into the trash is used light grade plastics like bulk bags with tears in them, and spent Ziploc bags. Considering that most plastic in this grade is at the end of a long line of plastic recycling we don't feel to bad about that.

The average American Consumer generates about 4lbs of waste per day. If we consider each of our kids as a 50% consumer we should be generating about 84lbs of waste a week. Last week we did about 5! If you factor in our recyclables (15lbs) and the amount of veggies and food we fed to the Compost pile and Worm Bin (easily 30lbs) our waste production is about 50% of average. But from a landfill point of view we generate about 5%, and the bulk of our 'waste' is recycled on site and turned into humus to produce-with some help from the good ol' sun- into more veggies.

Next steps? We will be switching to reusable mesh produce bags and reusable bulk bags-is zero waste possible? Perhaps not for us right now as we will have at least 2 bags worth of recyclables, but this is really encouraging!

Here is a short list of how we have gotten this far:

1) Reduce We factor packaging into our purchasing decisions now. Does your cereal come in a plastic bulk bag? It, or a similar version, probably does. This not only saves the cardboard from the box, but will save you easily 10% in cost. Refuse a bag when checking out on small, easily portable items. Better yet: bring your own bags-the only time we take bags is if we are getting low for our trash-about once a month. Buy Bulk-Good Harvest offers everything from Olive Oil to Peanut Butter to Dishwashing detergent in bulk in addition to the usual pastas, beans and flours. Again this will save money too!

2) Reuse I have already mentioned bringing your own bags, but compared to the beauty of Freecycle it is small. I am amazed at the stuff that people will take from you on Freecycle. Whenever we have posted something it has never sat more than 48 hours-and in the case of the kids stuff the receivers are usually gushing due to unexpected twins on the way or some other pinch on their budget. Makes you feel warm inside. Yogurt quarts and milk jugs make great leftover containers, and in spring all my seed starts were in Stoneyfield cups. We ship all of our eBay stuff in reused cardboard boxes and mailing envelopes. Then there are the gardens-we used local sourced field stone to build the raised beds and stone from our own yard to line our perrenial beds.

3) Recycle This one has a big Duh factor to it, so I will go beyond the curb pickup recycling. We recycle literally tons of waste on our property. I annually produce about 2-3 cu. yards of finished compost on site. Considering I have no mature trees that takes some doing. I take 25 gallons of coffee grounds from a local coffee shop each week that would otherwise be in the landfill. We also use wood chips from our city yard instead of buying them at Menard's. Then there is the Worm Bin. God I love those worms! They take 2-3 lbs of food scraps every day and turn them into the best fertilizer that you can get. Then there is cardboard-whenever I want to expand my gardens (ok that is all the time) I don't use Round-up- I just lay out a layer of two of cardboard, cover it with leaves and grass clippings (sheet mulching) and 3-4 months later I have nice friable soil ready for planting.

Other awesome ways to reduce your impact on the waste stream are to grow a garden, shop farmers markets, and use the library.

Challenge your friends and family, and I am challenging each of you now, to reduce your waste. Little things have Big Impacts and proactive solutions are much better for the psyche!

Be the Change!

Stumble It!