Turn your spoil into soil

Don't let your food waste, your vegetable peeling, go into the waste stream, not even the composting one of the municipality; make your own compost or give them to someone who composts

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

First of all let me say that, to all intents and purposes, you should try to reduce your food waste in the first instance but, and I know that well enough, there is always some that spoils or that cannot be reused.

And then there are the peelings and trimming. True, many of them could be rendered down into vegetable stock but who of us, nowadays, really has the time to do that – at least not all the time.

The best way that I have found, in dealing with food waste, if there ever is any, and with vegetable peelings, is to feed them to my chickens, who produce eggs for me, and the droppings then make, together with other things, such as waste paper, that also go into the composter, soil that is rich in nitrogen.

Keeping chickens, I know, does not work everywhere but where it does it is better still than just simple composting as it is a total win-win situation.

Earlier I suggested that you don't let your scraps go into the composting stream of the municipality but rather, if you cannot use them, give them to someone who makes compost for his or her garden.

The reason I said that is that the municipality uses your compostable materials and makes, well, compost from it which, in most cases, then is sold.. if you have a very benign local government they may give it to anyone willing to pick it up but in most cases it is a for-profit operation and thus why should you or I provide the materials for free.

You can make compost in many ways, from a simple heap, which will take longest to rot down, via a composter, where things happen a lot quicker, to a compost tumbler, which can produce rich compost soil within the space of a few month. A small tumbler can even be used on a patio or a balcony to make great fertile soil.

And what to do with this soil? Well, you grow a garden, even a small one, in planters and, even if you like flowers, you should grow food crops, mixed with flowers, if you so desire, to reduce at least some of your impact and your food miles.

Happy composting... the scraps, not you...

© 2013

Manure

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Manure’s most important contribution to the garden is that it adds organic matter to the soil much like compost and peat, or the, supposedly eco-friendly alternative, coir.

Peat and peat composts are, in fact, something that should be avoided as far as possible due to the fact that the use of them depletes the bogs from where it is cut.

For some strange reason it took a million Pound study for the British government to “discover” that manure is needed for a healthy soil and that using chemical “fertilizers” actually leaches nutrients from the soil. Any organic gardener and farmer could have told them that for free. In fact, they have done so for ages.

The best time to add manure to soil is autumn, but it can also be added in early spring before planting. Add 2 to 3 inches of manure to the soil and mix it into the top 6 to 9 inches of soil, well into the root zone. Do not add manure if you expect to harvest vegetables within two months or so of adding the manure to the soil. Also note that the pH of the soil may change with the addition of manure to the garden.

Not all manure should be used in the garden. While cow, horse, goat, sheep, rabbit, and poultry manures are all safe to use, manure from dogs, cats, and other meat-eating animals is not safe due to the risk of parasites disease pathogens.

Never, however, add fresh manure directly to the soil. It should always have been aged at least six months, ideally a year, or composted first. Either let it simply age or if you wish to compost it yourself make sure that the temperature of the compost reaches at least 66 degrees Celsius (150 degrees F) to get rid of pathogens like E. coli that are potentially lethal to humans. An alternative, obviously, is, like most people do it, to buy it already composted at the garden center.

Organic matter, such as manure is, is important to create and provide a good soil structure and a nutrient rich soil. Using the same soil year in year out for, and this is the worst thing that modern agriculture does, and only applying chemicals leaches the soil of nutrients and destroys the structure.

Chemical fertilizers do not equate manure, even though the components may be right, by way of nitrates, etc. They are but plant food and not soil food. Feeding the plants, however, only goes thus far and no farther.

There was a reason why our ancestors worked the way they did. They found that it works and it is Nature's way.

© 2013

Don't throw out your leaves!

Do-it-yourself leaf mold is great to improve your garden's soil

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Instead of raking the leaves in your yard and garden together, putting them into plastic bags and setting them on the curb to be picked up and added to a landfill, where most will end up via the municipal waste stream unless your council operates a green waste recycling scheme, turn them into leaf mold.

The dark, crumbly finished product of leaf mold is a great soil amendment and conditioner and if we are going to be dealing with droughts in our gardens in the future, which no doubt we will, increasing the moisture retention of our soils is important. Leaf mold is better still than wood chip mulch in this department as it improves the soil much better and quicker.

Finished leaf mold can be used as a mulch to suppress weeds and trap moisture, blended into the soil of garden beds, and added to container gardens and making leaf mold is, in fact, ridiculously easy. If composting seems too complicated and involved for you: give making your own leaf mold a try. All you need to create leaf mold is a space, leaves, water and time.

The easiest way of making leaf mold is to rake all of your leaves into a pile in the corner of your garden or yard. Once you’ve gathered the leaves into place, wet the pile down and keep it moist for the next six months to a year. If your leaf mold pile is at risk of being thrown about by kids, pets or the wind create pen to keep it in place.

Make a round or square frame out of chicken wire, reclaimed wood or similar to the DIY compost bins the designs of which you find all over the Internet. You can also put the leaves, ideally shredded, into black plastic bin liners, moisten them and then tie up the bags.

If you have a mulching mower you can speed up decomposition by riding over your leaf mold pile and shredding the leaves into smaller pieces.

A few years ago while watching one of those cable documentaries on the drug trade, I saw a cocaine farmer use a weed trimmer to shred cocoa leaves to process them faster. And you know what? It works! After you’ve corralled all of your leaves in place you can run a weed trimmer through the pile to break it down. Shredded leaves not only break down faster, but you have room for more leafs and taller piles.

All leaves you collect in autumn are good candidates for making leaf mold, though some are better than others when it comes to breaking down and decomposing. Smaller leaves, such as birch, alder and Japanese maples, can break down in as little as six months. Oak and hornbeam leaves similarly break down rather fast.

The bottom of your leaf mold pile can be ready to be mixed into your soil, used as a mulch, or mixed into your favorite container gardening soil mix in as little as half a year. Therefore, take some time this season to rake up your leaves – and those of your neighbors – to improve the soil in your garden. You will be keeping valuable organic matter out of landfills and preventing your neighbors from making burn piles this autumn.

The leaves have sequestered carbon over the year and this carbon is released into your soil when added to it and will feed your plants. So thus you should not waste it.

If you grow your own – vegetables that is – in the way that I do in “containers” of various sorts you can use the so-called lasagne gardening method and, in fact, add the leaf mold after six month to the bottom of the container and spread a thin, about four or five inches or so, layer of soil and compost above in which you sow your seeds or plant your plugs.

Waste not want not is the old adage and it applies also to those autumn leaves.

© 2012