Got me some goodwood chips for my compost

Today I was driving down the street and saw Logan working in a neighbor’s yard chipping small logs. Drove quickly back home, got four five-gallon buckets and went back to see Logan.

The wood chips will aerate the compost and will speed up the decomposition process. A compost needs three things: organic matter, moisture, and air. If you remove one of the three elements, the decomposition process comes to a halt, worms don’t stay and it will take a couple of years for it to decompose.

These are 'the boys". I would have packed them better, but I didn't want to appear to be a wood chip hog. 

    

I took one bucked at a time and slowly incorporated it into the compost. 

Folks, believe you me, it's not easy turning the compost, but you gotta do it. The chunks of wood and the turning of the compost will aerate it. This process is called aerobic composting and it's well worth it.

Twenty minutes later I was done. The compost heap was fuller, I was happier and the buckets were empty. 

Happy composting and keep your worms happy!

Getting Lots of High Quality, Free Dirt - My Compost Heap Problem

Two years ago we had to cut down our 100+ year old Pin Oak tree because its roots were compromised after a storm that went through our village. The tree was just magnificent and we really miss it. Every fall it would drop loads of leaves that I would collect and add to my compost heap. The leaves added with other organic matter would provide me with lots of high quality dirt. 

Well, 'If the mountain will not come to Muhammad, then Muhammad must go to the mountain'. When my neighbors clean up their yards guess who's collecting their bags full of pure gold. Of course I return their bags and help the environment is a tiny way. 

I have set up several bins made of free wood pallets at the end of our yard and I add the leaves there. After you add the leaves and the bins seem full add little water and some mixing with the pitchfork and I get what I want, free dirt. 

You need to have at least TWO bins. You'll add material in bin #1 and then a week or two later you can toss bin #1's contents to the other bin. My local coffee shops, DunkinDonuts and Noble Roasters, help me by providing spent coffee grounds. Worms love coffee grounds. Making high quality dirt is easy and effortless. When I toss the contents of one bin to the next, I sprinkle some coffee grounds. As I do that I can hear the worms say "yum yum, yum".

If you don't mix your compost matter it will take about two years before it decomposes and it's usable. 

I always add my kitchen scraps there. I have a bowl next to the kitchen sink and throughout the day as I clean the vegetables, add the scraps in the bowl. The first two years the method worked like a charm. We consume lots of supermarket purchased fruits and vegetables and the scraps go in the compost heap. So far, so good. Supermarkets, though, add these stickers on everything to identify their goods. As you can see the avocado shell below has one such sticker. Quite the conundrum. YOU HAVE TO REMOVE THEM OTHERWISE YOUR FUTURE DIRT WILL BE FILLED WITH THESE STICKERS! They are made of some sort of material that will be in your garden for many years to come. 

By the way, out squirrels love to eat the material left on the avocado shell. We all have to live...

On my way home today I saw one of my neighbors had chopped down several small trees as he is working on a project. Well, tomorrow morning I will pay him a visit and get a few buckets of those wood chips. It will be such a great addition to my compost heap.

Keep on mulching!

I just planted a few potatoes the Ruth Stout way, the lazy way

Ruth Stout,  (June 14, 1884 – August 22, 1980) she was an author of gardening books and a "lazy" gardener. She pioneered the deep mulching method that basically eliminates watering and weeding gardens. I learned about her method by watching a film strip, remember them?,  back in the early eighties while I was attending ECCC in upstate NY.

Here is a quick-and-dirty video that demonstrates her way of "planting" potatoes.

The soil in this garden bed is rich in nutrients and has already been used for three years. Basically, you place the potatoes on top of the garden bed and then you cover them with lots of hay. Hay was Stout's prefered milching material. She didn't like leaves and she didn't use straw either. She said NOT to pull any weeds that may come up, but to just add more hay on top of the weeds to kill them.

You can find "bad hay" very cheap if you check your local Craig's List or at any local farms. Usually they go for $2 per bale and I use about four bales every year.