Photo above shows a "lasagne bed", or layered bed made in the fall with mulch hay sides and layered organic matter. Easy composting-in -place!
It's a great time to check your compost & be sure that it is still covered. I like to a layer of leaves, straw or mulch hay every time I add a layer of kitchen waste. For those of you who don't receive out local Take 5 magazine, here is an article on composting I wrote for the March issue. The picture of me above was taken by my youngest son Adrian was taken last summer when we were harvesting the garlic.
Confessions of a Compost Queen
By Dianne Andrews
Many women of contemporary society enjoy manicures; I prefer manure. As a rule, most people are afraid of our local garter snakes. I love them!
Composting has always been one of my favorite hobbies. The magic of how beautiful, black organic matter is created never ceases to delight me. Families often have culinary recipes handed down from generation to generation. From my family of origin, I have inherited a passion for soil building/composting. My grandmother collected “leaf mould” from the alder grove on their homestead in the early 1900’s in Manitoba. I enjoyed hearing her stories about life on the farm and how they gardened organically, although that term hadn’t been invented yet. When I was a child in Victoria, I pushed a wheel barrow around our neighborhood, selling bagged manure, to finance my obsession with riding horses. Some of this special ‘product’ went into my parents ingenious, three bin composting system.
Having lived in Yellow Point/Cedar since March of 2002, my dream of being a garlic grower has finally come true. In the fall of 2010, my friend, Ian Jones, who sells at the Cedar Farmers’ Market, supplied us with Porcelain garlic and specific instructions on how to grow it. Even though my gardening partner, Karen, and I planted the cloves on top of “dead” rhubarb plants, which then came alive and grew around the garlic plants, we had the most amazing harvest. Friends thought the garlic was corn because the plants were so tall! About 600 garlic plants, our second crop, are poking their heads though the top layer of our raised garden beds as I write this.
But I am getting ahead of myself. As you know, the only way to have a great organic garden is to carefully build the soil. The first challenge here on my friends’ wonderful organic farm, where I now reside, was the fact that the garden area, including five raised beds, was completely overgrown. That’s when my friend, Yolanda, stepped in to help by showing me how she had created a new bed right on the lawn by layering organic matter. Some refer to this method of composting-in-place as “lasagna gardening.” Use the right recipe and you will have wonderful soil, full of earth worms!
Karen and I needed to gather the ingredients to layer our garden beds. Since we were doing this on a fairly large scale, Karen and her husband licensed their farm truck. I am too short to drive this truck so Karen, being tall, courageously took the wheel. The truck, having been underneath a tree all winter, was sporting a fair amount of moss. In addition, I could barely see over the dashboard, making us a comical sight indeed.
Now a word of caution is needed here. Once you have determined your source of manure it should remain your secret. It can be procured with cash but we discovered that zucchini loaves, garlic spread and the promise of garden produce has been enough to keep a steady supply of horse and cow manure at our shovel tips. You can never have too much manure in various stages of decay. If offered more manure say “yes” and then find a way to get it home. If you collect large piles of manure as I do, tarp them once they are wet through. Keep them covered even in the spring to create the perfect habitat for garter snakes. They love to sleep on the warm manure pile after feasting on aphids and slugs in your garden all day. Rather than trucking in manure, you can simply bring it in tubs with lids. My parents are always delighted when I show up with fresh manure in the trunk of my car. It works better than alfalfa pellets for “compost starter” and can make a great “hostess gift”.
“Lasagna gardening”, like cooking, requires the best ingredients in the right quantities. Always place cardboard or feed sacks on the bottom layer. Then layer alternately with carbon rich (brown) and nitrogen rich (green) organic matter, each layer not more than three inches thick. Some of my favorite ingredients are rotted manure mixed with sawdust, fresh manure (on bottom layer), mulch hay, straw, comfrey leaves and maple leaves. Be sure to water each layer if the materials are dry. The top layer of the bed needs to be finished compost or soil. Your beds can have sides or not. We just built one using reed canary grass hay bales to create the structure.
Last summer we made a new lasagna bed and then planted cucumbers in shovelfuls of finished compost, wondering if the plants would grow since the layers hadn’t composted. The crop was amazing, the downside being that I am not really fond of cucumbers and I kept having to find willing recipients for this insanely, top-producing vegetable. One evening I came home from the office to find several cucumbers surreptitiously placed on the bench outside my door!
Due to the wealth of information on line, I am not going to outline step by step how to make compost in bins but I will share a few tips. I build three bins side by side using free wooden pallets tied together with baling twine. A bungee cord secures the “door”. If you are a town or city dweller you may wish something fancier.
In regards to composting kitchen waste, think raw fruit and veggies. No cooked food of any kind; even salad with dressing on it is unacceptable. Layer the compost as you do the beds, but spread a layer of thick plant stocks on the bottom for aeration. Adding handfuls of worms from finished compost or manure piles helps too. Worms, like snakes, are good!
Here is what I consider to be the biggest secret for producing excellent compost. It needs to contain the right amount of moisture, like a squeezed sponge. Water the layers you add in summer and cover your bins for the winter. In the early spring your composts will heat up under the tarps and produce black gold.
In conclusion, I would like to thank my gardening partner, Karen, who patiently instructed me in the art of planting vegetables last spring, not without a fair amount of laughter of course.
