6-06-2012 Subject: Machinations of Compost
Several years ago, when I first started
broaching the idea of trying raised beds instead of the way my parents always
did a garden, my mom asked me, “Honey, where are you going to get the dirt?” A very good question from a beautiful little
woman. My response to her was a smile
and, “We’ll figure something out.”
At the time, I wasn’t really sure where I
was going to get the dirt either. I
started off with cutting 55 gal chemical barrels into sections and made a couple
diamond designs in my garden area. I dug
out the ground and embedded the barrel sections in the soil leaving about 4”
sticking up. I mixed my dirt with
potting soil (bought at the local department store garden section) and sand
(got a truck-load from a sand and gravel company down by the river).
The sand and potting soil did make the
dirt much easier to work with (a lot looser), but it didn’t add very much in
the way of nutrients for the plants. I
started raising rabbits for the table, and harvesting the manure for a small
compost bin. Some friends that lived in
town were willing to give me all the leaves that they raked up in their yards
(I just had to haul them off), and I began layering leaves in the worm beds
that I created under the rabbit hutches.
It wasn’t long before I began to see a noticeable difference in my
garden plants using the composted rabbit manure, leaves, and the worm castings
that were generated in the worm beds under the rabbits.
That old sayin’, “Build it and they will
come” really describes how the compost will call the worms in. In just a few weeks, the worm beds under the
rabbits and the compost bin were already crawling with worms from the surrounding
soil. We were feeding the rabbits to add
to our table … so the rabbits were feeding us, the leaves and manure were
feeding the worms, the worms were breaking down the organic material into ready
compost, the compost was feeding the garden plants, and the garden plants were
feeding us … and we got the added bonus of never needing to look very far for
fish bait.
The first compost bins I created were made
from some old 2 x 4 wire that someone was throwing away. It worked fairly well to hold the initial
ingredients, but there was quite a lot of material that started falling out as
the material broke down a little … it also allowed a little too much air flow
around the sides and kept the compost dried out. Working compost needs to stay a little damp
both to assist in the way bacteria and funguses work to break down the organic
material, and to keep the worms happy (if the worms ain’t happy they tend to
head for greener pastures).
I next built a couple 4’ x 4’ x 4’ squares
out of some old concrete blocks someone gave me from where a house burnt down. This helped to cut down on the moisture loss,
but when one of the sides caved in (I just had them stacked up), I decided that
I needed something a little more structurally sound.
I found some old wooden pallets in a
dumpster behind a store and started using them to frame up my beds with. Old wire is usually not too hard to find, and
I used it to tie the pallets together in side by side bins. I would fill a bin … let it work for month …
shovel it into the next bin … let it work for a month … move it into a final
bin and in another month (when it was ready) … put it on the garden.
This system worked the best of anything I
had tried so far. I was able to generate
about a cubic yard of useable compost each month and from start to finish it
only takes about three months.
(note) This doesn’t count the
time the material set under the rabbit hutches waiting for the first bin.
I am now using cow manure, goat manure,
rabbit manure, old hay, leaves, scraps and weeds from the garden, and anything
else I get my grubby little hands on.
Organic material is organic material … and the worms like it all the
same.
What I have discovered from all of this is
that I don’t need to find dirt somewhere to fill my garden beds … it grows. I am now in a position to help all my friends
with their own gardens and flower beds and fruit trees. Others will gladly give me their yard leaves
and manure from their pastures in exchange for awesome growing medium for their
own green-thumb projects.
…
Duane
No comments:
Post a Comment