Where to Find Stuff for Composting

5-30-21  Finding material for composting.

I thought that this post should be about raking in the compost again.  A lot of the discussions I have with different people that are interested in gardening are about how to compost, and where to find the material needed for the sweet dirt.  It seems mostly to be common sense to me, but common sense is based on knowledge too.  If you haven't been in the game very long, then the knowledge has to come from somewhere.  

Part of our composting regimen is to take a wide variety of organic material that we can find and run it through the wringer.  Now, the organic material I'm going to be talking about today, is all that biological waste that we find from so many of the animals on the farm.

Here's one of those readily available materials that we add to the pile.  It's those chicken manure impregnated pine shavings that we harvest from the brooder box.  This box just happens to be a recycled six-foot chest style freezer that was tossed out by somebody when the compressor tried to burn their house down.  We didn't need the motor, compressor pump, and evaporator coil ... we just needed the box.  These guys are only about three weeks old, but boy can they generate the waste.  A batch of chicks between twenty and thirty peeps can make about three-gallons of hot (nitrogen loaded) compostable material a week.  We had to move them into this box because the next batch of chicks is almost ready to bust out of their egg-shell prison in the incubator, and we needed the smaller box for the new batch of chicks.   

The donkeys can be another wonderful source of compostable material.  Donkeys and horses both have a large pelletized skat that is high on nitrogen and is filled with lots of organic material that is in different stages of breakdown.  I guess you could say that they don't digest very well.  The more complicated the digestion system is on an animal, then the more the organic material is broken down.  That makes it more readily available for your plants to take in the nutrients from their root systems.  The things that haven't been totally broken down yet, give your plants more over time, as opposed to immediately.  Both are needed for a healthy soil.

I'm sorry Jack and Fancy, if I'm talking about your droppings.  There's nothing to be embarrassed about.  We all do it.

Thank you Donkeys, for leaving us this compostable material to use.  I bet you're probably done with it anyway.  We'll try to put your gift toward a good purpose.
 

Cow manure is my go-to for filling the compost bins.  They have an incredible amount of waste material, and it is usually just sitting out there in the pasture in nice little brown piles, just waiting for someone to go out there to pick it up.  The older it is, the more of the nutrients there will be that are already leached into the surrounding soil, but when it's fresh, it is very hard to pick up.  It will be better to wait a few days after the piles are dropped to attempt to get them, just to let them dry out a little bit before harvesting them.  Wet manure becomes a solid ball of muck in a compost bin, and it is harder for the air to reach everything to assist with decomposition.

Hi cows, and you too El Toro (the bull).  Hope you guys are staying happy over here in the shade.  Did you leave us anything?

Where we feed the cows is always a bonanza of usable material.  Just let them stomp it in, poop on it, stomp it in some more, and Voila!  There ya go ... that old hay and manure is already starting to decompose.

Goats and sheep all have a small pelletized manure that is virtually free of weed seeds.  They both have a very complicated digestion system, and seeds find it really hard to live through all that.  Wherever the larger ruminants lay down for their sleep, there will be piles of those black jelly beans begging to go in a compost bin.  They're not really jelly beans, and they aren't really sugar babies either, so I don't recommend tasting them ... they just look like that.

These guys are all waiting for somebody to put the feed out.  They might look calm right now, but it's Katie-bar-the-gate when I have a feed bucket in my hands.  It's a good thing that they aren't carnivorous ... I'd be a giant walking meat sack.

These are the quonsets for the sheep.  They get in here for the snow and wet cold weather.  It's about time to dig it all out again and start over.  When they cover their bedding material with poop, we just give them another layer of bedding on top of that.  It adds up pretty quickly.  When it dries out in the middle of summer, that's usually the best time to dig it out.  It can get at least a foot thick in there, and is already well on the way to being ready for a garden.  

If you raise rabbits, then it is easy to scoop the droppings out from under the cages.  They are so nice to leave it there for you.  The area under the cages can also become a buffet area for worms, so don't be surprised if the earth worms create a colony under there.  It's pretty common to put a shovel in the rabbit manure and turn it over to find ba-zillions of tiny strings of red spaghetti (baby earth worms).

Hi there rabbits.  Hope you guys are staying happy and healthy.  They provide us with lots of meat as well as mounds of loaded organic stuff.

Here's a pile of that molding rabbit manure.  About time to fill a bin with this stuff too.  With all the worms we find in there ... might just have to go fishing.

For anybody thinking about it, it's never a good idea to use human waste as an addition to a garden where you will be eating the produce.  It might be ok for flowers, for bushes, or for fruit trees, but any food that could come in direct contact with human waste isn't really something that is a good idea to put in your mouth.  Diseases and parasites that are exclusive to people can be passed in their waste material.  Yes, I know ... it's been used like that for thousands of years all over the world, but that still doesn't mean it's a good idea.  Just because it's ok for people in exotic places to get intestinal parasites, that doesn't mean that having intestinal parasites is an exotic thing to try.  In a survival situation, you do what you have to do, but if you don't have to ... steer clear of that one.

I think I talked about harvesting the storm water drainage dirt in an earlier post, so I wanted to show all of you what I was talking about.  Even a small place where rainwater builds up drainage material could be a good source of compostable material.  You just want to make sure that it doesn't come from the highway, or from a giant burn pit, or from any other place where industrial or fuel waste could be around.  Keep it natural if you can.

This is a set of culverts that are under the fence on the downhill side of the pasture where we feed the cows.  There are two 24" culverts here and we have to clean them out periodically to allow the water to drain.  If we don't clean it out, then the water can build up and wash out the fence (been there and did that).  This is after the last few days of flooding rain that we got.  Looks like there might be several cubic yards of sweet dirt right there.  I'll be able to fill a couple of bins with that stuff, when it dries out enough to get a small trailer in there without sinking up to the axle.  I'm so blessed.

I'm really glad you could stop by for a visit, and listen to me as I discuss the finer points of poop.  Nothing like sitting in the shade, drinking a cup of sweet iced tea (or a cold beer), and discussing the intricacies of manure.  Tell everybody you stopped by, and bring some more of your friends.  I've got lots of things to talk about, and you are guaranteed to get a better understanding of how to grow your garden.  I might even ramble on about a few other things as well.

Stop by any time.

Duane

I Believe There is Light in the Tunnel

5-23-21  Digging out the garden

Here's where we are now:

We were able to get a mower in there, but those weeds fought us the whole way.  We gathered numerous wheelbarrows of cuttings that we gave to the cows.  They were so happy.  :)  We could have also added it to a compost bin, but it looks like the pallet bin down here in the garden is pretty much falling apart.  Just one more thing to add to the growing list.

This step was really necessary just to see what we are going to have to deal with.  Gotta find it before you can work it.  When the weeds grow up on the outside of the wooden beds, it allows moisture to stay on the boards and they will rot exponentially faster that way.  Moisture allows the wood to stay soft, and soft wood calls the termites and ants that live inside.  The residue the bugs leave behind becomes food for funguses that will further degrade the boards.  Bugs, fungus, mushrooms, and active bacteria are Mother Natures way of changing wood back to the soil so it can start that cycle of life again.  We may try to carve out little pieces of this wonderful planet for ourselves, but in the end, Gaia is much better at removing traces of our existence then we are at making things that stand the test of time.

I took a hedge trimmer to the trellises for the grapes, and that was a real time saver.  It's usually best to trim the grape vines after the sap has receded into the roots for the winter, but sometimes you have to work from where you're at, instead of where you wish you were.

I still need to weed the grape beds so I can give them a topper of compost, but the first step was to find out where they were.  I see you Golden Muscadines (Scuppernongs).  Looks like there is an old hummingbird feeder hanging in there too.  There probably aren't any hummingbirds around now after starving them for this long, but I bet we can call them back again.  Little bit of water, sugar, and food coloring goes a long way.  It's like waving a flag at the search party helicopter ... Over here! ... Over here!

I did have to trim off quite a few flower clusters on the long new growth, but if we're lucky, we'll still get a showing this season.  If not, it's just part of the process.  Take care of plants the way you're supposed to,, and you'll get the best result.  Anything else can still yield you something, but it's never what it could have been.  I was able to give the same treatment to the Concord Grapes too.  Right now is the height of flowering for the grapes.  The smell of flowering grapes is like somebody sprayed everything with some kind of bug killer.  It's a very sickly sweet smell that adds another flavor to the air here.  The Privet and Wild Roses are blooming right now too, so the air is thick with pollen and fragrances.

Nice and healthy looking stems and leaves on the Concord Grapes.  Large clusters of flowers too.

I found the Elephant Garlic and the Scallions.  They are both still thriving in their beds.  I'll need to dig them both out and replant toward the end of July so they can both get a jump on next winter.  Here's the Elephant Garlic.  This particular type of garlic grows to about3' high for the leaves, but the flowers become 5" purplish balls at about 4-5' high.  They really draw in the bees and wasps necessary to transfer the pollen from flower to flower.  The wasps that come in are also needed to remove a lot of the other bugs that eat your plants.  So I guess you can say that we're growing bugs too.  Since most of the bugs in a garden are actually good for the garden, we never use any kind of poisons that might run them off.

Looks like the Scallions (Winter Onions) are already producing the little pearls that are so sweet and tasty.  Both the Elephant Garlic and the Scallions are varieties of onions that are really loaded with oil,  The essential oil from the onion plant is the thing that makes the onion so beneficial to your health.  The vitamins are packed in every bulb.  Antioxidants, sulfur compounds, essential oils ... these wonderful plants are anti-aging, anti-cancer, and work to feed the good bacterial in your gut.  Some people might experience some stomach distress from eating onions and garlic, but around here, we don't have any problem.  I also found out that if I eat more garlic, it keeps people out of my private space.  Nothing like keeping your private space tidy  :).

Here's a look at some of those baby Scallions on the tops of the plants.  :

These plants are both hardy, and grow all winter, and give a good yield in even extreme conditions.

Next, we'll be digging out some of the beds and putting in the summer garden stuff.  We might be a little late on most of it, but in the end, it won't even matter.  Here's a good example of that.  This is the Garlic Chives after just a couple weeks from the hair-cut.  I don't think we'll be running short, from now on.

Join me next time ... love to have you come in for a visit.

Duane

5/16/21 I found the Garlic Chives

 Raised Bed Gardening in Arkansas

     I was really surprised with how well the Garlic Chives have survived.  They were being strangled by the Bermuda Grass and shaded over by the rest of the tall weeds, but they were still in there ... somewhere.   

     It took a little bit of work to dig it out, but once I got the bed (an old truck tire) defined, I was able to start removing the weeds in the Garlic Chives themselves.  They are easy to tell from all the weeds because of their dark green color, their wide and thick blades, and the base is white and round, like an onion.  This variety doesn't have a bulb on the bottom like the traditional Onion Chives.  They have a thick mat of interconnected roots and spread from under the ground.  When they get too clustered and root-bound to grow very well, then you just dig them up and cut the root mat into bite-sized chunks and replant them.  Give them a little space between the new plants ... like at least a few inches.  You can take the extra and plant it somewhere else, or give it to your friends for their own gardens.  It lets the roots have room to expand and reach new and uncharted territory, and the plant starts all over again.

     The next part was to do what is necessary to get them to grow again.  I had to give them a haircut.  In just about every plant, there is an ingrained survival instinct that causes them to shift from just hanging out to growth mode if they get a haircut.  I think my own hair works like that too.

     Consider it a harvest.  These blades that were cut off went into the bucket that was going to the kitchen.  I wanted to leave enough top to give it something to grow on, but I needed to cut it back enough to see what I was dealing with too.

     After the weeding and the haircut, it was time for the addition of the new compost.  I added a couple inches of new friable and crumbly organic compost that I found clogging up my culverts that lead under the fence from the pasture where I feed the cows.  The stuff that flows down the rainwater runoff from my field, is a well-composted organic matrix that is light enough to be picked up by the water where the sand and clay will usually drop out before it gets there.  This compost could be considered a very fertile "Forest Loam", but is loaded with the fresher material that the cows leave in beautiful brown piles scattered across the fruited plain.  It's a veritable smorgasbord of yummy stuff that the plants really seem to love.  I don't think it's quite ready for human consumption though ... it might need to be run through the filter of a plant's roots before I want it to go in my own mouth ... just sayin'.

  

     This bed looks like it's going to be just fine.  With the way the weather is warming up here in Arkansas, there should be an explosion of new growth in no time.  The cage over the top of the bed is mainly used to keep the dogs out.  Dogs just love to dig in dirt that is fresh and loose.  They also want to help you do whatever you are doing.  "Oooh ... Daddy's digging ... I wanna help ... I wanna help!" they say as they are getting right in the way and try to slap their tongues right in your face.

     Now what happened to that bucket of Garlic Chives?  Oh yeah, it went to the kitchen.  I cleaned the blades in the sink, and removed any weeds that were still hiding among the blades of Garlic Chives.  I snapped off the yellow leaves, and any of them that didn't look as palatable.  Then I loaded all of them into the dehydrator.  I filled 5 trays just with this one cutting.  When they are dehydrating, they give the whole house a smell that is reminiscent of buttery garlic, but there is a hint of another scent that is almost like a mild cabbage that was cooked earlier in the day.  I've always loved coming in when something new is cooking or drying.  I've always loved to eat too.

        Garlic Chives are a really tasty addition to just about any meal.  They are light and easy to add, especially when they are chopped up really fine.  Dehydrated, they have a buttery-garlicy flavor that is mild and sweet (wonderful as a topping to anything needing just a little garlic flavor with the added visual of the tiny green flakes).  If they are fresh, they have a sharper garlic flavor that is still milder than regular garlic.

     I found out that they also freeze really well in their blade form.  When you want to add some fresh Garlic Chives to a recipe, just get them out of the freezer bag and use a pair of scissors to snip off what you want and just put the rest back.  They work out really well as additions to soups and I have this really cool Americanized French Onion soup that I like to make with all the stuff that grows around here.

     In a Pesto, they add a strong and potent flavor that perks up dips, side dishes, and gives a cool garlicy explosion to even a tiny taste (much more than just the blades themselves).  They do tend to add that long-lasting garlic addition to your breath though.  It might even be enough to keep the Vampires away ... I mean if you just happen to be living in an area with a larger than normal Vampire population.

     I ended up with a little more than a pint of dehydrated Garlic Chives with this first haircut, and it will stay usable for at least a couple of years.  They store easily in any kind of container that can be sealed to keep out the humidity.  I store them in canning jars and put a folded up paper towel in the top to act as a desiccant.  They can also be stored in a zip-loc bag with a paper towel in there too.  For longer term storage, they can be sealed in a vacuum sealer with a paper towel in them and kept in the freezer for several years.

     I think I'm going to have some with my scrambled eggs that the chickens left for me, and asparagus this morning.  Now, what can I dig out of this jungle next?

... Duane

 5/9/21  Subject:  The Next Step

     So where do we start?  What's the next step?  Crap ... what's the first step?  That was a big question, considering the monumental nature of the task in front of us.  My wife and I decided that it be best to start with what needed the attention the most.  Now that sounds pretty simple, at first glance, but there were a lot of things that really needed attention.

     We’ve always had a garden that mixed both perennial garden plants as well as annual plants.  The annuals didn’t really matter yet, because we hadn’t planted anything.  So at least that narrowed down the number of beds that could possibly be in the running for needing the attention first.

     The Concord Grapes and Golden Muscadines both needed to be trimmed back to the trellis.  The Elephant Garlic needed to be cleared out.  The Scallions were probably in there somewhere.  There was a planting of Oregano that would need to be cared for.  The Raspberries hadn’t seen any care in several seasons.  A bed of Bamboo that I was growing to establish a bunch of it else ware on the property had grown at least fifteen feet out of the bed.  A couple beds of Kiwi Grapes would need to be looked at, especially after that late freeze just to see if they were still alive.

     We decided to dig out the bed of Asparagus first.  The reasons for this is that Asparagus is probably the first summer plant that comes out of the soil in the spring.  I didn’t know if any of it was still alive in there, but it was worth a shot to work up that bed first.  So there I was, armed with my gloves to protect my hands, a feed sack to keep most of the mud off of my knees, and a Thermacell to keep away the mosquitos, and I started getting the weeds out of the Asparagus bed.  Actually, I was astonished when I found how much of it was still producing, even after all this time.  I'm pretty sure that I even wasted a few as I was doing the deed, and they ended up in the pile of weeds and waste material going to the critters.

  

       A few seasons ago, this was a well-established bed, so we got really lucky with this one.  It looks like it is still able to keep us in fresh spears already.  Asparagus is one of those garden plants that will produce over the course of your whole life.  I think that each plant has about a thirty-year life span, and it takes several years to even start producing.  Kind of like a fruit tree.  Normally, if you want to establish a new bed of Asparagus, you would be doing yourself a massive favor by buying five-year old root stock to start with.  That way you can start getting some snackables during the second season.

     If you start it from seed, a plant will be a wispy little fern that looks a lot like Dill, but it grows a larger root over time and begins to make some pretty massive plants.  By massive, I'm talking about a tall fern that gets at least eight feet tall and can spread over a four foot wide area.  I think some of these plants came up from whatever seeds dropped at the end of the summer either last year, or maybe the year before.  Here’s what they look like if they start from seed.

      A mature Asparagus plant is really something to see, if you’ve never seen one before.  Where you can buy a bunch of “kind of” fresh Asparagus in a grocery store, usually they are soft and pliable and almost rubbery in texture.  They are rarely even offered in stores around where I live that are much bigger than a pencil in diameter.  If you have a well-established planting of Asparagus, some of those puppies come up out of the ground as big around as a quarter.  They’re never rubbery either.  They snap, and are crisp when you bite them.

     Fresh Asparagus has a flavor that is similar to both fresh green peas and fresh green peanuts that haven’t been cured yet.  Ours hardly ever used to make it to the house.  It was always like one of those things that was a snack as you worked in the garden.  They were a treat, they were a reward, and it was first come - first served.

     To harvest an Asparagus spear, about the best way is to cut it at about a half inch below the surface of the ground when it gets about eight inches high.  You can use a knife or a pair of scissors, and just snip it right off.  What this does, is to cause the plant to say, “Hey … somebody stole my baby.”  It makes the plant get anxious about reproducing and it will immediately go into growth mode to get another spear out of the ground as fast as possible.

     The spears themselves are good to eat across their entire length, just wash them first.  If you forgot to check them, or got too busy to cut them one day, they might be taller than you would like, but still cut it off at the same place.  Sometimes the longer stems will get tougher as they get taller, but this is easy to get past.

     Lay the spear on a plate or cutting surface and, starting at the base, begin to gently push a knife against it.  Work your way up the stem about a quarter of an inch at a time until the knife snaps through.  It's good from that point to the top of the spear.  The part that didn’t cut easily becomes fibrous and pithy in your mouth.  It might still have the same nutritional matrix, but a mouth full of fibers isn’t a very good feeling.  It’s like trying to eat string-beans that haven’t had the strings pulled off.

     We’ve taken all of the stalks in this bed down to the ground to make the bed start over again.  I ended up with enough edible Asparagus to add to my breakfast eggs for the next week … yum.  By allowing the sunshine to reach the soil now, we hope to have a bunch more to eat pretty soon.  Asparagus loves the sunshine.  I’ll keep you posted on how it produces in the coming weeks.

     After cutting all of the stalks, I took a hand-held cultivator and removed all the weed roots at the surface level, down to about two inches.  The root crowns of Asparagus are usually about four inches deep, so what this does is allows the plant to easily break through the fresh ground to put those tasty spears in the sunlight again, without having to compete with other plants for the space.

     After cultivating the surface, a layer of our own fresh compost helps to rejuvenate the bed by adding nutrients and fertilizer that will leach down to the root crown every time the bed is watered.  This also helps to keep any weeds from getting a good start because any seeds that are active down in the soil will get a blast of fertilizer and shoot up without giving them a chance to establish a good root system.  Spindly fast-growing weeds are easy-to-pull weeds.

 

     The only pest that I’ve ever noticed on the Asparagus is the Green-Horned Tomato Worm.  They don’t do nearly as much damage to Asparagus as they can to a tomato plant.  They are easy to see on the thin stalks too.  Since they only seem to go after adult plants, your tasty spears are never affected.  You’ll only see them at the end of the season as you allow a few stalks to grow to give the plant a chance to go through its entire growth cycle.  This seems to keep them happy and producing.

     One note about Asparagus … there are certain people that have a mild allergic reaction to fresh and uncooked Asparagus.  I’ve never met any of them, but the Internet says they’re out there.  The cooking process is believed to eliminate many of the side effects.  I tend to eat fresh Asparagus, cooked Asparagus, and even eat the tiny red seed balls that grow on the ferns at the end of the season.  They are about the size of a pencil erasure and have the same flavor as the spears.  The only side effect I notice is my pee gets really strong smelling.  That's not a big deal, because I usually don't leave my pee around for others to have to smell it anyway.

     Ok … what’s next in getting this garden going again?  Maybe I’ll clean out the Garlic Chives.

… Duane

Rejoining the World of Gardening

Raised Bed Gardening in Arkansas

5/2/2021  Subject:  Where Do We Start?

     First, I need to apologize for starting up this blog, and then just disappearing from the world back in 2013.  I know that even though these meanderings never did hit the mainstream, there were still several people that were already looking forward to the new information that I could provide, and I dropped the ball, and left people hanging.

     I could tell you stories about the dimensional portal that sucked me in and it took me this long to find my way back.  Or I could make up something about an alien abduction, where they kept me strapped to a table as they did all their nefarious probing.  Or I could just say, "I'm sorry guys ... I thought I was up to the task, but life threw me a screwball, I took the out, and I'll try to do better in the future."  With that said, I'm starting this thing up again, and I hope I can get all of you to join me again and put your hands in the dirt, and see just how special the world of gardening can be.

     The remains of my poor garden is just sitting out there, unkempt, unworked, and overgrown.  Looking at the task ahead, it's like an insurmountable range of mountains ahead.  No path forward is in sight, it all looks like a jungle from here.  The wooden borders on the beds are lost in the jungle of grasses and weeds that have taken them over, and many of them are rotted to the point where they can't hold the dirt in anymore.

     In my mind, I hear the crunching and munching of bugs eating the wood, and there are nests of ants, like prairie-dog mounds, where the little buggers have piled up their boring residue in giant piles of waste material.  The fencing was torn up a few seasons ago when an army of Viking Cows came up the coast and pillaged the entire area (I know they were Vikings because they had horns on their heads).

     Here's what it looks like now:

     I've got the picture of my mom sitting on the mantle, and it reminds me that no matter how big the task is, there is nothing that we can't do.  She has always been my inspiration and my guide.  My mom is the little girl in the middle, between her two older sisters.  You can just see the orneriness on her face.  We lost both of my parents a few years ago, but Mom sits up there on the shelf to say hi to me when I come in.

     Humans are the strangest species in existence.  Where other creatures struggle to survive and attempt to adapt to the everchanging and hostile environment (and many times fall to the wayside of evolution in the process), people reach out with their opposable thumbs, and their tools, and their intelligence (and most importantly, their desire) and mold their environment to fit their needs.

     I don't think that we ever really live in harmony with the world around us.  We can, we have the ability to, but what we almost always do instead is to force the world to become what we want.  I guess there's a happy medium between nature and human habitation somewhere in the mix, we just don't usually get to that place.

     So here's to molding the world and creating our own niche in the middle of all of it.  Here's to asking Gaia (the Mother and Spirit of the Earth) to bless our efforts at semi-harmonious co-existence and asking God to give us the strength to climb that mountain ahead.  It's just a mountain after all.  One foot in front of the other, one step forward at a time.  Each thing that we accomplish is another goal reached, and our path widens as we move into our future.

     Come with me as I bring my gardening world back to a point where I can sit with my little woman in our yard chairs, right in the middle of that jungle.  We'll sip on our cool drinks of choice, and marvel at how precious life is, and how blessed we are for being able to share all of it together.  Join with me in bringing my garden back from the brink of extinction.  Use the trials and issues that I work through to assist you in your own journey, and watch as the insurmountable mountain becomes just another bump in the rearview mirror of life.

     On the next post, we'll start to carve out the garden that is waiting in the jungle.  It's like a wood carving.  To get what you see in there, just cut away everything that doesn't match the image in your mind.

... Duane