Tips from Charles on Building a Compost Pen

Our site for mining "black gold"

Let's take a closer look at the features of the compost pen that Charles designed and built.  It's a simple structure, but its features improve the flow of collecting, turning, and harvesting compost.  Charles also minimized the cost of building the pen by using salvaged and free materials.

1. Drain tile is set into a foundation of compacted dirt, which slopes toward a drainage trench at the rear of the pen. The trench is filled with cobblestones, which were collected from the yard.

2. Charles had intended to fill the bottom of the pen with gravel, but changed his mind when a neighbor offered a supply of wood chips.  Wood chips are appropriate for this application because they absorb moisture and encourage compost-benefical insects.  Wood chips are also preferable to gravel because some of the base layer will inevitably be integrated into the compost during turning.  A layer of wood chips in front of the pen provides an area to stand while adding to and turning the compost.

3. The wood used in the frame was left over from the house construction several years ago.   By saving wood and other materials, the homeowners have a collection of usable materials for many projects, and avoided contributing to the huge amount of waste accumulated by residential construction.  According to the National Association of Homebuilders' Research Center, construction of the average 2000 sq. ft. home generates 8000 lb. (50 cubic yards) of material waste, 3000 lb. (11 cubic yards) of which is wood.

4. Charles's original plan called for 1 cm square-grid "hardware cloth" to line the pen.  However, lighter-gauge chicken wire was a quarter of the price of the hardware cloth. Doubling the chicken wire created a 1.5 cm grid at half the cost.

As you can see, Charles's building techniques include using salvaged materials, working with materials provided by the site, and designing creatively.  Whether you live in a rural or urban environment, opportunities exist to reduce the cost and resources used for your project.

Try, Try Again (The Growing Challenge)

My planting medium is composed of vermiculite, perlite, and peat moss.

Our seeds from Baker Creek arrived in today's mail.  Unfortunately, they were out of bok choy, but I'll try to find those seeds at the local garden center.

The wonderful husband and I started a batch of herb seeds under a fluorescent light a couple of weeks ago.  Sadly, they succumbed to "damping off," which means that a variety of fungi in the planting medium attacked the young stems just below the soil line, and they toppled over.  We had started them early as an experiment, and have more of the same seeds to start again.  This time, I have a plan.

I've done my homework by consulting some of my favorite gardening blogs: Elements in Time, Tiny Farm Blog, and Seeded.  Based on advice gleaned from their posts, comments, and forums, here are some steps that I'll take to ensure seeding success:

1. Sterilize seed trays using Melinda's method: wash with soap and water, rinse in a solution of three parts hydrogen peroxide to one part water, rinse with water, and dry.
2. Plant seeds in a soilless medium composed of equal parts by volume of peat moss, vermiculite, and perlite.  This mixture holds moisture and is light and fluffy, to promote good aeration.  It also creates a sterilized environment for the seeds to germinate.
3. Moisten the medium with cooled, weak chamomile tea to prevent damping off of the seedlings.  Apparently, chamomile discourages the growth of fungi that cause seedlings to fall over.  Mike recommends a solution of one bag of chamomile tea brewed in one quart of boiling water.
4. Keep medium moist by bottom watering: place trays in a tub of water for about 15 minutes to allow medium to rehydrate from the bottom.
5. Place a heating mat under seed trays and hang a fluorescent light several inches above the seed trays.  The light will be kept on at least 12 hours a day after the seeds germinate, and will be raised as the seedlings grow.
6. Turn on an oscillating fan to "breeze" the seedlings for an hour or so every day.  This promotes stout growth of the seedlings, and prepares them for transplanting outdoors.
7. Sow appropriate seeds directly into the garden soil.  Beans, squash, beets, and radishes are among Melinda's suggestions for in situ planting.

I should mention that Wonderful Husband Charles thinks that some of the steps above are "hooey."  Implementation of my plan may involve "His" and "Hers" seed trays.  We'll see who eats the first lima beans and tomatoes.  Ha!

We're in no hurry to start our next batch of seeds.  Since our garden is going to be a hobby, and since we don't expect it to be our principal source of nutrition this year, we're content to wait until a little more snow melts.  When we race to the farmer's market in May, it will be as patrons, not as vendors.

The rare seeds that we ordered didn't have any instructions written on their packets.  I liked the seed planting spreadsheet at You Grow Girl.  I found the most specific information on frost dates here.  

If you ran out of toilet paper rolls to make the seed cups in my previous post, check out the instructions on Seeded for making seed cups out of newspaper.  

Seedy and Crafty (The Growing Challenge)

A few snips on a cardboard roll produce biodegradable seedling cups!

Recovering from the flu has allowed me ample time to choose seeds for our garden.  We have plenty of herb seeds (at least 20 varieties) remaining from last year's order from Heirloom Seeds.  I also have mache, French mache, and something called "Salad Burnet," but I'm going to order several additional leafy types because I love fresh lettuce.  Plucked from the garden and rinsed, it's a totally different animal, so to speak, from greens that have spent any length of time in a bag.

This year, most of our seeds will come from Baker Creek, which produces an attractive catalog and has user-friendly, online ordering, as well.  I really like the story of this company-- Jere Gettle started selling heirloom seeds at age 17, collecting rare varieties from around the world and promoting seed-saving by his customers.  Now, he and his wife run a multi-faceted business in Missouri, including publishing a quarterly magazine and operating Bakersville, a pioneer-themed village with monthly events.  Whew!

Though Baker Creek's selection meets all of our needs, I'm also going to order from the Turtle Tree Biodynamic Seed Initiative catalog that I picked up at the Hawthorne Valley Farm Store.  Turtle Tree offers open-pollinated seeds from a network of biodynamic growers across the country.   Information in the catalog, such as source codes for each seed variety, is reassuring to anyone who is concerned about genetically modified organisms in our food supply.  

Baker Creek seeds:

Dixie speckled butterpea, Mexican sour gherkin cucumber, Ching Chang bok choy, Tainong Emperor heading mustard (for kim chi), Chinese Red Meat (or "watermelon") radish, Pantano Romanesco tomato, Riesenstraube grape tomato, Orangeglo watermelon, Red Wonder wild strawberry

Turtle Tree Seeds:

Golden beets, Charentais cantaloupe, arugula, "Frilly Oaks" lettuce mix, King of the North pepper, Anaheim hot pepper, Ronde de Nice zucchini, Rainbow Swiss chard, Principe Borghese tomato, Harold's Special Mix cosmos, alfalfa cover crop, burgundy amaranth cover crop

The lists represent about one-third of my original selections.   I crossed off my list those vegetables that are expected to be in plentiful supply at local farmer's markets: squash and zucchini, root vegetables, and several varieties of cucumbers (we love cucumbers).  I kept unusual varieties, such as the Mexican sour gherkin cukes and the "watermelon" radish, and varieties that I have great plans for, such as heading mustard for kim chi and Principe Borghese tomatoes for drying.  Wonderful Husband Charles is excited about cover crops (really, who isn't?).

And finally, to explain that wacky photo I took: biodegradable seedling cups can be made from empty, cardboard toilet paper rolls.  Use scissors to make an angled cut at one end of the roll.  Rotate the roll to create four to six parallel cuts.  Gently overlap the flaps, like closing a box top, and press until you have closed one end of the roll.  That creates the bottom of the seedling cup.  Fill the cup with growing medium, plant your seeds and keep them warm and moist, and you can transplant the seedling in its cup!  Happy planting!

Savor Vermiculture (The Growing Challenge)

I'm a planner: I like to have an itinerary when I go on vacation, I can spend hours researching where to go to dinner, and I've been making the rounds on the gardening blogroll for pointers in planning our garden.  Wonderful Husband Charles is bold and likes to experiment: last spring, he started an unconventional container garden, composed of (in order of greatest to least success) small hot peppers, basil, mache, onions, and sweet corn.   I, however, become sheepish after the seed selection process is complete and it's time to mate seed and soil; what if something goes wrong?

I've come to terms with the possibility that the seeds might get started too early or too late; that the garden plot may not be ideally sited for every variety I want to grow; that the critters whose tracks I now see in the snow may ultimately eat more of our salad greens than we will.  But the timing of the planting still feels a little early to me.  Let me tell you instead about something foundational, the preparation of which can never be premature: the soil.

Along with our housemates, we deposit food scraps, eggshells, coffee grounds, and spent tea into a gallon bucket near the sink.  Once full, its contents are conveyed to one of two large, black cylinders in the back yard, usually by WH Charles on one of his infamous, barefoot compost runs.  I wonder if that practice will lose its allure when the snow melts.  

Fortunately, maintenance of our other compost system offers no such opportunity for pneumonia-inducing activities.  The worms are housed warmly in the basement-level mechanical room.  WH Charles made their home by nestling a large, plastic pail in an opaque, five-gallon bucket.  The inner pail is pierced with many quarter-inch drill holes, and has a hollow core of metal mesh to promote air circulation.  WH Charles filled the doughnut-shaped space with alternating, quarter-inch layers of soil and a concoction we refer to as "worm salsa," vegetable scraps blended with water in the food processor.  He feeds our squirmy friends every couple of weeks, sprinkling a layer of soil on top of the food to prevent any odor from escaping.  He also keeps the lid loosely on the outer bucket, as worms prefer dark, moist environs.

Our worm community is composed of earthworms and night crawlers.  We're on the lookout for red wrigglers to add to the population, as well.  WH Charles developed our system after reading a couple of articles on vermicomposting.  If you want dig into the subject, as it were, there are many informative resources online.  I found a good overview on this website.  Happy composting!

Verdant and Victorious

My maternal grandparents grew up in a rural community in northeastern Mississippi.  My grandmother, along with her nine siblings, composed the labor force on their parents' small farm.  As a child, I loved hearing her stories about picking cotton, swimming in the cow pond, and swiping eggs from the henhouse to exchange for a Baby Ruth at the general store (run by her grandfather).  Her after-school snack, she told me many times, was a turnip or onion pulled from the garden on her way in the door.

While my choice of snack was different (butter-and-sugar sandwich, anyone?), the meals I ate at Maw-Maw's house included the foods that she'd prepared her whole life: butter beans, grown on Paw-Paw's farm in Liberty, Mississippi, and canned in their kitchen; boiled red potatoes with white sauce; ripe tomatoes from the garden; turnip greens, which my mom liked to eat with pepper vinegar; and a cast iron skillet of cornbread, which never contained wheat flour or sugar.  Paw-Paw enjoyed leftover cornbread with milk for his breakfast, while I chose Maw-Maw's biscuits with homemade peach and huckleberry preserves.  

A theme of Maw-Maw's stories was growing up poor during the Great Depression.  However, her family's hard work on their farm meant that they never went hungry like so many others did.  Growing food was something that she had always done, and was common in rural communities at that time.  During WWII, the Victory Garden movement expanded small-scale food production to urban areas, as well, in support of the war effort.

If its popularity on the blogsphere is any indication, the Victory Garden concept is experiencing a renaissance.  Its relevance extends beyond our status as a nation at war: we are also a nation facing rising food costs, unease over food security, and backlash against industrial agriculture.  Backyard gardening offers a hobby that helps us feed ourselves.  

As a garden neophyte living in Zone 5, I'm relieved to find a plentiful supply of garden blogs and even support networks online.  I've signed up for the Growing Challenge, organized by Melinda at Elements in Time.  Participants commit to growing one more fruit or vegetable crop than they did last year, and to publishing weekly posts about their gardening activity.  I'm also joining the Victory Garden Drive led by Pattie at Foodshed Planet, whose goal is to inspire two million new organic gardens this year.  Pattie also encourages experienced gardeners to mentor those of us whose thumb color is yet undetermined.  To find a companion gardener, or to "Take Five" new gardeners under your wing, check this post.

In addition to my gardening posts, I'll also provide a blogroll of gardening resources that I come across.  Reader contributions are also welcome, particularly if you garden in Zone 5!