Where to put your compost pile

I am a compost convert...I am completely sold on the idea of closing the nutrient cycle of everything that grows and comes onto someones property. Of course apartment dwellers can't do this easily, but so many people live on suburban lots. There are lots of excuses why people don't compost and most of them are crappy ones. Basic knowledge shouldn't be one of those excuses. You can find all kinds of advice...everything from detailed scientific or pro-farmer experiences all the way down to average yokels like me. Here is one simple lesson.

Where to site your pile is a common question. Common pointers: not near trees (roots will suck nutrients), not in the shade (heat helps decomposition), close to your garden (for convenience). Sometimes they add "close to your kitchen." Well...guess where mine is? Not close to my kitchen. Look below:

All the way at the back of the lot near the corner of the neighbor's fence.

Do you know why they recommend putting it near the kitchen? Because this is what you collect to put in the pile:

Not exactly what you want lingering in your kitchen.

Now Northwest Arkansas has mild winters...but this one was extreme. We had four snows in a six week period. The first was the dusting above.

The second was several inches..okay, normal. And usually it melts off fast.

The third was a very decent snow by our standards. And some very cold weather to go along with it.

The fourth snow was 14 inches at our house. A record during my lifetime for Fayetteville. And BITTER COLD for days. (don't the raised beds look like shallow graves covered in snow?)

Well guess what happens when you don't want to trudge through knee high snow at 4 degrees?

PILEUP!!!!!

Lesson learned.

Is this healthy for my soil?

Remember the beautiful compost I was so excited about? I commented that I found a few pieces of glass in it, but that I was still happy with it. All it took was a few rains for the truth to come out...our UP rather.

So we spread about 4 cubic yards of this stuff in 400 square feet of raised beds. This much glass has come up so far...and I imagine there is a lot more of it in the soil. The rain will settle it but how much of the soil's rising crap does this represent? Just the first inch or so, right? We put 5-7 inches in most of the boxes. Is there really five or six times as much glass still left in our soil?

I am a little disappointed in the quality of the compost from the City of Fayetteville. I guess we will continue to pull glass piece by piece for years to come. There goes running my hands through soil....without gloves at least.

An ambitious expansion

Okay so this year's garden grew from 4 to 6 to 10 of those 4x4 boxes as the spring planting inspired us. This is on top of a 2 wide foot wrap around the deck that is to the right of this picture. In addition we had two long bean rows out to the left of the square boxes just in the ground. As you see there are now three long boxes....4x12 basically. And you may not see them in the right background, but there are two more 4x4's. That brings us to 12 of the squares. With the wrap around bed it all comes to about 396 square feet. That is really only 20 x 20, but remember we are not doing traditional row gardening with huge walkways between rows of vegetables. To put that in perspective if I planted it all in green beans I would harvest 222lbs (using last year's results). At upwards of 4 dollars a pound at the farmers' market, that would be $888 in produce.

Part of this expansion is because I went bought that extra scoop of compost. With that much, we don't even have to worry about mixing the horrible clay crap in with the good stuff, but we did a bit anyways. Actually the long box to the left there we just put the compost straight on top of the grass. All the boxes are set 2-3 inches into the ground, but with no weed barrier. The other 4 new boxes received the tender loving care of me hacking out clumps of sod, shaking, and removing as much roots and rocks as I could. I guess this will be a bit of an experiment to see how many more dandelions come up through the first long bed.

I should have taken pictures of the dandelions I pulled. The tops were small and puny, but they had roots up to 9 or 10 inches long and some of them I wasn't even getting the whole thing. I always knew dandelions were survivors, but I assume they really dig deep to get through the cherty clay that was used to level the lot 25 years ago.

I don't know how Kyle is going to manage to garden that much garden. He likes the idea of doing a little bit of everything in the garden. That makes for a lot of work with things needing started at different times, different sun and water requirements, confusing crop rotations, and different harvests. I prefer to do fewer items that I like to eat more of or that I had a good harvest of last year. I would love to have extra to give to friends and family.

We have basically done square foot method or variations of it. Kyle suggests he will run long rows in those long boxes, but not give them space between. I am not sure what I think of that. I say if you have a large group you want to plant, do it in a 4x4 block.

Garden Journal #13

First the vegetable update, but then the really exciting news.

Parsnips. Like carrots but white and a stronger flavor. They were gnarly. Could have left them in, but needed to make way for......

THE COMPOST!!! A water bill, a borrowed truck (my dad's), and $20 plus tax bought me 2 cubic yards of the finest compost the City of Fayetteville provides it's citizens. And not knowing that each household is only allowed one scoop, I went back for a second. To give you a sense of how much 2 cubic yards is, my father's Ford F-250 was overflowing with the single scoop. Big thanks to Fillan for helping unload the first scoop and Gayathiri for helping unload the second. If Gayathiri's father knew that she came to the United States only to end up shoveling compost for a gay man I am sure he would reconsider his investment.

Don't you just love the way it crumbles?

Using the crappiest plastic wheelbarrow known to man, much of it ended up in the backyard in the many raised beds. Gentle turning in...not too deep...still leaves a good 8 inches of good soil work with in the spring. After some rain and some settling I filled them even further.

One little problem....some glass pieces in several of the boxes. Oh well..the compost is made from yard waste from citizens and I am sure random bottles end up in their curbside bags. I am still grateful to the City and her citizens who don't compost their crap in their own yard.

Garden Journal #9

Compost. Homemade. My heaven.

This batch is the first one that truly is what compost is supposed to be. It was a long slow batch sure to be full of seeds, but those can be turned into the soil easily.

That cage was over the strawberries to keep the rabbits out. It worked fine for a screen.

A good barrow full...isn't it beautiful?

The dill and fennel came out of here earlier. Now for the treatment and garlic to be planted later in the fall.

See how much darker and nicer the compost looks?

Mixed well with the existing soil and ready for a late fall planting of garlic.

Garden Journal #8

Late summer in the garden has been a little slow compared to some of the busy weeks in midsummer. I will try to post some pics from back when the produce was really cranking.

Learning: I never would have thought that okra plants would grow 5 feet tall. They started out as the tiniest little things and it took until the heat came on for them to really start growing. They ended up being quite woody and had a very well developed root structure.

Confusion: I have no idea what kind of peppers these are. They have absolutely no heat to them but they don't look like any of the others we grew. It was a mix called "salsa peppers" so who know what they are. Do you know?

Fall Reprise: The idea of a fall garden sounds neat but it terrifies me. I went a head and took a leap of faith and emptied out the packet of radish seeds leftover from the spring. They popped right up and continue to grow. (I was able to use some of my second batch of compost in the soil!)

An Old Enemy Returns: The rabbit(s) that live(s) under the deck previously feasted on the soya beans though we got a good crop out of them. Now the food of choice is a fall batch of Kyle's "granny" bean and my very late experiment of sweet potatoes. I worked in some of the second batch of compost into this late planting.

Fall Surprise: We pulled our onions after heavy rains when the tops started looking really bad. One box had some onions that a friend planted and they never got as big as the others, but they just kept growing. The tops had rotted off and I decided to pull whatever remained. Most small, but a few bulbed out. I was not expecting them at all!

Garden Journal #7

Carrots and soil conditioning

That's the same bunch twice. This is the first harvest of anything that grew in my own compost. The deep soil was good for growth, but these babies were shaded out by huge and leaning asparagus that will actually be harvested next spring.

What do you do when stuff starts coming out and you have nothing to do? Go ahead and condition the soil. This was a little bit of compost that was almost ready.

Half a bag of manure left over from this spring.

Garden Journal #1

(This was written about 4 weeks ago, waiting photos for posting)

Kyle's Ambitious Garden Plans
I knew that Kyle wanted a vegetable and herb garden. We talked briefly about it last spring, but decided we were too late to really get started, especially with the work that needed to be done on cleaning up the ice storm damage and putting a new roof on the house. For myself I imagined just one big, long row of something along side the fence. I don't care what it would be, but I had collard greens on my brain I guess. Just a bunch of stuff that I could give away to my friends to prove that I could grow something and to subtly encourage healthy eating habits. Little did I know how grand his plans would grow!

Kyle had something quite different in mind. I should have suspected when he came home with seed packets galore and starter kits. Then came the spreadsheets tracking germination and planning the beds. Oh, the beds! Raised beds! A whole bunch of them! I didn't volunteer to dig out all the grass turf for them, but I have helped a little here and there. As always little side projects distract us from on-going projects or chores. For example the lawn been rarely mowed this spring and taking out the back fence took priority over finishing the soil prep for the raised beds.

Current (May 30th) Garden

My Little Victory

I am probably too impatient to be a successful gardener. I want immediate results that will not fail. The idea of starting from seed and only having 20% of them germinate and survive is nerve-wracking for me. My preference would be annuals in six packs and for sure bulbs like daffodils. Same for vegetables. I was letting Kyle worry about all this seeding business knowing full well that when the time comes for results, I will be buying peppers and tomatoes that have got a good head start in the nursery.

While Kyle has been fooling with the seeds, I had a little surprise that has turned into a small victory. As you have probably read, I have an active compost pile. About two weeks ago I was out turning it when I spotted some new green growth coming out of it. I was not thrilled about this until I realized what it was. GARLIC! I had thrown out some small bulbs that had sprouted and not even thought about them taking root. I did a little research and decided that I was going to grow garlic this year. They should have been started back in about November for a long growing season, and they recommend starters that are certified disease free, but any kind of green growth makes me happy. So I grabbed a few more of the old garlic bulbs that really are past their prime, and planted them in my little hill of cooked compost from last year. They all rooted just fine and now they have been transplanted in the newly prepared raised bed.

Garlic bed as of May 30th

My victory is that with basically no work, I have green and growing plants that are bigger and prettier than anything Kyle has. Of course they will not produce the best results because they need a long growing season, but hey, they look pretty! (UPDATE: Garlic is in a normal bed now)

Now the question is should I transplant the three potato chunks that have sprouted in my active compost pile as well? It wasn't in the plans for the garden, but perhaps I should just try them out! (UPDATE: I did transplant the potato starts)