Category Archives: Compost

Garden Experiments Revisited

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In February and March, I posted two garden experiments .  The titles of these were Compost Hits and Misses and Spinach Experiment.   Follow the links to get a quick refresher.  Basically to sum it up the compost experiment was to see if an anaerobic compost pile is easier to keep than an aerobic compost pile.  The spinach experiment was testing the germination rate of  mulched seeds.

One was a success, one was… in Myth Buster lingo, we will call it plausible.  We will start with the success.  The anaerobic compost pile.  I was pretty happy with the end product of the pile.  I put in almost all the contents of my “after winter” compost pile.  Which is basically kitchen scraps, pumpkins, landscape material from last fall, all not really decomposed because it sat all winter.  So I took all that plus some manure and made a pile where my herb garden is going to be.  Then I threw a black tarp on top and secured it with rocks.  Every week I would dumped a 5 gallon bucket of water or two on it and once gave it a good stir around with my pitch fork.

This is the anaerobic compost pile after 3 months. It is pretty well decomposed. The farmer ran over it with the tractor.

Pros

  1. The pile decomposed fairly quickly.
  2. Almost no management except adding the water.
  3. Lots of worms when the pile was used.
  4. The pile did not really stink.

Cons

  1. The black tarp was an eye sore in my yard for a few months.
  2. The farmer ran over it with the tractor when we were getting other garden areas ready for spring.

I would use the anaerobic method again.  I would suggest, I guess with all compost methods, put it somewhere out-of-the-way and out of sight.  It was nice to put it on my future herb garden spot, because the farmer just tilled all that compost right into the ground and it is now part of my herb garden.  Over all, a good experiment.

Now the spinach experiment.  I mulched one of my raised beds with hay and made rows to plant spinach seeds.  I did not have a great germination rate.  Maybe somewhere around 50% or less.  Some rows did better than others.  I believe they just did not get enough sunlight to really pop up.  I do have spinach though, and we enjoy a spinach salad just about every night so it was not a total loss.  Also it took longer than normal for the spinach to really get going.  Again, because of the lack of sunlight right when they were emerging from the soil.  I don’t think I will do this again.  I will just plant in rows and hoe in between.  Then when spinach is done, I will do consecutive plantings or if not in the mood just mulch the whole bed, to keep weeds down, until fall when I can plant more spinach.

Since I now read a lot of garden blogs, I have noticed that many gardeners will have an experiment going in one form or another.  It’s just not enough sometimes to hear someone tell you something works or does not work.  You have to see it for yourself.  I had books and others warn me about trying an anaerobic compost pile.  It would stink, it takes longer, maybe I didn’t do it right, but I sort of liked it.  It gave me some quick (3 month) compost.  It’s worth it to just try something and make your own conclusions.  Those are this farm wife’s thoughts on the subject.

The Farm Wife

Start a garden! No Excuses

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One of my raised beds.

The farmer, the kids, and I take a trip to Florida every year.  We drive from Wisconsin all the way to Fort Meyers where my grandparents (second generation farmer and wife) stay the winter.  On the trip, farmer and I have lots of time to talk and drive.  I enjoy the time because I can bring up any topic I want and he has no choice but to sit and converse.  I talked a little about gardening this year because I have been thinking about how someone would start a garden with little or no equipment.  Something that is very foreign to the farmer.  “Why would you start a garden with no equipment?” is the response I get.

Urban gardening has gotten very popular.  You can have a garden anywhere you get sun.  I think many people look out at their yard, large or small, and think how would I even start?  I don’t have a truck, I don’t have a tiller, I don’t have a gator.  How do you start a spot for your garden?  The first thing I would do, and maybe even start a year

This is actually the kids sandbox, but the idea is the same. I put a rock in the corner so I would have somewhere to sit, also a good garden tip, it can't be ALL work.

earlier than the garden, is get your compost pile going.  Refer to my post compost hits and misses for some compost how to.  Next, I would think in terms of a raised bed.  There are many raised bed kits out there, but one reason people have for starting a garden is to save some money, so build your own raised bed.  Basically all your have to do is make a box out of 4 pieces of treated lumber.  If you absolutely can’t rent or borrow a tiller try to get lumber that is 2″x12″.  Construct you box right on the spot you want your garden.  If you can rent a tiller do so or have a landscape company come out and work up the ground for you, I would recommend it.  If you don’t want to spend the money just pile dirt up from a local landscaper or fill it with compost from your own pile.  When you put plants in, you might have to dig down and work up the spot so they have plenty of room for the roots to grow.  You don’t have to spray the grass just put your dirt right on top and the grass will die.  Don’t fill your raised box with leaf mulch that you might get for free from the city or township.  Leaf mulch is basically nitrogen and your plants will look great, but they won’t have much as far as a vegetable is concerned. Adding  some leaves to your compost is fine, but not all leaf mulch.

If you absolutely don’t have a hammer, or want to go to the lumber yard to get lumber, there are still options for you.  My grandma, who now lives in town, grows 2 tomato plants and a cucumber plant on the east side of her house in her flower bed.  It works, it looks good, and she has all the tomatoes her and grandpa need.  If your not quite sure about an all out garden you can still grow your own vegetables.

Back to the farmers response to starting a garden, after I asked him “How would you start a garden with no equipment?”  He says “Go to the local coffee shop or wherever a lot of trucks are parked and ask a farmer to borrow his truck and then ask if he has a tiller and if you can borrow that too.”  I told him we would keep that in mind for plan B.

Compost Hits and Misses

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Composting is a natural process.  That is how God made everything.  It will eventually decompose and return to the earth.  So why do I have so much trouble composting?  It’s not that I can’t compost because like I said natural materials just do that automatically, it’s that I am not composting in a timely manner.

Everyone from Oprah to any home and garden magazine has talked about composting benefits and basics.  I’m not going to go into what to and not to compost to get a list of that go to the University of Illinois extension website (Im sure there are many others).  They will get into carbon and nitrogen ratios which is great, but sometimes you just want to throw stuff in.  Instead I would like to cover the problems I have and probably others also have with compost piles.

A lot of people have an aerobic pile.  You build a structure that holds your material, you throw stuff in and it will compost.  That is what I was trying to do.  Except I was not managing it correctly so my pile was basically anaerobic.  The stuff at the bottom was composting  very slowly but that was about it.

This is the compost bin the farmer made for me out of pallets. Something most farms have sitting around.

My main problems with my compost pile.

       I take compost out of my pile only once a year.

       My pile is never hot or warm.

Even though we live in Wisconsin, and compost piles don’t do much composting in the winter months, I should still get more than one chance to pull compost out of my pile.  Well, since I have done some more compost research, more than just the description of what to put into a pile, I actually had to go to the library.  I think I’ve come up with some answers.

Here are a few mistakes I was making

  1. I was not adding water.  I thought “hey it rains, that should be enough”
  2. I was not chopping my materials up.
  3. I was not adding a bacteria source

I believe an aerobic pile will compost quickly but there is a certain amount of management that needs to be done.  Keeping your pile damp is important.  Taking a hose out to the pile once a week should solve this.  Chopping materials will speed up the composting process.  To do this, take your pile of leaves and run over them with the lawn mower shooting them into a building so you can then pick them up.  You can also do this with your fall garden cleanup material.  If you can get fresh manure do that and throw it in your pile.  Already composted manure can go right out to the garden to help your soil.  Fresh manure supplies the bacteria needed to get that compost pile working.

With all that being said, I think I am going to try my hand at anaerobic composting.  I still have my aerobic pile, but I’m going to get another pile going just to see if I like this better.  I think there will be a lot less work to get compost.  So this is what I did.

First, I moved most of my materials onto the Gator and to a different location.

See how I have lots of large stick like pieces? These will not compost quickly.

I am killing two birds with one stone because I am putting the pile where my herb garden is going to be.  I am composting and killing the grass underneath getting it ready to become an herb garden.

My Gator is my best friend.

Then I added  fresh manure and straw with manure in it.  The animal that I have gotten for manure purposes is the alpaca.   Alpacas are so easy to care for, they are clean, the kids love them and they are a ruminate animal like a cow so their manure is not full of seeds.  I have 3 non breeding males.  Oh my gosh I forgot the best part, they poop in the same spot so it’s easy to pick up manure.

I mixed everything together and placed a black tarp over the pile and secured it with field stone.  Before I put the tarp on I threw a 5 gallon bucket of water on the whole pile.  I will continue to add water that way once a week.

The farmer keeps a pile of field stone for me so I can landscape with stones to my heart’s content.

So this is my anaerobic compost pile!  I have heard that this might stink, but unless its absolutely putrid It won’t matter too much.  It doesn’t look real nice, but it’s February in Wisconsin so nothing looks real nice.  I will update on the pile, but my hope is that I will have some nice compost by May.  Please feel free to share any compost tips.