Create Your Own Enriched Soil

Merry Teesdale is a field biologist and permaculture designer who specializes in win-win solutions. She manages OwlWood Wildlife Refuge and OwlWood Garden, which displays and encourages the development of sustainable food production within the community.

Editor’s Note: The author had a family emergency and has been out of town.Part 2 appeared in the January issue.

Part 3

Permaculture principle #5 says, “Use biological resources to save energy, produce needed materials and perform work. The key is management based on timing.” Principle #12-d enjoins us to “Work with, not against nature.” Both compost piles and worm bins can be perfect examples of these principles.

For ease of usage and maximum results from your compost pile and worm bin, location is key. Principle #2 requires that “Each element performs multiple functions – at least three,” so placement of the structures must be carefully planned. Ideally, you want the compost pile next to the ingredients, for example, near the chicken coop or near the garden. The worm bin should be in a shaded area near the kitchen for easy access.

A compost pile can perform three functions. It can store and process organic material into humus for the gardens. It can function as another area to grow plants on. And it can create a new gardening space by prepping the ground beneath it. Additionally, the shape or appearance of the compost pile can be a design element in your garden.

In order to improve the soil in places which are currently lawn but will become transformed into food-growing centers, compost is necessary. For plants to flourish, the soil must have humus and the more the better. Humus is the water storage component of soil and the action of worms, along with a multitude of soil biota, turn it into available nutrients for plants.

Fortunately, compost is easy to make. The ingredients can be had for free. Everything that was once alive will compost into humus given time, even things like jeans and t-shirts. As anyone with a lawn knows, periodically a lot of yard waste is generated. Permaculture philosophy states that excess yield is a pollutant and creates work. Capture and cycle it again. Grass clippings, leaves, small branches, plant wastes, manure, kitchen scraps (excluding animal parts) and even ashes can and should be used to make compost. When composted into humus, these castoffs are transformed into buried treasure and generate wealth in the form of marvelously healthy food. Paying a company to take away yard clippings actually impoverishes your yard, your pocketbook and ultimately yourself!

I don’t have a permanent compost site. My piles tend to move around the yard from year to year creating new planting sites. A compost pile will eliminate the grass beneath it just as effectively as sheet mulching does. Each spring I use up all the humus and discover that the empty spot has been transformed into a newly bared and fertilized planting area. One time I envisioned a fragrant flowering shrub garden next to the deck and started a huge compost pile right on that spot. It was convenient because I didn’t have to carry food scraps very far. A year later I spread out the humus and planted Mock Orange, Daphne, and spearmint. Mmmmm, sitting on the deck is a wonderful experience now.

There are several composting techniques. The fastest way is the hot pile, which is assembled all at once. It is built like lasagna with layers of green stuff and brown stuff. It must be monitored and turned over a time or two. Because of the work involved and the fact that large amounts of several ingredients have to be available at the same time, a hot pile is impractical for most people. Besides, time goes by whether you want it to or not so why not just relax and let nature do the work.

The cold method for composting takes longer, but the end result is the same. Instead of six to eight weeks, the cold method takes 12 to 18 months to decompose the ingredients. Since a cold pile will not kill weed seeds like a hot pile will, you must be careful to keep flowering weeds out of it. Bacteria will break down most of the ingredients, but there will also be worms to help, who add their castings (poo) to make the mix even more fertile. The pile needs to stay somewhat moist, so place it in a fairly shady spot.

A nice-looking compost pile container can be made out of used bricks and this style has the advantage of being movable. A row of bricks is placed in a circle or oval shape with an inch of space between each brick. On the next row, center each brick over the space, overlapping the ends of the two bricks below it. Stagger up a few rows and the pile is hidden inside a nice-looking brick structure.

Now you are ready to add every vegetative thing you can find for about six months. This includes, but is not limited to, grass clippings, leaves, weeds that have not started to flower, drier lint, old cotton clothes, paper, cardboard and kitchen scraps (but not meat). Thin layers are best. Keep a shovel handy and stick the kitchen scraps under the surface for faster assimilation by worms and also for protection from meal-scrounging neighborhood dogs. Don’t put meat scraps in there; it’s best to bury them in a hole. Otherwise, anything organic can be composted. With a compost pile and a little imagination, you can significantly reduce your waste stream. One of my neighbors gets rid of his grass clippings so I trade him for them. Now he brings them over to my pile.

Nitrogen is a necessary ingredient so occasionally add manure of some sort. Dog poo is not good, however. Chicken, sheep, cow, and horse manure are all fine. For variety and bulk, buckets of free coffee grounds from the local java joint are a wonderful resource. It’s practically already humus. Small soft stuff is best because it breaks down fastest. Harder and larger items like wood chips, twigs and pine cones take longer to decompose. Add them only when starting the pile and in a year or so, they will be gone. Every once in a while, add a couple shovels of garden soil from a cool, moist, shady place. That soil is full of bacteria which will help your pile break down faster.

No matter how much stuff you add to it, the pile won’t overflow because whatever is added will shrink down within just a few days. The bacteria that are doing all the composting work for you need air and moisture and too much compaction can hamper this. By pushing a long piece of pipe or an old shovel handle into a few spots and twirling it around you can easily open up holes to the center of the pile for air and water access.

After a few months of adding stuff, it’s time to let the pile finish decomposing. I twirl in a few holes, wet the pile well, cap it so it won’t dry out and start another pile. The cap can be black plastic, a piece of old carpet, even a thick layer of leaves. If you don’t turn it over or stir it up, the cold pile system takes one year or even longer to completely break down into a brown dirt-like substance. In order to have a constant supply of compost ready every six months, three piles are required. The two older piles are easy to camouflage by planting a potato or two or some squashes on them and the piles thereby become useful during the waiting time.

Principle #9: stack and pack your system. One year, I grew some fantastic tomatoes on a pile, because the dark-colored compost heated up fast on cool days and the pile held water lots longer than the garden soil. Warm weather plants love that. Truth be told, vegies often simply volunteer in my compost piles. In order to get three piles started at once, I needed to vastly increase the compost input for a couple years. I planted some dynamic accumulator plants called borage and comfrey. These perennials have large leaves with lots of nutrients which can be harvested many times for the compost pile by whacking them back repeatedly before they flower.

Here are a few DO NOTs of composting. Be smart and DO NOT put flowering weeds, seeds or invasive plants in a compost pile or they will come back to haunt you, creating much unwanted work. (Of course, if you are mulching properly, you won’t have a weed problem.).If the weeds are invasive, dry them in the sun on some cardboard until thoroughly dead before adding them to the pile or throwing them away. DO NOT let bindweed get into your compost pile lest you spread it all over the place. DO NOT let the pile dry out. The bacteria will die and the pile will not decompose. DO NOT let weeds or grass grow on your compost pile. Cover it to shade them out. If necessary, lay down a narrow layer of carpet around the perimeter of the pile to deter grass from entering the pile lest the grass rootlets can be transferred to other places in the gardens, creating more work for you.

I also have a store-bought black plastic compost maker which works by adding green stuff in the top and removing compost from the bottom. It worked pretty well in general until I threw in some hunks of sod, which totally constipated it, evidently an incorrect use. I just thought up a new principle: “Do not create work for yourself!” §

Next Month:
Worm Bins – Every Living Thing Has Intrinsic Worth.

---