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Composting and Mulching

If you already make your own compost and mulch your garden, this post isn’t for you. On the other hand, if you are just beginning with gardening or with organic gardening, here is an introduction to one of the best sources of fertilizer and related to it one of the best ways of controlling weeds.

If you have a small garden, or you are primarily composing kitchen waste, you may prefer to use a composting container. In another post I am going to go into more detail on what this is. In this post I am going to assume you have too much material to compost for a small container.

When deciding where to place your compost, you should keep a few things in mind. Compost has a lot of insects in it when it decomposes. They normally don’t go far from the compost, but this means it is best located away from frequently used areas. Compost has a distinctive odor, it’s not normally thought of as objectionable, but keep it in mind if you are sensitive to such things. Compost rarely attracts animals other than a few harmless insects, but if you have an established problem with things like cockroaches or rodents, they may make their home in the compost because it is warm.

I’m going to risk scaring you off by getting a little bit technical, but hang in there. Even if you don’t understand the underlying principles, composting and mulching are easy and it’s very difficult to go wrong. Composting is simply taking waste material from your garden and decomposing it into a form of dirt, that is very rich in nutrients and can be added to the ground in your garden to make it richer.

Composting is both a chemical and biological process. There are two very important elements in your garden, nitrogen (N) and carbon (C), and composting is a chemical reaction between these two elements. Composting is also a biological process, in that it involves a variety of micro-organisims and insects. Composting will work almost no matter what you do, but will go faster if you provide C and N in the correct proportions and provide good conditions for the biological processes to take place.

N is present in almost anything green (green leaves, grass clippings and so on) and also in animal manure, but it is also present in large quantities in the air we breath. C is present in almost anything else, especially in brown colored things (sticks, dried grass and so on).

When preparing a pile of material to be composted it is important to layer it. Layering is important to improve air circulation and water flow, but also because different materials will contain different amounts of C and N, and it is good to provide a good mix of these in all parts of the compost pile. Ideally you will alternate layers that are high in either N or C, providing slightly more C than N.

It’s much more important to make layers of some sort than it is to get the N and C right, so don’t worry about the N and C unless you are trying to make your compost decompose as quickly as possible. Since there is N in the air, if your compost pile needs to adjust the amount of N it will either release or absorb it from the air as necessary, but this will take a little longer than if the correct proportions are there initially.

Since composting is also a biological process, dependent on micro-organisms, it is a good idea to try to provide a souce of these if possible. They are present in the environment anyway, and will establish themselves eventually, but you can speed things up by adding them directly to the compost pile. A good souce of them is a shovel full or two of compost, if you have already made it in the past. Another good source is animal manure. It’s also possible to buy an inoculant from a garden center, but is perhaps not really worth the money, unless you are in a big hurry.

In general you can put anything in your compost pile that was once alive, so almost any plant or animal material. There are however some things to avoid for special reasons. It is very important to put clean things into your compost, and avoid things that could pollute the ground of your garden: commercial cut flowers will contain too many pesticides, paper may contain poisonous inks and bleaches, and so on. You should also never put diseased plants into your compost, because many diseases can survive the composting process and reinfect your garden. You should avoid things that could attract animals like meats or cooked foods. You should avoid large sticks or wood, unless they are chipped first, because they will take too long to decompose. It is a good idea to avoid putting seeds or potatoes into the compost, because these may not be killed and can turn into weeds. Animal bones will take too long to decompose. Small amounts of paper are not a particular problem, but large amounts of unshredded paper will ‘clog’ the compost and interfere with airflow. Egg shells are good for the compost, because they add calcium which is needed by many plants. It is rarely a problem to put living weeds in the compost, because the composting will quickly kill them.

The use of animal manure in composting or gardening is controversal. In theory, it will provide a good source of N and will compost well. In practice, like everything else you need to insure it is clean. If your manure comes from a commercial farm, it will likely contain traces of all of the food and drugs given to the animals it came from. In addition, if it came from animals that were sick, it will likely contain these diseases. Certified organic farmers who use manure, generally have to use certified organic manure. Manure can contain salmonella and E. coli, which can survive composting to contaminate your vegetables, and make you sick.

There are certainly gardeners who swear by manure in their gardens, but it is my experience that it is of no special benefit and is best avoided or used in small quantities. In any event, fresh manure is high in soluble N like nitrates and nitrites, which can burn the roots of small plants and cause environmental pollution. If you use manure in the garden, it is important that it be well aged and composted so the soluble N becomes fixed and can be used by plants as a fertilizer. Since manure is very high in N it is important to provide a good source of C when composting it, or it may not completly decompose.

Okay, once you have chosen what to put in your compost and layered it, now you have to let it sit. While it it decomposing you should keep it moist, but not water-logged. In addition, it should be able to breath, so don’t store it in an airtight container. Normally compost needs to sit through one complete summer before it is ready to use. Stirring it more often will make it decompose faster, but normally it should be stirred at least once, preferably at the beginning of the summer that it is to sit through.

Typically, a gardener will collect material to compost over the course of a gardening season and build the compost pile at the end of it. The pile would them be stirred the following spring. Stirring usually means to just move the pile from one place to another, but it’s also possible to stir it in place.

What can go wrong with composting? The answer is not very much, at worst it just won’t work until you fix whatever the problem is. If it is too dry, it will just stop decomposing until it is wet again. To avoid the compost pile from getting washed away, surround it with a fence or other border. If it is too wet or doesn’t get enough air, it will become a ‘stinking rotten mess’. Besides smelling bad, this isn’t very serious, just fix the problem and the smell will go away.

Even a ‘stinking rotten mess’ will decompose into compost eventually . It does this with an anaroebic (meaning without oxygen) process which takes longer, but still works. Another example of something that works with an anaerobic process is a septic tank.

If your composting is going well it will get very hot. Perhaps as high as 60C (140F). This is a good thing when it happens because it can kill seeds that may later turn into weeds, and many plant diseases can be killed as well. In addition, heat in turn makes the composting process go faster.

So where does mulch fit in with all of this? There are a few of the same principles behind mulch. Mulching is when you take a material like plastic sheeting, straw or wood chips and use it to cover a piece of ground that you want to protect from weeds. In part this works because it blocks sunlight from anything that might grow under it, but it also works on the same principle as composting. When mulch is rotting in your garden, it is composting, and it will destroy weeds by decomposing them. Weeds, like all growing plants, are high in N. One way that you can increase the effectiveness of mulch is to use something that is as high in C as possible. It should go without saying that it is important to keep mulch at least a few centimeters away from plants that are not weeds, or you may kill them as well.

Some mulches are also effective because they remove N from the ground. Wood chips are a good example of this. Wood chips are so high in C that when they decompose they need a source of N, and they get this from the ground. Since all plants need N to grow this makes wood chips a very effective mulch. Wood chips should be removed rather than be turned into the ground when you are ready to plant, because turning them under will make the ground N poor. Since removing them is a little difficult, they are better suited for areas around rather than in the garden.

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Hardening Plants

It’s the time of year when many of us begin to think about moving plants outside that are now growing indoors under a light. It’s a common mistake for beginning gardeners to move their plants outside without first hardening them, but it’s a mistake you only make once! Moving plants outside without hardening them will usually kill them, wasting all the effort that went into growing them in the first place.

There are different hardening techniques, but they are all based on the same principle, slowly introducing your plants to the outdoors after being in your heated home under a grow light. Some people use a cold frame or greenhouse for this. It always takes about the same amount of time, roughly a week.

Whatever method you decide on in the end, here is a good place to start. Begin by setting your plants outside for 15 minutes the first day, then doubling the time each day (30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, 8 hours, 16 hours). This is a very uncertain time for your plants, so watch them closely. If they start to wilt or look like they may be dying, stop the hardening process and return them indoors for a few days before trying again. At the beginning of the hardening process place the plants outdoors in the shade, and gradually introduce them to full sun over the course of the week.

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The Whole Organic Food Book

The Whole Organic Food Book written by Dan Jason is an excellent introduction to both organic and heirloom gardening. While the book takes something of an introductory approach, it also has plenty of material to offer more experienced gardeners as well.

Dan Jason is a certified organic gardener, seedsman and food guru. He is the owner of Salt Spring Seeds in Canada, a supplier of heirloom seeds. This book is a complete instruction book on what to do with the seeds he sells. The book takes you from gardening and growing the plants, to harvesting and seed saving then cooking the harvest. It explains how his clever threshing box works to help with harvesting.

This book helps you rediscover foods that have become unavailable. For example consider the soybean. The soybean we can buy in the store now is yellow, hard and tasteless. Just like heirloom tomatoes, there is a whole world of soybeans out there all with different and special tastes. Wheat is another example, something that is easily grown in a home garden. There are many different kinds of wheat, and you can do many more things than just make bread with it. Wheat can be cooked as wheat berries or sprouted. This book is full of recipes and examples.

Also included in the book is information about food politics, and the state of GM contamination in our food supply.

Readers of the book living outside of Canada may be unable to purchase seeds directly from him, because his primary market is Canada. If you are interested in growing seeds mentioned in his book, and you are unable to find another supplier, please contact me via email or leave a comment, and I will try to help out.

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Favorite Heirloom Tomatoes

Kenny on Veggie Gardening Tips recently posted his list of favorite tomatoes, so I thought I would post mine as well:

  • Brandywine — Gourmet flavor. Red
  • Snow White Cherry — Pale yellow, large cherry sized
  • Black Prince — Early, nice tasting purple tomato
  • Black Cherry — Heavy producer of tasty purple cherry tomatoes
  • Yellow Taxi — Gourmet taste, color of a NY taxi cab
  • Sugar Cherry Currant — Wild or currant variety. Sweet and prolific
  • Yellow Oxheart — Not very prolific, but attractive and tasty.
  • Mortgage Lifter — Large, red, good tasting
  • Tiny Tim — Small red tomatoes.  Determinate (all tomatoes ripen within a short time).

When you grow heirloom tomatoes, remember to save some seeds!

Also when growing tomatoes keep in mind that while the plants can be direct seeded into the ground, they will do better if you start them indoors 6-8 weeks before moving them outside. Tomato plants that are direct seeded will have weaker roots, and will form tomatoes later.

One of the reasons for starting them indoors is because they like to be both transplanted and at the same time buried deeply in the ground. Tomato plants can form roots from any part of the plant that is buried, so when you transplant them it is only necessary for a few top leaves to be left showing above the soil line, and the rest of the plant should be buried. Ideally, you will start the seeds in a seed tray, transplant them in a few weeks to a small plastic pot, then transplant to it’s final growing location.

Dr Carolyn J. Male has written an excellent book on this subject, 100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden.

Do you have favorite heirloom tomatoes? Please share them with us in the comment section, or post them on your own blog!

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Saving Seeds from Biennial Plants

In January I posted an introduction to saving seeds.

In this post I would like to go into a little more detail on saving seeds from biennial plants.

Biennial plants are ones that go to seed during their second growing season, usually in the spring. Many people who save their own seeds don’t save seeds from biennials because they think it’s too much trouble, but this isn’t necessarily so. All plants are a little different, and it’s not possible to say everything about all of them, but here are some general tips. Some example of biennial plants are parsnips, carrots, cole plants (cabbage, brussel sprouts, turnips, kale and so on), celery and celery root (celeriac), parsley, beets and swiss chard.

What many people don’t realize is that by saving your own seeds from biennials and other plants is that the resulting seeds will be more suited to your garden and climate than the original seeds, and will likely improve in both productivity and quality of harvest from one year to the next, especially if good roguing techniques (see below) are used.

If you live in an area with a mild climate, chances are good that all you will have to do is let these plants stay in the garden and harvest the seeds in the spring. In some cases, covering the plants with a layer of straw or other mulch can help them survive through the winter.

If your winter is too harsh for the plants to survive, you may need to dig up the plants and store them in a root cellar through the winter. In a few cases you may need to grow them in a greenhouse or similar structure, possibly with heating. In this later case, it may very well be too much trouble to try to save your own seeds.

If you store the plants in a root cellar, you will need to maintain a steady and low temperature and a moderate to high humidity. It does not necessarily need to be underground, but it does need to be protected from the effects of direct sunlight, so probably will need to be north facing. Depending on the type of plants stored, you may need to protect it from freezing, or otherwise provide some source of heat. Plants are normally dug from the garden and stored in wet sand or sawdust for the winter.

Whatever plants you are saving roguing is critical. All seeds will contain genes and traits that effect their suitability for growing in a particular location, their productivity or their quality in other ways. The goal in saving seeds is to select the best plants and consequently the best genetic traits, for growing in the conditions present in your garden. If you are growing cabbage or brussel sprouts, you want plants whose yield is large, solid and attractive. If you are growing a root crop like beets or parsnips, you want only properly shaped, large and good tasting roots. Of course you can’t taste the plants if you are going to save seeds from them, but only save seeds from plants that you think would be the nicest to eat. If you are saving roots, dig them up and look at them! Replant the ones that look nice. Destroy any plants that do not have desirable qualities.

As a rule, plants normally produce large quantities of seeds. In general, it is not necessary to have a lot of plants to have a good seed harvest. It is however a good idea to save seeds from at least a few different plants, as a way of preserving your gene pool.

Once you have selected the plants you are saving seeds from, go around the garden and identify any possible plants that they may cross-pollinate with and figure out how you are going to isolate them. Destroying genetically compatible plants is the easiest way to prevent cross-pollination, but in some cases this is not possible. Depending on the plant, it may be possible to construct a cage or other covering to prevent insects from cross-pollinated the plants. Providing enough distance between the plants may be all that’s necessary.

If you live in an area with wild Queen Anne’s Lace, you will have a difficult time saving seeds from carrots. Queen Anne’s Lace is really a wild carrot and will easily cross-pollinate with what you grow in your garden. Because the pollen from these plants is very fine, and carried large distances by the wind, it is difficult to isolate them with barriers.

Exactly what plants are genetically compatible is complicated, and frequently the source of disagreement between gardeners. The best thing is to ask around for advice, or research the matter on the Internet.