Grow Better Veggies

Manure Compost as Passive Greenhouse Heating

Here is a photo of a big steaming pile of s**t.  Actually, nice fresh stinky horse manure.  I'm going to put it to good use.

In trying to figure out how to keep our greenhouse heating costs down, I thought I'd investigate a couple of ways of increasing the night time temps of the space.  Previously, I blogged about how our greenhouse benches (aka tables) sit on barrels filled with water.  The idea was that the barrels would absorb heat from the sun during the day and exude it at night. 
Then I thought of a way to add a little extra something something.  I looked around the farm and realized that this old orchard box would fit perfectly underneath a bench and inside of the barrels.  Hmmmm, let's get seven more of these boxes.  John, or master composter and our worm-keeper, sprang into action and arranged to bring me enough bins.

Filling the large boxes with fresh manure would start the decomposition process, and heat up.  The mass will give off much-needed warmth for the time it takes to decompose.  Since I'm only heating my greenhouse for a couple of months while I propagate and grow on tomato seedlings, I figure by the time the masses cool off, I won't need the supplemental heat anymore.  At least that's this season's experiment.

Daniel, my excellent volunteer, has been endlessly patient positioning these giant bins in place and moving the manure into them.
We needed as much compression of the manure into the bins as we could get, so we put our newest volunteer, Sarah, to work stomping on it.  I'm glad she took me seriously when I told her to show up with rubber boots.
Once completely topped off with manure, we repositioned the bench tops.  Now they're ready to accept our young plants, help warm up the greenhouse, and definitely exude that fragrant "je ne sais quoi" that will keep people wrinkling their noses a bit upon entering.

Class: Compost and Vermiculture (Worms!)

Using your own home-made compost is the single best thing you can do to increase your garden's fertility, ward off pests, and keep diseases at a minimum.  Worm castings have also been shown to be a similarly powerful tool.  Great gardeners will have both an active compost bin and worm bin up and running at all times.  They know the benefits to their garden are enormous.  Using your own compost and worm castings will also drastically cut down on the amount of soil amendments, fertilizers, insecticides and fungicides that an organic gardener usually needs to purchase to maintain their vegetable plot.

Come to Love Apple Farm and learn what these benefits are, how to properly build a compost pile (we build one ourselves during class), learn how to harvest it and use it on your garden. 

The second half of the workshop is devoted to vermiculture: how to start, maintain, and use to full benefit a proper worm bin.  See how we feed our worms, harvest the castings, and even make a fabulous worm tea for use as a supplemental fertilizer.  You get to take home a worm bin, complete with starter worms.

Class date: April 7, 2009 (Tuesday) 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.

Tuition:  $20
Materials Fee: $25
Register and pay via Paypal:

Compost Mythbusters - Continued Yet Again!

Myth #3:  You Have to Turn Your Compost Pile

Truth:  You Don't Have to Turn Your Compost Pile!

Yes, it does help to turn it, but if you don't have time, or are otherwise unable (i.e., too lazy), then that's ok!  It will take longer, that is a certainty, but it's not required.  The beautiful compost in this picture was from an unturned pile.  We started the pile a year ago, in October.  We built it with an entire tree's leaves, all of our tomato vines we grew in 2006, and the contents of our chicken coop. Then we injected it with our biodynamic preps, covered it, and let it sit.  I meant to turn it.  I wanted to turn it, but turn it we did not.  So the pile just sat there, getting smaller and smaller as the decomposition process continued. 

When I wanted to start using it this past fall, we dug into it and discovered that it was ready to go.  A bit chunky, yes, but nevertheless crumbly, dark, and absolutely fabulous.  We screened it through our compost mesh, and have been adding it to our beds ever since.

Bottom line:  if you want quicker compost, go ahead and turn it; try to get the outside parts into the middle.  If you don't want to turn it, don't.  As long as it's built properly, with thin layers (2 to 4 inches thick) of alternating brown and green matter, it will eventually decompose nicely.  Takes about a year. 

Yet one more reason to go ahead and start that compost pile of yours.  Just do it!

Compost Mythbusters - Continued

Myth #2: You Need a Fancy-Pants Compost Bin

This is the "ComposTumbler."  You don't need this.  It's $499.00.  Your wallet doesn't need this, unless you want your wallet composted in 14 days like the ad says.

Some people think they need a pre-fabbed bin to start making compost. There are even loads of composters that are significantly cheaper than the tumble-type bins. I still say do NOT put off making the best soil amendment EVER by waiting on a specially made structure. 

Great home-made compost is the most important thing you can do for your plants. It should be an absolute priority for you.  Compost can completely eliminate the need to buy expensive fertilizers and amendments for your garden.  After several years of adding two or three inches of compost per year to planting beds, their health will improve dramatically.  You'll see a reduction in both pests and diseases, because healthy soils grow healthy plants.  Healthy plants are much less susceptible to both pests and diseases. 

You can start a simple compost pile tomorrow in a corner of your yard with no tools whatsover and no container.  Just start alternating shallow layers of brown and green waste.  That's carbon (brown) and nitrogen (green). If you want to make a simple structure, then do what we do here at Love Apple Farm.  Our piles are merely wire fencing material formed into a circle.  Here's a schematic of this type of ultra-simple compost bin:

We use concrete reinforcing wire for our piles, but I would prefer to make them with the 2 x 4 wire fencing, like the diagram.  The reason we don't is that we have an overstock of the concrete wire, and we try to use what we have. 

Our circle bins are about five feet in diameter.  We start with circles of wire about two and half feet high, and then as the pile builds, we'll add another level of wire to get the pile higher.  We'll stop after three levels, or about 6 feet.  We don't build the piles all in one day, but rather over a period of a month or two, then stop when the pile is high enough.  At that point, we'll insert our biodynamic preps, cover it, and let the decomposition process happen.  Let's go through it step by step:

After you've got your circle in place, the first layer in contact with the ground ideally should be some twiggy material, like corn stalks, dahlia stalks, or small branches.  This layer aids in air circulation, and helps airflow to the interior of the pile, which aids in the break down of the plant materials. 

After this first layer, all you need to do is alternate your green and brown layers.  Kitchen waste, fresh manures, weeds, and green plant trimmings are all high in nitrogen and considered "green."  Most things that are dry, such as fallen leaves, straw, paper towels, and coffee grounds, are considered carbon, or "brown."  We make each layer quite thin, about two or three inches.  This layering is essential to cause the heat generation required for decomposition.  Here are our major layers, clockwise from the top left: fallen leaves, Manresa kitchen trimmings, end-of-season tomato vines, and handfuls of wood ash from our fireplace:

After every few layers, we water the pile for a good 5 minutes, then leave it be until we have more fodder for the layering.  You can take a few months continuing to build your pile, but at some point, just cover it up and leave it alone. After that, start another one next to it while you're waiting for the first one to finish composting.
Next post in this series: Myth #3: You Need to Turn Your Compost Piles

Compost Mythbusters

Myth #1: You can't compost animal products

Well, I'm here to tell you that you can indeed compost animal products.  Look at this beautiful blue fin tuna head.  It came from Manresa, and would have ended up in the dumpster had it been at just about any other restaurant.  But here at Love Apple Farm, we take all the fish waste back to the garden and compost it.  This tuna head was gigantic; it's hard to get a proper perspective on its size, but if you check out the head of romaine lettuce next to it, you can appreciate how big it was.

You can compost animal carcasses as well.  I was initially appalled at this revelation when Harald Hoven, my professor at the Rudolph Steiner College explained how they regularly put road kill carcasses in their biodynamic compost piles.  But after helping the class turn a pile that had six months before contained eight dead opossums, I became a believer.  The only discernible residue of the opossums in the now perfectly black and crumbly compost was small bones and skulls.  Harald explained how they sprinkle a good handful of lime on the carcass to help get the decomposition started.

I haven't quite got up the nerve yet to compost any dead animals, mostly because the restaurant keeps us in a pretty steady stream of fish parts.  We keep my dogs and the marauding racoons out of the fish-infused piles by making sure there is plenty of plant waste put immediately on top of and around the stinky bits.  Once enough plant residue is properly layered on the fish and then compacted down by stomping on the pile (more on that later), the decaying fish smell isn't noticeable to humans.  As far as the curious critters are concerned, I further ensure they don't dig up the pile by having high wire sides to it, and covering it with a tarp.

Fish products in the compost pile make  extra nutritious finished compost.  You all know the benefits of fish emulsion on plant growth; it's very high in nitrogen.  Having the decomposed fish in the compost just adds another healthy element to this all-important soil amendment.  And let me tell you, the quality of Manresa's seafood scraps couldn't possibly be any better.  They indeed help us grow better vegetables.

Stay tuned for more compost myths debunked this week.