The wonderful world of compost

Every farmer, irregardless of the size of the farm, must do some sort of composting. I am sure even Luke Skywalkers uncle did some sort of composting for his moisture farm. I also imagine the garbage compactor in the Death Star was really just a big compost bin and I am pretty sure that there is a garrison of storm troopers assigned to weed and hoe on the gardening level.

Composting is a great way to recycle old items into garden feed. Over time kitchen scraps and other things will decompose and look a lot like dirt. Its pretty amazing.

Here is my original compost pile

Really it's just a big pile of dirt where I would dump my grass clippings. I recently got a really great pitch fork and when I tried to turn the dirt I found that the tree had grown lots of roots into the pile making it pretty useless. Oh well.

It turns out there is a lot of science that takes place in a compost pile. It takes the right amount of wet and dry ingredients plus heat and air flow to break down the waste. 

There are three primary phases in the composting process.

1. The active or thermophilic phase - In this phase the material is broken down most rapidly. Aerobic bacteria alter the chemical makeup causing the pile to heat up. This phase can take from 1-4 months depending on conditions.
2. The curing or mesophilic phase - After the initial phase the temperatures stabilize and lower. Bacteria that prefer a lower temperature take over the decomposition process and turning of the pile is not needed. At this point the material is not recognizable as its original form. Curing usually takes less than 3 months.
3. The maturing phase - In this phase the pile transitions to materials that are less prone to microbial breakdown. If you have a male compost pile maturation may take longer but will eventually occur.

I am trying two things for my compost piles. 

For my first I took a plastic bin and drilled holes for aeration and drainage.

This has worked really well as I can role the tub around the yard to mix things up. It also heats in the sun to speed up the process of decomposition.

Here is me throwing a worm into the bin:

Worms and bugs help with the process of breaking down matter. My compost started out like this:

Really just a pile of grass clippings and kitchen waste. After a month or two it looks like this:

You can still make out the egg shells but it now looks like dirt. This is good stuff and will be good for the plants.

I am also trying out another bin. Old paletts are readily available so I took four and joined them:

I am going to start dumping my clippings here and adding leaves and kitchen waste to a proper ratio of wets items and dry items. I have read that a proper ratio is 5 parts dry to 1-2 parts wet.

The pallet should work well as it will provide excellent ventilation and I can dump things in easily. Here is the inside:

I will keep you, my avid readers, updated on the progress of these exciting projects.

Here are some general pictures of the garden this week:

A tall sunflower:

A pallet to keep my melons off of the ground:

They are growing like crazy.
My son, Edison, pulled this broccoli yesterday while he was helping me weed. I stuck it back in but it doesn't look good:

Some other random pictures:

This tomato doesn't look good. I don't know why.

Mr Bean:

Happy Weeding

Friends of the Jedi Gardener

One thing that I love about gardening is all of the friends that I have met. The many comments on this blog are great and it also seems that gardeners are very helpful and willing to share their experiences.

I have had some really great advice about many things but recently I have received advice about how to control garden weeds.

I used to not mind weeds so much. They add nice greenery to any garden and provide shelter for numerous bugs.

Weeds have always been a problem for me because I just figured I didn't have the time to keep weeding day in and day out and would have to wait to retire before I had a weed free garden. Every time I weed the pesky weeds keep coming back even after using the amazing stirrup hoe.

A good gardening friend said that she adds her grass clippings to her garden. This does two things. First, it acts as a mulch helping the soil not to dry out so quickly and second, as it decomposes, it releases nutrients into the soil. I am pretty sure this will be solid gold for the garden.

Here is a picture with a few layers of clippings:

Here are the clippings after they sit for a few weeks:

It looks much better after weeding and adding the clippings. I am hoping that this will prevent the weeds from coming back.

I also have a few neighbors who are very helpful with the garden:

Those are Skinks.

I also have a number of worms that I will be adding to my compost bin:

I will be writing about the bin soon. Its very exciting.

On a carrot note I have a carrot that has grown rather large. Here is a picture:

Who knew that carrots eventually grew flowers? I didn't.

I am concerned about pulling this Carrot as I don't want it to turn out like the last short carrot and I am considering leaving this as Schrodinger's Carrot! It currently exists as both a short and log carrot. This is a great vegetable paradox joke (Schrodinger's Cat). Ha ha.

Here are some random pictures of the garden in its current state. I think I will be picking some items soon:

These are Leak flowers. Pretty cool.

These are a few tomatoes:

These are squashes and cucumbers:

Here are some beans:

Below is a cucumber almost ready to pickle:

Vegetable garden the prequel

Here is a picture of my garden at the end of last season:

Its a mess as you can see. The cucumber trellis on the left has no cucumbers, the little string trellis I made provided a house for spiders and nothing else and the rest of the plants are a nightmare of weeds and droopy leaves. Disgusting.

I love to water and I am pretty sure that the plants like it too. Unfortunately last year I think that I over watered and caused the plants to rot away.

Well this year I am turning things around. My goals this year were to really plan my garden out, plant from seed if possible and organize my garden into rows. I also expanded the garden. Here is how it looked after the expansion before planting my plants.

I used the plastic to try and heat up the weeds. I think it would have worked better in the hot summer but it did an ok job.

Here is a picture of it now after planting for a few  months.

I have had to deviate from some of the well defined rows because of the lack of sun. I have a large tree to the left of my garden that has now sprung to life and is now blocking the sun for part of the day. Shady vegetables like lettuce are being moved over to the right shadier side of the garden. My cucumber trellis is also quite large and my rows have become a bit disorganized because of that. I will plan better next year.