There is a real satisfaction in planting a bed of vegetables, especially when grown from seed. There is such care that goes into tending them right through to the harvest, then preparing them for you and your family to eat.
When you take the additional step to convert kitchen and garden waste into compost, you get not only well-fed humus soil, but quite a bit of freedom too.
Freedom from ill-health and environmental concerns over reliance on pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Freedom from the high cost of bagged compost, that despite it’s almost prohibitive price is often woefully uncomposted, or worse, tainted with persistent broad-leaf herbicides and/or high salinity additives.
There is freedom from consuming low-nutrient grocery store produce, that fills you up but does not truly feed you, and there is freedom from doing business with the inherently exploitative components of commercial agriculture.
And all because you took the time to compost. It’s pretty nifty, really.
Common Methods
Bokashi – The compostable material is fermented anaerobic conditions, rendering the seed in the compostable material uncapable of germination. It takes skill, and can go wrong, making a very smelly pile, but it also can make literally tons of compost very quickly and is a fast path to weed-free beds.
Thermophilic Composting – This is the three-bin composting many are probably most familiar with. A mix of carboniferous (browns) and nitrogenous (greens) materials, laid down in well-watered layers, then breaking down in aerobic conditions through biological activity of microorganisms. It is hard to screw up and most mistakes are rectified by simply turning the pile, but often the heat generated by the microorganisms is not enough to sterilize weed seeds.
Leaf-mold – A massive bin of leaves run through the lawnmower to decrease the particle size are piled high and wide, and compost slowly by fungal activity.
A leaf-mold pile can take a year or more to break down, but the slightly acidic compost it produces, the black stuff that looks like the forest floor, makes strawberries and blueberries grow very happily.
Hugelkultur – Composting of a mound of materials that have a specific order of being stacked, and topsoil layered on the top and sides to make a raised bed that can be planted and used while the mound breaks down over time. This is slow and requires thoughtful implementation in your landscape, but is an excellent way to build deep, welldrained beds in Eatonton’s clay.
Cover-crops – These are grown on your rows where you will later plant vegetables, mostly in-between crops or in the off season, that are either incorporated into the soil by tilling or laid down on the surface and then tarped to aid in the composting and left as a nutrient- dense mulch.
I will go into more detail in the coming weeks about how to implement these different methods in your garden as we head into fall.
Until next time, Your Eatonton Gardenerd This week’s jobs: Keep turning beds – Gather leaves – Find seed garlic Fellow Gardenerds! Send questions, concerns, and tips to: garden. nerd.31024@gmail.com