Composting: a guide to making compost at home, using compost tumblers, bins & other composters ~ Activate your compost. 'Activators' can be added to your compost to help kick-start the process and speed up composting. Common compost activator materials are: comfrey leaves, grass clippings, young weeds, well-rotted chicken manure. ~ Flying insects attracted to your compost? ~ Unpleasant odors from your compost pile? ~ Is your compost pile steaming? ~ Is your compost pile soggy? ~ Matted leaves, grass clippings clumping together? ~ Problems with raccoons? ~ A moveable feast. ~ Additive only. ~ Take advantage of autumn's bounty.
Double Digging August 7th, 2008 Email 11 users recommend Double digging is a quick fix for impenetrable soil. Janet Jemmot This subsoil is so dense that plant roots will have a tough time penetrating it. Here's a double-dug bed ready for planting. Jennifer Matlack Photo: Janet Jemmot by James KerrOctober 1998from issue #17 As every serious gardener knows, the key to a bountiful harvest is good soil. Good soil is something that is sought, rarely found, but can be made. How you deal with difficult dirt is dictated by resources. Many gardeners resort to rototilling, but most tillers don’t go deeper than 8 in., which is not enough to break up poor subsoil. Double digging allows roots to reach deeper into the earth, where better-draining subsoil makes it less likely they’ll become water-logged or oxygen-deprived. That’s the rationale for this simple technique, but simple doesn’t mean easy. You may also need a wheelbarrow for hauling organic matter to work into the bed. Technique for double digging.
Backyard Vegetable Garden While it may seem like a lot of work to get the beds established for planting, this can be done in stages. You can start with a small plot and enlarge the garden as time and inspiration allow. Remember, the bulk of the work, establishing the beds, only has to be done once. Once in place, nutrients can be added by 'top dressing', and will not require heavy digging or strenuous work. The best advice we can give is to put your attention to building rich, organic soil. Learning the basics of soil development is not difficult, it just requires some attention early in the season, before planting any crops, and during the season in between successive crop plantings. A well-planned and prepared garden will provide many years of productivity with relatively minimal routine maintenance.
Brewing Compost Tea The soil is full of microorganisms that aid plant growth and plant health—bacteria and fungi, which are decomposers, and protozoa and beneficial nematodes, which are predators. But there are bad guys, too—disease-causing bacteria and fungi, protozoa, and root-feeding nematodes. Our goal as gardeners is to enhance the beneficial microorganisms in this soil foodweb, because they help our plants. The bad bacterial decomposers and the plant-toxic products they make are enhanced by anaerobic, or reduced-oxygen, conditions. By making sure the tea and the compost itself are well oxygenated and highly aerobic, you eliminate 75 percent of the potential plant-disease-causing bacteria and plant-toxic products. Plants themselves don't use all of the energy they make through photosynthesis.
5 Secrets to a ‘No-work’ Garden It took over 20 years of gardening to realize that I didn’t have to work so hard to achieve a fruitful harvest. As the limitless energy of my youth gradually gave way to the physical realities of mid-life, the slow accretion of experience eventually led to an awareness that less work can result in greater crop yields. Inspired in part by Masanobu Fukuoka’s book, One Straw Revolution, my family experimented with gardening methods which could increase yields with less effort. Fukuoka spent over three decades perfecting his so-called “do-nothing” technique: commonsense, sustainable practices that all but eliminate the use of pesticides, fertilizer, tillage, and perhaps most significantly, wasteful effort. Here are the strategies we used which enabled us to greatly increase our garden yield, while requiring less time and less work. 1. With ‘no-till’ gardening, weeding is largely eliminated. 2. Gardeners are always on the lookout for free sources of clean organic mulch to add to their garden.
Plant Nutrients Macronutrients can be broken into two more groups: primary and secondary nutrients. The primary nutrients are nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K). These major nutrients usually are lacking from the soil first because plants use large amounts for their growth and survival. The secondary nutrients are calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), and sulfur (S). There are usually enough of these nutrients in the soil so fertilization is not always needed. Vertical Gardening Techniques for Maximum Returns - Organic Gardening Related Content 10 Tips for a Tiny Balcony Think your balcony's too tiny to provide food and fun? Whether your garden is large or small, you can make better use of every square inch by using vertical gardening techniques to grow upright crops. How Plants Climb Plants that benefit from garden trellises use a variety of methods to cling to support, including curling tendrils, twining stems or, in the case of tomatoes, long, ropy branches that form roots in places that touch the ground. Curling tendrils produced by peas and cucumber-family crops will twist around whatever is available, so you have plenty of versatility when supporting these crops. Twining stems have little use for horizontal lines, so they do best with trellises composed mostly of poles or an upright fence. Tomatoes like to throw themselves over their support. Temporary or Permanent? Crop-Specific Supports The most successful garden trellises increase the leaf-to-fruit ratio of the plant by allowing more leaves access to sun.
Compost Fundamentals Biology & Chemistry - Acid/Alkalinity Issues Acid/Alkalinity Issues pH is the measure of the acidity or alkalinity of soil, with 7 considered “neutral” and numbers below acidic and above alkaline. Composting feedstocks have a pH, which will fluctuate during the composting process. The initial pH of garbage, yard clippings, manure, and other compostable material is likely between 5.0 and 7.0 unless it contains ash or other highly alkaline materials. If the material has begun putrefying before being received for composting, the pH will be near the lower value, since anaerobic organisms produce acids. After two to four days the pH usually begins to rise and will level off at between 8.0 and 9.0 towards the end of the process. Apparently, initial pH values of 5.0 to 6.0 do not seriously retard initial biological activity since active decomposition and high temperatures develop rapidly after material is placed in the stack.
Garden Know-how: Extend Your Growing Season As late winter days lengthen, resourceful gardeners scurry to collect cloches, erect plastic-covered tunnels and put together a workable cold frame. Using season-stretching devices such as these can add four to six weeks to the front end of your growing season (and many of them will be handy again in the fall). You can make an amazing array of season-stretching garden gear from found or recycled materials, and you won’t have to rely on electric grow lights to get delectable spring greens in time for Easter or have the first ripe tomatoes on your block. Creating season-extending equipment is fun because you’re working with free solar energy. Physical shelter from blustery weather will help any plant, but cool-natured plants such as lettuce, spinach and cabbage-family crops don’t need as much heat as tender tomatoes or peppers — especially at night. Try Creative Cloches Before cutting off the bottom of any jug, I make a vee-shaped slit in the top of the handle. Make Terrific Tunnels
Compost Chemistry - Cornell Composting C/N Ratio Of the many elements required for microbial decomposition, carbon and nitrogen are the most important. Carbon provides both an energy source and and the basic building block making up about 50 percent of the mass of microbial cells. Nitrogen is a crucial component of the proteins, nucleic acids, amino acids, enzymes and co-enzymes necessary for cell growth and function. To provide optimal amounts of these two crucial elements, you can use the carbon-to-nitrogen (C/N) ratio for each of your compost ingredients. The ideal C/N ratio for composting is generally considered to be around 30:1, or 30 parts carbon for each part nitrogen by weight. Typical C/N ratios for common compost materials can be looked up in published tables such as Appendix A, On-Farm Composting Handbook. * Source: Dickson, N., T. As composting proceeds, the C/N ratio gradually decreases from 30:1 to 10-15:1 for the finished product. Oxygen Another essential ingredient for successful composting is oxygen. pH
Maintain a Weedless Organic Garden Weedless gardening! That’s an oxymoron, an impossibility, right? Well, my gardens may not be 100 percent weed-free, but they are 100 percent free of weed problems. I’ve achieved this happy state in four ways: 1) never tilling or otherwise disturbing the soil, so dormant weed seeds stay asleep, away from light and air; 2) designating permanent areas for walking and for planting to avoid compaction and the need for tillage; 3) maintaining a thin mulch of weed-free organic material to snuff out any weed seeds that blow in or are dropped into the garden by birds; 4) using drip irrigation whenever watering is called for to avoid promoting weed growth in paths and between widely spaced plants. A particularly nice aspect of this weedless gardening system is how much it simplifies fertilization. Where extra nitrogen might be needed, I use soybean meal, which supplements the diet of young trees, bushes and intensively grown vegetables. Crops that don’t naturally winterkill can also be used. 1.
Companion Planting Chart - For Gardening Vegetables, Fruits, Herbs, Flowers Gardening Companion Planting Chart This companion planting chart is compiled from personal experience, recommendations, folklore, and science. Use it as a general guideline for planting vegetables, herbs, fruits and flowers in your garden, but do your own study also! Become a better gardener by learning the many reasons for companion planting. Note: There can be variances in the performance of "good" vs. See also, instructions for growing: - Vegetables - Herbs- Fruits Gardening Tips From Our Readers: Have a gardening story to share? Note: the advice and information contained herein is based upon our experience and study.
Why Natural Insect Control Works Better Thirsty? The unique leaves of this cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum) hold water for insects to drink. I’ve always been an organic gardener. Early on, I thought natural insect control meant using an “organically approved” insecticide, such as rotenone, to defeat leaf-eating insects — especially my arch-nemesis, the Colorado potato beetle. I dusted my potato patch several times a season in a struggle to keep the beetle’s exploding population in check, barely managing to bring in the crop. One spring I vowed to use no rotenone at all in my potato patch, even if it meant losing the crop. That was my epiphany about the true nature of the teeming insect community around me, and my garden’s relationship to it. Using natural insect control makes perfect sense to me now. My fundamental mistake was assuming “organically approved” insecticides made more sense than using any other garden chemicals. Encourage Insects in the Garden Many beneficial insects feed on pollen and nectar produced by flowers.