Compost

Not hot anymore!

Our big pile of stuff has cooked down into some nice compost! Thank you so much to Brett and to Michelle and her friend, for turning this compost with me. It sure was a lot of work, but compost is the heart and soul of the organic garden. It provides organic matter and beneficial microbes. I don't think we will be doing this very often, so get this compost while you can. We need some volunteers to top up and to turn the compost on the East side.

This compost was a hot compost, done California-style. We turned it every three to seven days, three times. I layered brown and green matter, then finished it off with our leftover sheep manure. I should have used quite a bit more chopped leaves to balance all the fresh green garden clippings and manure. It was a very hot compost - we could feel the heat radiating off of it as we turned it. (Thank you, Mike Monell for all those leaves as well as the manure!) Every layer of green matter should have a bit of manure or finished compost and a covering of dry brown matter like leaves. The manure or compost adds a little ecosystem of live microbes and the leaves balance the carbon/nitrogen ratios. (Also they make the compost less attractive to mice and flies.)

So please use leaves to cover your additions to the compost pile and chop everything up. Do you see all the sticks and things in the compost? Even a hot compost like this cannot digest big items.

Wednesday, August 5th Volunteer Day

Several people took advantage of the last mid-week workday this summer, and we all enjoyed some watermelon and a chance to rip up lots of weeds. The next opportunity to volunteer is Saturday the 15th at 6pm. I think it would be fun if we all brought snacks to share on Saturday as the next potluck is not until August 22nd. Thank you to Arvind Sridharan, Andrea Weeks, and Silvia, Joey, and Christian Lancaster!

July 22nd - Volunteer Day

Hello all. We were busy this Wednesday, with five people showing up to take care of our gardens. I didn't get any pictures this time. Anne Knoll took care of the sidewalk garden and shade garden, Jill Chen and Lois Falconer weeded by the west fence on the West Side (and boy did it need it), Michelle Crandell and her boyfriend cleaned up the overhanging trees and the entrance area on the West side, and I ran around tending to the raspberries (I also gave them a new soaker hose) and the compost.

Next week we should give the East side some attention! It does look pretty good, though: someone has put some landscaping fabric and mulch down on some paths, and I saw Ingrid pulling weeds. The pergola is really looking great right now, it's worth a walk over to the East side to see it. Volunteers built it last year, and then planted flowers in the planter boxes they built around it.

Several of us who stayed late saw bats and a hawk moth the size of a hummingbird feeding on the nectar in the daylillies. It could have been a tomato hornworm moth, although I saw stripes not orange spots on the abdomen. It was really fabulous, but I hope I don't find any giant green caterpillars defoliating my tomatoes and peppers! According to Wikipedia, "They can also be found easily and picked off the plants at night with the use of a blacklight, since they glow under the ultraviolet light." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manduca_quinquemaculata

My compost is cooking very nicely now. It is almost done - it looks like compost but it still smells a bit like a catbox and it is still quite warm inside. It should be ready to use next weekend. The compost in bin 1 is ready to be used.

Yellowstone is amazing

I'm back from my trip to Yellowstone and finally catching up on the blog. We got caught in a buffalo-jam while they crossed right in front of our car. They were close enough to touch. Boy, are they big and fast. I was so glad no one did something dumb to get them upset like honking or touch the babies.

I have a couple of Workshare days to catch-up on. The first weekend Michelle Crandell and her boyfriend flipped the compost for the first time - yeah! - This is really tough work - thank you! On July 8th Brett Sloan and I flipped it again. It had cooked down a little, but it really had a terrible ammonia smell - the smell of valuable nitrogen escaping. Next time I will put in far more dry brown matter. Brett, you are a trooper! Lynn Siverts, Enid Van de Walker, and Anne Knoll weeded. Paulina Mundkowski worked in the orchard. The next week Lynn and Brett came again and Brett turned the compost with me again! It had definitely cooked down, and the smell was far more bearable, but still bad. It was hot to the touch. David Pinter tended the current compost by adding brown leaves on top of the green vegetable matter. Tim Towns tended the bees.

Compost

Liz Slokar has volunteered to take our weedy waste to Western Disposal for commercial composting. Thank you very much! It is important to divert our waste away from the landfill, so we are committed to making compost instead of methane (vegetable matter decomposing without oxygen produces methane a potent green-house gas, according to Eco-cycle.) I may need to ask other people with trucks to also take our weeds. I've asked the city and Eco-cycle if we can get some kind of official compost pick-up, as well as recycling pick-up. The city has committed to starting a pilot compost project in 2010, maybe they will start with us.

Right now I have a little bin by the front gate of the West Side that is just for weeds we can't compost, like thistle and bindweed. Please, no plastic, dirt, or rocks! We pay by the ton.

Things we can compost include hair, vegetable plant parts, chopped up corn or sunflower stalks, kitchen vegetable waste, leaves, flower garden trimmings, and cut grass. Please bury food scraps in the compost.

I have topped-up the compost in bin 5 on the West Side. We (you can contribute here) will be using pitch-forks to flip it into bin 7, then back into bin 5, no more once than every third day. It should be as moist as a wrung-out sponge. See the shed door for details.

Work share

This last Wednesday was another volunteer day at the garden -- this time we didn't get rained out! Anne Knoll had a crew of people who put gorilla mulch in the shade garden. Adam Kemna generously lent us his truck, then Robert Young and Lisa Tannahill helped Anne get the mulch spread out all over the shade garden. (photo) Anne fixed the drip irrigation and Liz Slokar set the timer for us (yes, we were mystified) then took our weedy waste away to Western Disposal to add to their commercial compost. Michelle Crandell and Steve Balgooyen joined us to cover the front common area with mulch. Later, Paul Weiss worked into the dark putting compost on the raspberries (which are starting to ripen!)

Thank you, all!

I am going off to Yellowstone for a week. There will be no official work day next week, but we will be back on the eighth. In the meantime if you want to pitch in, you could: spread several inches of that mountain of mulch on our paths and common areas, turn the compost, pull or weed-whack the many weeds, put compost on the grapes, pick up garbage, or tend the herb garden or orchard on the east side. For details ask Judy Slack or Anne Knoll.

Drip Irrigation

Some of us are using soaker hoses at the garden. This can lead to conflicts with other gardeners if your device is flooding the path or promoting weeds. (And we wouldn't want the city to start charging us for water!) The Internet has a lot of info about setting up a soaker hose in your vegetable gardening. A pressure-regulator is a good idea -- the soaker hoses operate at best at between 10 and 15 psi, but it's difficult to set the pressure just right and make sure it stays that way. Even a cheap timer can turn off the water for you if you forget. You can see how deeply you are watering by digging down with a shovel after 15 or 30 minutes, or you can measure the inches of water you catch with a shallow container under the hose. Vegetable roots generally are not that deep, if you have actually double-dug the garden your roots might reach down two spade-lengths. Plus our clay soil absorbs water so slowly that any extra will end up just running off.

So how long do you set your timers for? What kind of system are you using?

I would love to hear how deeply you are watering your vegetables -- and tell me how you are checking.

I'm actually hand watering this year, after having used a drip-irrigation system last year. I like having more control over where the water goes and I like to SEE how much water I am using. I use soaker hoses at home for my landscape, where I want the soil to dry out for several feet down between deep soakings.

Workshare

We had another good workday at the gardens. This time we pulled weeds in the East side -- around the compost bins, the herb garden, the squash patch, etc. Veronica and her children, Ingrid, Judy and I were there, and Anne and Kristen brought some veggie scraps from Terroir. We were interrupted by a big storm and had to take shelter in a hurry. Sometimes we wish the sheds were bigger!

Next week is another one, same time, starting at 6pm. If you can only be there for one hour, that's enough, we can get a lot done in an hour. I would like to build a new compost pile on the West side with manure and leaves, then turn it every three days. I need your help! Call or email me if you would like to be a part of making new compost. We can get compost in two to three weeks if we put the work in. Also, we should do the same thing on the East side soon.

In addition (and this work can be done any time) we need to finish pulling the weeds on the East Side around the compost and in the herb garden. We also need to add thin layer of compost and manure around the trees in the orchard, from a few inches away from the trunk, to the drip line. The grape vines and the raspberries also need some amendments. The paths also need mulching -- we have new mulch now! Several inches is very helpful in keeping down the weeds. Of course, the shade garden and the sidewalk garden on the West Side could also use some mulching. The trees overhanging the garden by the children's play around need trimming.

Please take some compost from the west side's bin. It's done, and looks pretty good aside from the big pieces (and, for some reason, rocks.) The sifter can be used to sift that stuff out. That's why we chop up big stuff with the machette or the clippers or trimmers! The newsletter has some good info about the compost.

Potluck

The last potluck was a blast. At five o'clock I was standing on my brother-in-law's porch in Lafeyette, looking out at the pouring rain! But in Longmont it cleared up just in time for us to get together. Derise had arranged two grills, one for vegetarians and one for omnivores. A good time was had by all, the wine and sparkling juice was enjoyed, and we stayed until it was too dark to see!

Workshare Days from the Handbook

2009 WEDNESDAY WORK SHARE SCHEDULE

June 10, 6-8PM
June 17, 6-8PM
June 24, 6-8PM
July 8, 6-8PM
July 15, 6-8PM
July 22, 6-8PM
July 29, 6-8PM
August 5, 6-8PM


2009 WEEKEND WORK SHARE SCHEDULE

August 15, Saturday, 6PM-DARK
September 13, Sunday, 8AM-NOON
October 4, Sunday, 1-4PM
October 24, Saturday, 1-4PM

Starting Up a Blog for the Garden

So Facebook is getting too weird. I can't even find my link to the Second Start Garden blog without ten minutes of searching. Plus a lot of us don't want to join Facebook just to read about SSG. I've been reading about the Vibram Fivefingers on blogs on Blogger (next best thing to barefoot, apparently) so we'll give this a try.

Hopefully this blog will be a good source of information. I would welcome additional content from other gardeners. Someone who really likes blogs might just want to volunteer to keep it updated!