Backyard Project: Flowers and Hot Mulch

The garden suddenly turned colourful.

In the Cut Flower bed lilies bloomed.

This is such a beautiful colour scheme.

The exquisite shape of another lily.

The nasturtiums are out in bud.

Insects are feasting on comfrey flowers.

The 3 fig trees' Breba crop is filling out.

The feijoa/pineapple guava is in flower.

Sammy brought around a load of spent hops from a local brewery. 

He mixed it in with the mulch.

I put in the thermometer - 80 degrees. Over the week the heat produced by the soil organisms moved the temperature up. I texted Sammy when it reached 160 degrees and he came back to turn the pile. Within a few days, the temperature started to rise again. Hundreds of mushrooms appeared and covered the whole pile when the temperature hit 130 degrees. They died off in a few days while the temperature rose again to 160 degrees. I opened up the steaming pile to let it cool down. It was too hot to hold my hand on the pile.

Once it has cooled down again we will spread this elixir on all the garden beds. 

Rough and Loose, Green then Brown - Two Gardening Mantras

An ant nest found under a mulch of coffee sacks. The ants were forced to move their colony because I was ready to work on the soil in this bed.

While attending the Organic MasterGardener course Ron and I learnt two very important mantras that continue to guide me as I work at building up the soil in all of the garden beds.

Coffee sacks and a woolen blanket have protected this soil bed until I had time to work on it.

The mulch is removed. The ants are moving out.

A deep watering of  the soil to encourage the soil organisms to get active.

The first mantra is 'Green then Brown'

To make compost whether insitu ontop of the soil or in a trench, or in a compost bin the materials need to be layered by alternating different types.

First the green. I harvested most of the comfrey now the flowers have finished and they are no longer visited much by the bees. It is high in minerals the tap root has brought up from deep in the soil and also high in nitrogen. Comfrey is the 'green' and was the first layer put on the soil.

Next I added shredded branches that are high in carbon as the 'brown' layer. 

The 3rd layer was coffee grounds that are high in nitrogen, a 'green' layer. Technically the grounds I pick up from coffee shops are also high in carbon because there are lots of paper products such as filters and paper cups in the bags. 

So the mantra goes, 'Green then Brown, Green then Brown' which translates to 'nitrogen-rich' then 'carbon-rich' then 'carbon-rich' and so on, until you run out of materials.

Time for the 'chicken scratch' while repeating the 2nd mantra, 'Rough and Loose, Rough and Loose.'

I make like a chicken, lightly mixing the layers together while leaving the surface uneven and light. I avoid standing on the soil as much as possible. This method creates the ideal conditions for supporting soil organism activity.

After a deep watering and the addition of  a final top mulch layer, the bed is ready to hand over to the soil organisms to do their job of making a rich friable soil. 

I ran out of time so put the coffee sacks, blanket and cardboard back in place but will replace it with shredded plant material as soon as I can.

'Green then Brown' - 'Rough and Loose'

Building a Lasagna Garden Bed

One of our new garden projects this summer was building a lasagna bed around the base of this Big-leaf Maple. It's roots are exposed in some places and the mower keeps cutting them. They need protection.

Also, this will be the comfrey plant supply bed. We will cultivate comfrey plants here then transplant them to other beds to do the job of building up the soil and providing nutrients for other plants in the bed.

A house down the street put lots of flattened cardboard out for the taking.

It is the perfect 1st layer. It kills off the grass below then breaks down, adding organic matter to the soil.

While building up the next layers we kept the hose running on the cardboard to thoroughly wet it.

In the compost area there are piles of paper, coffee grounds, grass clippings, horse manure and leaves.

All of these were added in thin layers with a sprinkle of glacial rock dust every so often. The rock dust provides minerals to soil organisms so they can do their job.

All of our household paper is recycled except for the shiny stuff  that has undesirable chemicals in the inks.We put that out in bags for the city's recycling program. 

We kept the hose running on the pile as we built up the layers to provide plenty of moisture for the chemical reactions that need to take place.

The pile was covered with cardboard and left to 'cook'. 

A compost thermometer monitors the temperature and a water reader monitors the moisture levels. The pile needs to pass through a number of different temperature zones for a wide variety of soil organisms to become active in breaking down the materials. If the pile gets too dry over these hot summer days we need to water it.

 We have run out mulch so used cardboard to cover the new bed until we get more. As unsightly as it looks, we have found the cardboard is doing a good job at conserving moisture.

We were careful to not build up the bed against the tree trunk. Any soil or other material piled up against a tree trunk will rot its bark and could cause its premature death.

Look out for this project's update.