Composting: Why bother? (and a quick "how to" guide)

We use a lot of compost in October. Every courgette, tomato, capsicum, and eggplant that we plant gets a good shovelful or two in its hole, as well as a handful of fertiliser. If we had to buy all the compost we use, I conservatively estimate it would cost us about $60 a year (producing three 200L bins per annum at $0.10 per L).

The other way to look at it, is that combined our kitchen scraps and our garden waste makes $1.15 worth of compost each week. I like that even before doing these sums, I have come to look at our food waste as a resource! And of course we are dealing with our own waste, rather than transporting it somewhere else to a landfill.

So how do I compost? Well, quite differently from most people I suspect. For starters I am a bit "over the top" when it comes to composting - we have three large compost bins in the garden. But this does make the job of making compost easier, as well as boosting the volume. I fill the three bins sequentially, and when all three are full, the oldest is ready to go on the garden. This is usually when the material in the bin is 6-12 months old, depending on the time of year (compost rots a lot faster during the warmer months).

To make compost 'the easy way" here are my instructions:

1.  Site the compost bin so that it gets as much sunshine as you can. The more the merrier, but make sure it gets at least a few hours of sunshine each day. Sit the base so its nice and level, stable, and in direct contact with the ground.
2. The first layer needs to be coarse, small woody material (garden prunings, sticks, leaves, weeds), Pile this at least 20-30 cm deep in the bottom of the bin. This ensures there is adequate oxygen getting into the heap, which speeds rotting and reduces odour. My compost heaps DONT smell.
3. Then pile in everything you can compost, but alternate so you get layers of different types of materials. I find good things to compost include: garden prunings (branches up to 1 cm diameter, all cooked or raw food scraps (uneaten leftovers, vegetable scraps), cardboard, paper, used tissues, eggshells, hair (if you get yours cut at home), coffee grinds, weeds (except for wandering jew (Tradescantia fluminensis), oxalis, or anything with long lived tubers or seeds), lawn clippings, and old potting mix. 
4. Meat scraps, raw or cooked, can be added as long as you cover them at the same time with a good layer of other material, so that you dont breed flies. For most people this is a big NO, but it doesn't actually cause any problems. What I don't do is compost chicken bones or carcasses - the bones break into sharp fragments that later have a tendency to skewer fingers in a rather unhygenic way!. 
5. Larger garden prunings are OK throughout the heap, following the "if it can rot it can be compost" mentality. It just means that the bits that havent completely rotted yet when you empty the heap get put back in the bottom of the next heap.
6. Alternating layers is the trick to "anything goes" composting. It makes sure the compost heap isn't too dry, or too wet, or lacking in oxygen, and it helps build a strong worm population. You can be assured your compost heap is working well if its nice and warm when you lift the lid, even if its a cool day.
7. Keep filling the bin till its full, then leave until its a fine textured, crumbly, dark brown to black humus that is perfect for the garden (6-12 months). If you only have room for one bin, when you get to the top of the bin you will need to put the bottom half of the bin on your vegetable patch, and then put the top half of the compost back into the bin. Its a lot less effort to have multiple bins, and wait until the whole bin is "garden ready". 

If you want instructions on the more standard way to make compost, the following link is a useful website. The principles are the same - alternating layers and sunshine.

composting Wairarapa

Whats growing
Our garden is now almost full and ready for summer. We currently have the following growing:
Tomatoes (9 varieties), eggplants, capsicum, strawberries, raspberries, boysenberries, spring onion, calendula, mizuna, courgette, pak choi, garlic, coriander, lettuces, mesclun, beetroot, radishes, cucumber, basil, beans (Purple King, Dalmation, Scarlet Runner), rhubarb, grape, peaches, apples, rosemary, oregano, parsley, sage, bay, mairehau, thyme, chives, silverbeet.

Tomato planting tip:  When planting, or after planting if you have already got yours in the ground, bury the bottom few centimetres of the stem too. The plant will produce extra roots from the bottom of the stem, giving the plant a growth boost. If you look closely at the bottom of the stem, you will probably see little white nodules - these are roots that are trying to grow above the ground.

Cost/benefit analysis
Benefit minus costs is a bit lower this month - we have done a lot less cooking than usual, and have had some higher costs such as purchase of pea straw, lime, and ZooDoo compost (a compost with animal manure, that we have used for our tomatoes).  Savings year to date (August-October): $83.20, and a summary for the month of October is below.

Happy composting,

Tim

	kg/quantity	price	value
oranges	0.6	3.97	2.38
oregano	1 packet	3.25	3.25
lettuce/mesclun	5 bags	3.68	18.4
bay leaves	1 packet	3.68	3.68
parsley	1 packet	2.99	2.99
rosemary	1 packet	3.25	3.25
thyme	1 packet	3.25	3.25
spring onion	1 bunch	2.29	2.29
lemons	1 kg	3.95	3.95
garlic	1 bulb	1.32	1.32
silverbeet	1 bunch	3.75	3.75
alfalfa sprouts	1 packet	2.25	$          2.25
			50.76
costs
alfalfa seeds (c.300 g)			$5.40
ZooDoo compost 40L			$7.60
pea straw 50L			$7.60
garden lime			$7.48
mint plant			$2
chives plant			$2.29
			$        32.37
time spent for October: 2 hours
benefit minus costs			$        18.39

How to grow a continuous supply of salad greens 365 days of the year

Salad greens are right at the forefront of production in our garden, be it February or July, and always having these on hand provides a significant saving for us as a family. Its also so convenient - if the fridge is empty, there is always something green in the garden to go with dinner.

Dollar value for space used, salad greens are far and away our most productive crop - they take up little space, and you can go from sowing to harvest in six weeks. After a few years of perfecting my cultivation methods, I think I can now share how to do this, based on a few simple principles.

 Mesclun patch (photograph centre) with mizuna and corn salad. Lettuces along front garden edge. Radishes germinating to right, with an old deck chair used as a support for cucumbers.

The first is to have suitable ground, and for our family of 4, about 2 square metres of ground is all that is needed to allow us to pick 2-4 salads per week. The soil needs to hold plenty of moisture, to sustain the crop through the summer months, be relatively fine, and be well composted and limed. In practice, the soil should be roughly 50:50 topsoil and compost, worked to a depth of at least 10 cm, with a dressing of garden lime (like icing a cake) at least twice per year. Within the garden, a full sun position is OK, but if you can find somewhere that gets partial shade during the summer, that is preferable.

With 2 square metres of ground, I would have two 1m2 salad patches.

One patch is used to sow a mesclun mix (Kings Seeds, Original Mesclun mix is what I use). Sow the seeds over a finely worked patch  so they fall at roughly one centimetre spacing, rake over with fingers, then press down firmly. Keep well moist at all times and the seedlings will germinate quite densely, and with a follow up weed at 4 weeks, will dominate the patch of ground for several months. Start picking after 4-6 weeks, and keep picking regularly (pull off individual leaves, or cut at 5 cm above the ground with scissors) and keep harvesting the patch until it goes to seed, turns bitter, or production drops off), then dig it over and start the process again. Sometimes I will get 3-4 months of picking off one sowing, and from one seed packet I get at least 10 sowings. So it works out as VERY cheap, fresh, convenient greens. If you use Kings Mesclun Original expect some seasonal variation - I find that in the winter, mizuna and corn salad are dominant, and in the spring, summer, and autumn, mizuna, endive, pak choi, and lettuces are the best growers.

The second patch of 1m2 is used to grow lettuces, radishes, and calendula (for the bright orange petals). Prepare the ground in the same way, and grow loose leaf lettuces like "cos", "lolla rossa" or "oak leaf". Pick them leaf by leaf, and each plant will produce for several months. By planting new lettuces as soon as old ones get pulled out, the supply of lettuce is continuous, and can cover the periods when the mesclun is between sowing and first harvest. Salads with a mixture of loose leaf lettuce, mesclun, and radish can be easily grown year round. If your garden is in the shade in the winter, like mine is, try to sow a patch of mesclun around April-early May. That way the plants can be well established before it gets too dark and wet.

If you have more space to spare than 2m2, shift the patches of mesclun around the garden to achieve crop rotation (which naturally reduces plant diseases), and why not grow some tomatoes, cucumber, and spring onions too?

Happy gardening,

Tim.

The garden in October: A photographic essay

 View over garden beds planted with silverbeet, garlic, mesclun, coriander, cucumber, courgette, lettuce, spring onion, and calendula.

 The garlic bed: 30 bulbs to be harvested in January (at $1.32 each for NZ garlic). I will then put it into parsnip for a winter crop.

 One of our espaliered apples - all you need is a spare fence to grow apples, pears, peaches, quinces, figs, or grapes. Its not difficult (more a case of tough love for bending and pruning them into shape) and I love the look.

 Our silverbeet grows massive and lush, but I think it is the copious compost and liquid fertiliser it gets that makes this difference.

 Our courgette bed (shortly I will pull out the weaker of each pair). To maximise production I interplant with quick-to-harvest plants like mesclun and pak choi (these are the seedlings you can see germinating everywhere). These will grow to maturity and be harvested before the courgettes engulf the bed for the remainder of the summer. When the courgettes finish in April-May, this bed will become our winter salads bed for 2012.

 Our current salad bed, with carrots (left end), lettuce, mizuna, cress, cornsalad (centre) and radish and cucumber (right hand end).

 Recently divided rhubarb with compost added to the bed and a thick mulch of flax leaves to retain summer moisture. The bed was first planted 5 years ago, so was due for renewal. I expect to resume harvest of rhubarb in the New Year, and it will then keep on producing for a few more years.

Heavily composted bed. It might look rough but this is the kind of coarse organic matter that is sometimes needed to inject life into a compacted humus-poor soil. In a few weeks time this will be planted with Thai eggplants.

The Month of Silverbeet (and how to make it edible)

September has really been the month of silverbeet. This much maligned vegetable is crucial for us over the late winter and spring, when other winter crops such as beetroot are long gone, and ones like courgette, tomato, and cucumber are yet to come. Its also great for your health, and one of the easiest to grow. In fact silverbeet is one of the few I dont need to sow - I just transplant them from wherever they sprout up as 'weeds' back into an orderly row.

We use silverbeet wherever you might use spinach - its great in quiches, and on its own it is completely transformed to something gourmet with the addition of lemon juice and rock salt. Just squeeze over lemon juice and sprinkle with rock salt after steaming, or if you are doing a BBQ, roughly chop the silverbeet, pile onto a sheet of tinfoil, generously add lemon juice and rock salt, and then fold up into a parcel. Then place it on the BBQ plate for 5-10 minutes before serving - its absolutely delicious!

Its been a busy month in the garden. Our climbing beans (Dalmation, Scarlett Runner, Purple King, Borlotti Stoppa) are planted and beginning to climb, and I have recently planted courgettes, cucumber (F1 Diva and Tasty Queen), spring onion, lettuces, coriander, carrots (Scarlett Nantes and Belgian White), strawberries, beetroot, and the first tomatoes. In a couple of weeks time the seeds sown indoors back in August (eggplant, capsicum, basil, tomatoes) will be ready for planting too.

The value of the yield from our garden this month was a nice surprise, thanks to the plentiful harvest of silverbeet, herbs, and mesclun (tat soi, mizuna, cress, lettuce, corn salad, bok choi, calendula) (see the table below for details). Hopefully this is encouragement to get out there, get your soil humming, and turn those dreams of summer bounty to reality.

Till next time,

 Tim

	kg/quantity	price	value
oranges	0.75	2.49	1.87
jerusalem artichoke	0.8	5	4.00
oregano	1	3.25	3.25
bay leaves	1	4.96	4.96
mesclun	5	3.68	18.40
parsley	2	2.99	5.98
rosemary	1	3.25	3.25
thyme	1	3.25	3.25
spring onion	1	2.29	2.29
lemons	2	0.63	1.26
garlic	1	1.32	1.32
silverbeet	4	3.75	15.00
			$        64.83
costs
courgette plant			1.99
lettuce 2 punnets			2.58
strawberry plants 3			5.97
blitzem half packet			2.00
mesclun seeds			3.00
			$        15.54
5 hours of time (weeding and soil preparation)
benefit minus costs			$        49.29

Seeds of faith, roots of belonging

Today, with the companionship of my two-year old daughter, I sowed spinach, radish, mizuna, coriander, and cress straight into the garden beds where they are to grow, and courgettes, beans, and cucumbers indoors. If you start these more cold-tender crops indoors on a sunny windowsill, you can be eating them by Christmas (or you can achieve the same by buying them 'ready to plant' in early October).


For me, growing my own food isn't just about reducing the grocery bill - it also fosters a deep connection with the place in which I live. From sowing to germination to growth to harvest and then consumption, it is a process that encapsulates a lot of the richness of life. My home doesn't just provide me with shelter and warmth, it also provides food for day to day life. This 350m2 of Auckland suburbia, with all its faults and failings, is part of who I am.

This to me is rather healthy. While to some I might be waxing lyrical, I love the connection with land, that I grow when I am partly dependent upon it. Sure, our little space doesn't supply all of our family's food needs, but, during the summer and autumn at least, it does go a fair way towards it. And the joy of deciding what to eat for a meal, based on what is abundant out the back door, is a nice lesson in simplicity and contentedness.

One of the desired outcomes of our garden is that we raise our children to become well-rounded adults. From the age of 'nearly three' our daughter is learning little 'toddler-sized' lessons about truths such as the fruits of labour, that rainy days are  needed to help our food grow, and that little actions can have big consequences. She already shares the love that I have of sowing seeds, and I hope with time and maturity, she will have the wisdom to see that abundant crops (literally and figuratively) can come from simple, forward thinking actions.

To get the best out of a garden, due attention must be paid to the soil that forms its foundation - it needs to be regularly enriched with  inputs that exceed what is taken out, deepened so that roots can reach water and nutrients in the dry times, and also treated with gentleness (don't walk all over your garden beds!). I think there might be some lessons here for me as a father - the challenge to provide the love and encouragement my children need to grow, to provide a home that is a place of refuge when they are struggling or hurt, and to be firm without being hard.


Its never too young to start - parents just need realistic expectations about what a child is capable of. Don't expect straight rows or a well weeded plot! I hope that my children will carry on in the way that they are brought up - knowing that they are deeply loved and cared for, and knowing who they are and where they belong, right down to an understanding of the literal earth beneath their feet. And if they know this, it is my hope they will become people that know their heritage, and who have a strong sense of belonging to their family, their faith, and 'their place', wherever that may be.

Tim

My garden smells of coffee

My garden smells of coffee. The smell of morning lattes greets me as I open the compost bin, or as I cultivate the ground in preparation for planting.

So far I have spread about 40 kg over the ground, and its a free waste product of the local cafes. Essentially its compost ready to go, and it doesn't cost $6 per 40 litre bag! And if its not collected, it goes to land fill.

Coffee grinds are high in carbon, 1.4% nitrogen, and apparently a cat and snail repellent too. It seems most cafes produce 5-10 kg of waste grinds a day, and are more than happy to have it collected than have it fill their skip bins. So get out there, save money, reduce waste to land fill, and improve your garden soil (all in one mutually compatible go!). At this time of year I am spreading it over the surface in a layer 1-3 cm deep, weeds and all, and then lightly hoeing it in.

We do compost as well, but our three bins cant keep up with the need. The ideal scenario, if you have it, is to make the surface 5 cm a 50:50 mix of soil and compost with each new crop. This way the soil has great water retention over the summer (reducing summer watering costs) and provides ample nutrients for greedy feeders such as courgettes, pumpkin, and leafy vegetables such as lettuce. The only crops I wouldnt generously compost prior to sowing are carrots.

Sowing indoors now for planting early October:
Tomato (Tommy Toe, yellow cherry, black cherry, garden peach, Oregon Spring)
Capsicum (Dulce Espana)
Beetroot (Detroit Dark Red) - will be great eating by Christmas
Basil (Gourmet Blend of purple, lemon, thai, sweet genovese)
Eggplant (Green Splash F1) - for our summer Thai curries
Onion (Red Bunching).
Courgette Costata Romanesco
Courgette Gold Rush
Cucumber F1 Diva
Climbing beans (Dalmation, Purple King, Scarlet Runner)

I put mine on top of the tropical fishtank. If you dont have a heat source enclose each pot in a clear plastic bag and put it on a sunny windowsill. Start the beans, courgette, and cucumber in cardboard toliet roll tubes and then when you plant put them in with the 'pot' - they dont like root disturbance.

And now for the cost-benefit analysis for August:

Cost this month:
Seeds $21. 7 packets at $3 per packet. The remainder of seed sown this month collected from last summers garden (free).

Time: 2 hours (weeding, spreading coffee grinds, pruning espalier fruit trees, sowing seeds). I probably could have done this faster, but Annabelle LOVES sowing seeds, and this certainly doesnt speed the process. However I rather like it that my daughter that keeps asking "sow seeds Daddy?"

Harvest and value:
 Mesclun 3 salads @$3.68 each
Bok choy 2 bunches @$2.99 each
Herbs: parsley 2 bunches, rosemary 1 bunch, basil 1 bunch, sage 2 bunches @$3.25 each
Total for August $36.52

Cost versus benefit for year to date:
+$15.52

Herbs are only accounted for as multiple packets if they are 'bought' more than a week apart, otherwise one packet is used for multiple meals. I will find a more digestible way to show this data for the next post!

Happy Sowing

Tim

Backyard vegetable gardens: worth the effort? Financially viable? Lets put it to the test!

When perusing the vegetable seedlings at places like Palmers or Kings Plant Barn, I am often amused and a little perplexed, at how easy it is to “grow” your own - if you have the money. You can now buy instant  tomato plants, capsicums, or even lettuces  that are “ready to pick” if you are happy to pay  $10-15 a plant. I suppose the idea is that one day you can decide to have a vegetable garden, and the next day be picking the fruit of your ‘labours’.   Is gardening still gardening when it reduced to a financial transaction and the digging of a hole to plant it in?

 I also see instant vegetable gardening as economically nonsensical. I don’t think buying mature plants as a good use of resources when in the height of summer, tomatoes reach lows of $1 a kilo at the local Chinese green grocers. To me, a $10 plant needs to produce 20 kilos of fruit to make it worth the expenditure and effort, and most of my tomatoes probably only yield 5-10 kilos each in a season.  Or why pay $2.99 for a punnet of six carrot seedlings – carrots never reach even close to $0.50 in the shops!

Growing my own food is part of my way of life, but for me it also has to be financially viable. Space is at a premium, even with a 40m2 plot that is oversized by most Auckland vege plot standards. So what I grow is driven by return for effort (yield at an equivalent cost at the supermarket),  convenience (some vegetables are cheap but have such a short shelf life, that its more convenient to have them on hand when needed), and variety (who wants to eat only courgettes from December to May?)

For me, our vegetable garden must to reap a  ‘profit’ after all expenses are taken into account.  I will account for my time for the year, but I consider gardening as physical activity and people don’t normally expect to get paid to exercise – so my time won’t be part of the financial accounting. I would also find this an interesting exercise – I have no idea who time consuming this plot of dirt is. 

Rule 1. Costs  will be tallied monthly, beginning in August.  Costs will include fertiliser, seeds, plants, and any other requirements.

Rule 2. Costs are accounted for at the time they are incurred. So for example if I buy a bag of fertiliser that I use over a year, its cost is added to the month of purchase.

Rule 2. Benefits will be tallied by the value of the produce at the current seasonal price (at Countdown retail rates because I can look it up online).

Rule 3. Cumulative costs and benefits  will be kept as a running total for the year. Costs are forecast to be  initially higher than benefits , with a swing towards benefits  by early Summer.

Rule 4. Land costs and rates are ignored. If it wasn’t garden it would be lawn, which requires input (petrol and mowing time) with no return, so I think this is justified.

Rule 5. Surplus produce can be bartered for other food stuffs to supplement the variety of what we can grow. This may also allow us to swap for eggs, honey, etc.

Rule 6. Fruit and herbs produced on the property will also be included in the monthly accounting. Most of these are produced within the confines of the garden on the surrounding fences. 

 I suspect new rules may be needed as we go along, and your thoughts on these are also welcome. It would be great if the outcome shows how an Auckland vegetable garden can be a productive and economically justifiable lifestyle choice in 2011. Only time will tell.

Tim