If it’s Darwin, Hobbes and Malthus vs. Steiner, Rousseau and Marx, what sport are we playing again?

        

 

Vs.

 

 

    

"Synchronised swimming" "I hope it's rugby too"   "Three legged races"

 

Actually, it’s gardening. I was reading some tweets today on biodynamic methods of planting tomatoes. I wondered, what on earth is biodynamism and what has it got to do with my fruits? So I went and looked it up. Turns out, biodynamics is a method of agriculture that not only sees any farm animals (i.e. cattle) and plants (i.e. my tomatoes) as living organisms, but the entire farm, soil, air, water all as one contained living organism. Not so strange considering what we’re learning about the effects that the fertilizers, pesticides and antibiotics we use to encourage our plants and animals have on our soil, water and air. It seemed pretty straightforward, akin to the organic farming. But then, I read a little more and found it stemmed from a spiritual philosophy called anthroposophy- which links the energy of the cosmos to the soil in our yard. Since I was reading about all this online, I also was subjected to the standard “You guys are crockpots” comments on each article. It made me start thinking about how many hundreds of religious rituals are attached to agriculture and how useful, in a practical sense, that these rituals are.

We all know how religion affects agriculture, chiefly in land use rules, armed conflict over arable land and access to the products of that land. But it’s not often we get to consider how agriculture affects religious practice. Gardening really is the stuff of life, its products meant to sustain us in this life, and in some cultures, into our afterlife as well. Almost every culture, including our own, have strange and sometimes mystifying preparations and practices when it comes to growing food and medicine. Many of these practices have been reduced in status to old wives tales or superstition in today’s modern society, but many of these practices had (and still have) good reasons for being used. For example, most preplanting rituals around the world involve mimicing the actual actions one would take throughout the growing season for a particular crop or the songs and stories told during this time contain casual farming advice and tips.

Practical Lessons

These rituals are a valuable teaching tool for new growers, so that no seed or piece of land goes to waste. They are generations of memorized farming methods and instructions handed down with the benefit of real experience behind them. The ritual of planting governs the whole of the growing season, setting up rules on when and what to plant, creating clear divisions of labour, and establishing who has rights and responsibility for a particular plot of land. Today, instead of easily recited ritual and generations of first hand experience, we use books and property lines, calendars and seed packet information to keep track of our crops (as a result, some of us end up wrapping our potatoes in wax paper).

Who gets the biggest slice?

You may be asking yourself why I headed off this post with those great modern shamans of science, economics and philosophy rather than a visual representation of the cosmic calendar, fertility ritual or harvest sacrifice. It is because their opposing viewpoints on scarcity, especially as it relates to food and food production, is almost a universal theme throughout the world. Religious ritual pertaining to agriculture is heavily influenced by the idea that crops are either an endless gift from the earth or that land and resources are dwindling in the face of impossible population levels. That either the proverbial pie will always grow, and we will all get more as a result of it or that it is fixed and to get any extra we will have to conquer, steal or beg for someone else’s piece. These may seem like mutually exclusive ideas, but in the complex world of spirituality, they sometimes exist side by side.

Consider that sustenance is a universal need and the religious side of it is not so difficult to see, nor is it so easily laughed away. Being able to see the good common sense behind farming rituals will not only explain strange and often frightening customs, it will help us to become better gardeners. So, in tommorrow’s post we’ll discuss what astronomy has to do with planting, what ritually determined crop variety has to do with sustainable agriculture and what harvest and tilling sacrifices have to do with the redistribution of wealth and power.

Like many Americans this week, I’ve been thinking about the history of Thanksgiving.  But not the feast part of the story, instead, I was thinking specifically of the gardening part of the story.   No matter whose version of history you choose to believe, the act of teaching someone how to produce their own food is about the most valuable gift that can be given.

We think we are in an era of unprecedented technology, where knowledge is worth more than anything else we can have access to.  But this week, as I think of that humble crop that kept the settlers going, of the knowledge it took, the generations of experimentation and risk to create what we know as corn, and of the effect that just this one crop has had on the entire world, I can’t help but think that the technology and knowledge passed between peoples almost 10,000 years ago is as impressive, or more so, than what we have in the computer age.

Genetically modified crops are older than you think

From Teosinte, smaller than a human pinky and containing barely enough grain to be worth gathering, our ancestors, over thousands of years of selective breeding led to modern day corn.  It’s one of the oldest genetically engineered crops in the world.  Its a long story, how a crop becomes domesticated, but it starts slow: a community eats the sweetest, fattest, most tasty fruits of a plant and plants the seeds (either purposely in gardens or fields or opportunistically in middens or other waste piles) so that the best of the crop has a better chance to grow than the weaker plants.  At first this may be unintentional, but at some point, humans start to notice and plan, being ever more picky about which plants they will take seeds from.  Big deal, you might say, how hard is it to pick the best ones and replant them?  But it took thousands of years and many, many trades of knowledge and seeds to get to the settlers on Thanksgiving Day.

Give it to Mikey.  He’ll eat anything.

You also might consider originally poisonous species, such as almonds.  Wild almonds are fatal if consumed, carrying tannins that make them bitter and dangerous.  Yet we have domestic, safe, sweet almonds today.  How did it happen?  Someone, somewhere had to experiment and slowly breed the less poisonous seeds, every generation of trees having fewer and fewer tannins in them until today.  In this case, not only did it take thousands of years, it most probably took several lives to create the crop we enjoy now.

Consider then, the many lifetimes worth of knowledge that gets traded when gardeners exchange simple tips, a packet of seeds, a plant clipping.  If you tried to do that with anything else, with secret family recipes, manufacturing processes, new bits of technology people would think you were crazy if you didn’t get any monetary gain from it.

No matter which version of the pilgrim’s story you read, no matter where you stand on the morality of the interactions between indigenous people and English settlers, the natives who taught the pilgrims how to plant corn and survive that winter so long ago, did it primarily out of kindness.

Late one night on NPR I heard an interview with a songwriter who was talking about love (I wish I could remember who it was, if anyone knows, shoot me a note!) and he said, “Deep down, we all know we don’t deserve love, not one of us.  But then someone comes along and gives it to us anyway.”

Seeds of Love

Gardening is a lot like love.  There is nothing you can give back that will be equal in value to the millenia of sweat and heartache and hard living that went into that tiny seed in your palm.  It lies there cool and silent, not asking anything because it knows you haven’t got anything close to it’s actual value.  And if you’re lucky it grows anyway.  Teaching someone to plant or fish or hunt or otherwise provide for themselves will always be an act of pure charity from the kindest part of the heart.  It means that whoever you just taught will be equal to you in the most basic human way.  When you’ve been given that piece of knowledge or seed or clipping the only way to pay it back is to pass it on.  Don’t be stingy with your gardening advice, don’t hold back that great planting technique.  Not only did it take thousands of miles and lives to get to you, you never know how the next person will improve it, what the next generation will do with it.

So, for all the gardeners I’ve ever gotten advice from, all the kind farming souls who’ve passed down those little shards of love I plant every year in my garden, that feed my family and my friends- I say thank you from the bottom of my heart.  Happy Thanksgiving everybody.  Don’t forget to pass it on.

Go here to donate a cup of food to the hungry. It costs nothing but a few short seconds.

There is something beautiful and soft about a meadow with knee deep grass and wildflowers- at least to me, something natural that not even the best gardener or landscaper can truly replicate.  But my dad likes short grass, he even makes good points about it.  It’s tidier, it doesn’t grow into a rough mix of hay and straw and grass, and above all, it doesn’t let ticks hide in it. 

He always thought I didn’t want to mow the field because I was lazy.  But I secretly love mowing the lawn (it’s the whole power tool thing- we’ve been over my issues with god-like abilities on yard and garden), it’s very relaxing to me, as long as no one’s left their shoes in the way and I don’t run over a hornet’s nest.  But my dad was a man obsessed.  He was like a military barber for the lawn.  I swear he challenges himself to lower the blade another centimeter every time he mows, just to see if the lawn can take it.  I always knew if I let him have his way with the field, we’d be living on a dirt patch one day instead of grass.  So we battled for years, reaching uneasy compromises on the field, wherein half of it got mowed to the quick and the other half straggled into straw and weed where my dad had run out of time to mow it and I (and my siblings) refused, “ran out of gas” or became mysteriously and suddenly occupied with other yardwork when it was time to mow that half.

So why am I telling you all of this?  I know it seems like I’m going to draw a big parallel between my father’s ideas in other areas like politics and religion and my opposing views as a teenager, but honestly, my dad and I never fought, still never fight about anything except mowing the lawn or when to cut back the raspberry patch (same fight, different plant).  No, our landscaping arguments weren’t hints at larger conflicts in our lives, they were simply the different ways we felt about caring for our piece of the world.  Thinking about it made me think about the other gardeners I’ve known, the advice I’ve taken from so many people, and the passion each has had about their little plot. 

Why the world is filled with zucchini

Reading anthropology has taught me a lot about how people feel about property, why they build fences, have planting and harvest rituals, even why they fight wars over land.  But I think gardening and talking to other gardeners has taught me vastly more about all of these things than any anthropology course ever will.  When you talk to a gardener about their vegetables, their flowers, their trees, it’s a little like talking about their kids.  People take and give gardening advice almost as often as they take and give parenting advice.  And with about as much good will (that is, unasked for advice is always received badly, even when it’s given with the best intentions).  We trade pictures of our plants and expect the appropriate appreciation for our efforts, we trade clippings and expect others not to kill them (even if we cut the plant wrong), we trade zucchinis and expect people to smile and say thanks even if it’s the fifth zucchini they’ve received this week and they don’t know what the heck to do with a zucchini in the first place.

There’s politics in there too, not just environmental politics about what sprays we’re using either.  There are arguments about heirloom seeds and fair trade agreements on seed patenting.  There are arguments about fresh food allotments for elderly folks who can’t grow their own any more and haven’t got the funds even to pick up vegetables at the roadside farm stand.  And of course, there’s the ever popular neighbor’s tree overhang/ravaging dog/lax borrowing habits issues as well.

Do good fences really make good neighbors?

We may bicker and extend advice, but we know when we go home behind our fence or stone wall or property line, we’ll live how we want.  We’ll let the field lie or we’ll mow it into order.  Just like I know the field is probably bald as a cueball by now and my dad is in bliss.  Just like he knows my field will be rampant with flowers and straw and I’ll be happily swearing up a storm in spring trying to get the rototiller through it all.  And that would be okay.  Except that I found that tick the other day.  And I started thinking about my daughter walking in fields of long grass and came home panicked and searching for a picture of deer ticks.  And I started to wonder if my dad wasn’t right after all.   Is it age or parenting that’s changed me?  Or is it that I have my own little piece of the world to take care of now, my own field to mow or let lie?

p.s. here is a picture of a deer tick if you ever need to know

Good yard trimmings go here when they're cut. Bad yard trimmings go straight to the compost pile.

It feels like walking through a bowl of old morning cereal. Kind of looks like soggy cereal too.

unbridled leaf wrangling power

 The Zen of Leafblowing

My colleagues found the task of leafblowing boring, even onerous.  But seeing the hapless leaves scatter effortlessly before me, me who had slogged through drifts of sogging yard debris and lifted a rake until my arm ache, it made me feel like a hurricane personified, a tidy whirlwind able to clear acres in a single blow.  I was a king (er queen) among yardworkers, at least until I left that job, and more sadly still, the leafblower, behind.  Now I’m back to the trenches, slinging leaves like a commoner.  I have grand leaf powered dreams for the future.  Even gas powered ones.

The last leaves and yard debris mocks me, every gust of wind blowing down more to torture me with the earnumbing echo of my absent leafblower.  For once, I look forward to the deep snow that will hide the shame of my raking inadequacies, at least until spring.  And as we have already discussed, I’m of the spring lazy variety.

You think this is weird? You should have seen when I tried to stuff a pumpkin in too.

Don’t think I don’t appreciate a post-apocalyptic survival scenario as much as the next gal, but if that’s all you are using your root cellar (or plain old ordinary cellar) for, then you are missing out on great storage space for your surplus vegetables and fruits. 

Storing produce has always been a sort of countdown for me, a crossing off of days (or potatoes) until spring.  By the time you get to March, even the best potatoes will start to look shrunken and feel a little soft, and your apples are going to be wrinkly and maybe a tiny bit dry.  If you’ve never stored garden surplus all winter, you’re probably thinking, “Oh that’s disgusting! Why would I eat that . . . unless it was the end of the world.  Which of course is what root cellars are for, which is why I need a stack of twinkies, canned meat and bottled water, not fresh produce.”

But it’s not true.  And if you are serious about preparing for the end of the world (or a power outage) you should always keep bottled water, good thinking.  But forget the twinkies, properly cured squash, jarred preserves and pickles will last much longer.  And it’s not disgusting, those extra sweet, wrinkled apples and extra soft baked potatoes tell me it’s almost spring during those dreaded ides of March, when I most desperately need to be reminded that, yes, spring will come around again.

The Beauty of Postapocalyptic Pickles

Besides, your produce only gets shriveled at the end.  An entire winter stretches out before you with only dull, flavorless grocery store greenhouse produce to look forward to.  If you shove your canned meats and protein bars into the corner of your cellar though, and put off thinking about the end of the world until springtime, you can have delicious, homegrown produce and preserves (and lets not forget the pickles.  The longer they stew, the better they taste! I think I actually have a jar on the back shelf of my root cellar my mother made the year she was pregnant with me.  And no, I don’t know how they escaped this long) well into the winter months. 

There are all sorts of experts on building root cellars, in fact there is a very good article here on how to convert your cellar into a good storage space for your produce.  But the basic things you need are actually very simple:

• A space that stays cool but does not freeze
• Some kind of exhaust vent or release
• Storage bins, hooks and shelves for your produce

If you have a finished basement, you will probably not want to use it for storing your produce, because it will be too warm and your produce will rot.  But the basic idea of a cellar is key.  Underground spaces stay cool year round, but are insulated enough that they will not freeze.  You can use some above ground structures too as long as they are insulated.  A garage, a screened in porch (winterized with window plastic) or even a shed can all be good spots for your root cellar.  My favorite is the shed.  Since I keep wood for the woodstove in my shed, quarters are cramped with extra vegetables, but the firewood makes a natural insulation and it doesn’t freeze even in February.  You can also use stacks of straw or hay or you can use standard fiberglas insulation.  The key is not to let your veggies freeze. 

Moonshine is still illegal you know

The reason for the vent is that try as you might, some veggies and fruit are going to slowly ferment in storage.  If the ethylene gas that this process releases is not removed, it will speed the deterioration of all of your produce.  Ventilation can be as simple as a fan aimed out a small window, two pvc pipes exiting an exterior wall to as complex as an exhaust structure similar to those found in restaurant storages.

And by the way, if you were planning on spending the end of the world in your root cellar, you should probably have some ventilation anyway.

Why Banana Hammocks aren’t as stupid as they sound

Lastly, the issue of how to store what.  At first this can seem really complicated and a lot of hard work, but really there are only a few simple “rules” to help you sort it out.  Preserves, pickles and wines or ciders all need to be turned (that is, their containers need to be rotated) every six months, so any kind of wide shelving so you can reach each jar or bottle is going to help you immensely (by the way, not turning them will lead to separation and decay of your hard work, i.e. wine and cider turn sour, jams and jellies get a crust of sugar at the top while the fruit ferments and rankles at the bottom.  Except for pickles.  I don’t think anything can kill pickles).  Root vegetables, like potatoes, carrots, turnips do best in their own element.  That means don’t wash them (I know it’s hard to resist, you want a clean cellar and all, but really, they will last much longer in their own dirt) and don’t expose them to sunlight.  In potatoes sunlight exposure can actually be dangerous, as it produces a toxin.  If your potatoes have been out for a while and are turning green, it’s time to toss them.  You can keep your root vegetables in bins of sand or you can give them a well ventilated, airy bin or crate.  The important thing is that you don’t want too much moisture building up on their skins.  Some moisture is good, but if your produce starts feeling slimy, you’ve got too much, stop breathing so hard.  You’re going to fog up the end of the world shelter.

Garlic and onions need to be left out for a few weeks before storing them in the cellar.  People love the braided look of onions and garlic.  I love it too.  I’ve just never been able to manage to do it correctly.  If you can do it, more power to you, come teach me how so I can have pretty strings in my kitchen too.  I just throw them in an onion basket or even one of the storebought onion bags.  After 2-3 weeks, they will be ready to put in the cellar.

Squash, zucchini (and seriously, how much do you have anyway?) and pumpkins will go bad quickly if they are placed on hard surfaces.  You can make a pumpkin pillow with one of those eggcrate thingies you use to delude yourself that the ground isn’t hard while you are camping.  Or you can hang them in old pantyhose from a hook.  And yes, I got weird looks from a friend while I was taking this picture.  You are welcome.

Fruit needs to be preserved through canning, pressing or drying.  Hard fruits, like pears or apples can be stored over the winter, but they need lots of air.  Milk crates work very well.  I was thinking of trying to use my old hammock now that it’s inside and throwing the apples in there to see if that will work too, but I’ve never tried.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

Periodically, you need to check for any rotting produce and remove it.  You know that saying, one bad apple ruins the barrel?  It came from someone storing produce in a root cellar.  As your produce supply dwindles and eventually grows sprouts or wrinkles and drys up, try to realize a life truth in both it’s positive and negative light: Spring will always come again and nothing (not even potatoes) last forever.  Except for pickles.

If you, like many of us, dread being cooped up in winter and experience seasonal blues, you should consider container gardening through the winter.  Just the act of gardening itself, scientists say, has beneficial effects on brain chemistry.  What you grow can have an even bigger impact.

From the Ground up

If you are thinking of gardening with only potting soil or sterilized mixes you might want to reconsider.  As early as 2006, researches found a cheerful little bug that naturally occurs in soil called Mycobacterium Vaccae.  This tiny bacterium literally infects people with happiness.  Once M. Vaccae gets under your skin it boosts your brain’s seratonin level which is one of the chemicals that elevates mood and helps your body’s healing processes.  In fact, M. Vaccae is so effective that it has been used to help cancer patients bounce back from chemotherapy and treating fibromyalgia.

These bacterium are harmless except for infectious good cheer

  Just the normal activity of planting or repotting can help this little bug enter you It exists in soils around the world and has no harmful effects.  But you won’t find it in sterilized soils and potting mixes.  So go get some soil from your yard or garden to mix in with your potting soil.  Right now.  Before it freezes.  And then come back to see what else can help.

Superplants

Lots of depressed moods can come from imbalances in diet.  While all of these items are available at your grocery store, planting them instead will not only infect you with M. Vaccae, but will mean these fruits and veggies will be on hand for those days your bathrobe looks more comfortable than a trip to the store.  Some of them, such as herbs and citrus also do half their anti-depressant work with their pleasant and stimulating odors.  Growing them yourself will give you the benefit of these odors for many days before they are ready to eat or use.  Growing alfalfa, broccoli, green peppers, tomatoes and black beans can all be done in containers indoors.  Tomatoes can be hung in baskets to leave room for other plants while all of these other veggies can be planted in a long window box or deep tray and thrive.  These veggies have the same chemicals that make people reach for carbohydrate complex starches and desserts.  They will lift your mood without making you adjust your belt, which can be the key to avoiding the infamous holiday calories.  You can also grow dwarf citrus trees in a large pot indoors.  While citrus fruit does not directly affect brain chemistry, it helps your body absorb nutrients that do, such as magnesium, iron or thiamin. 

Your indoor herbs can also help adjust your mood while being useful in the kitchen or as an aromatic.  Lavendar, rosemary and basil are all excellent for reducing stress and elevating seratonin.  In fact, studies have shown that mediterranean diets which rely on tomatoes, rosemary and basil in a lot of dishes can have an enormous effect on mood.  Another aromatic that can help is jasmine.  Most jasmine varieties are large and utilize climbing trellises, however, the sambac variety is  easy to grow and manageable indoors, they are also easy to find at garden supply stores.

These are just a few of the beneficial plants you can grow indoors.  Of course, none of these can substitute a regimen planned by your doctor, but if you or your physician notices something lacking in your diet, consider planting a supplement rather than purchasing it.  Not only will your wallet be fatter, you will get the benefit of m. vaccae and lots and lots of sunshine.

Sunshine come on back another day

The third benefit of maintaining an indoor garden is exposure to sunlight.  Sunlight is one of very few ways our body absorbs vitamin D.  Lack of vitamin D can make us feel a little down or can be serious enough to cause seasonal affective disorder.  In the winter, even enthusiasts aren’t spending as much time outdoors as we do in summer.  So every bit of extra sun can help.  An indoor garden means you will be spending more time in front of sunny windows, inside a bright sunroom or greenhouse.  Take time not only to work on your indoor garden but to relax in it too.  If at all possible make it into a comfortable spot.  Add a chair or sofa, some blankets if it gets chilly, even a small breakfast table.  Make your indoor garden the new leisure center for you and your family so you will get the full benefit of aromatic plants and extra sunshine. 

An indoor garden need not be huge or complex, it can be just a few key plants, but it will help make  a happier, healthier you even in the greyest, coldest days of winter.

In the last few posts we discussed setting up and maintaining your compost pile and debunked (or at least helped you prevent) the spontaneous combustion theory.  In this post, we’ll help you diagnose what is making your compost pile reek like the Swamp Thing and how to correct the problem.

Is the stench of your compost heap enough to make you faint in horror?

Once you are established, your compost should not stink.  At most it should smell like damp dirt.  But there are three mishaps that can lead to stinky garbage.  There are ways to tell which problem you have, but my favorite (because it’s sort of like a game show quiz) is guess that smell.

Contestant number 1: this compost heap is redolant of rotten egg with a tinge of sulfur.

The problem?  Remember when we talked about the different microbes that do all the work in your compost heap?  There are aerobic (that is, works well with oxygen) and anaerobic (doesn’t play well with air) varieties.  The aerobic work faster and they smell better too.  Their anaerobic cousins prefer clouds of noxious gas.

What should you do?  This compost pile needs to be turned.  Especially if it is soggy.  Thin materials like grass and leaves mat down in the rain, closing any air holes that might have been in your nice, fluffy pile.  Turn your pile to release those stinky odors and work some oxygen back into the pile.  Not only will it smell better, it will do its thing much faster.  In the future, consider adding rough or bulky items such as sticks, corn cobs or even cardboard to keep those air passages open.

Contestant number 2: Your eyes water when you approach this pile and it sends out waves of ammonia.

The problem?Too much nitrogen and not enough carbon.  This can happen if you’ve added a lot of green materials like kitchen scraps or grass clippings.  Nitrogen needs carbon to equal it out otherwise the pile will get cold and emit a foul odor. 

What should you do? Add brown or absorbant items such as leaves, sticks, straw, paper, or corncobs.  This will help absorb extra moisture and reheat the pile.  If you have recently added manure, back off for a while or add campfire or stove ashes in to even it out, as this too, can cause a heavy ammonia smell.

Contestant number 3: this wholly evil pile reeks of death and destruction.  It’s also attracting rats and I think I saw a buzzard flying overhead

What’s the problem?  Somebody put meat, bones, dairy or other animal byproducts (besides cow or horse manure) into the pile.  This is bad, bad, bad.  Not only will this pile be stinky and attract pests and scavengers, it can also make you sick both because of the disease carrying pests and the microbes that are growing on the meat (and by the way can infect your whole compost heap and hence, your vegetable garden- this is how horrible stories like e. coli in perfectly unassuming, friendly looking lettuce can happen).

What to do?  If you are really serious about composting animal products along with your vegetables, consider Bokashi composting.  What is Bokashi? It’s a fermentation technique that began in Japan and it embraces those stinky anaerobic microbes by sealing the waste in an airtight container (this also means it won’t reek and drive you insane).  For a great example and walkthrough, try the Green Fingered Photographer’s blog here.  

Thank you for playing guess that smell, tune in next time for more composting surprises!

Oh, so sorry compost heap, better luck next time

I don’t like bursting anyone’s myth bubble, especially one as interesting as spontaneous combustion in a compost pile.  There’s nothing like a little hint of danger when it comes to gardening.  So instead of telling you that spontaneous combustion could never happen to your compost pile, thus depriving you of theoretical excitement, mayhem and general neighbor annoyance, we’ll explore why some piles spontaneously combust and the steps you can take to prevent any fires. 

First, what exactly is happening when you compost organic materials?  In nature, microbes, insects and animals aid decomposition.  The insects and animals (like beetles, worms, mice) do a mechanical breakdown of materials first (that is, they chew things into small bits) and the microbes finish it off to make humus (a rich soil that also results from composting).  The goal of composting is to speed this process up, so composting largely bypasses the fauna element and hands things exclusively over to the microbes.  Some of the microbes use aerobic fermentation (for those of us to whom both biology and chemistry class is a thankfully distant memory, that’s the kind of fermentation that happens in the presence of oxygen).  As these microbes do their eating thing, the oxygen gets used up and the temperature rises.  In a tightly compacted area, like a large compost heap, the temperature can get quite high.  This is actually a beneficial thing.  The higher the temperature in your pile, the faster your compost becomes humus.  This is why aerating your pile by poking air holes or turning your pile is important.  When the pile runs out of oxygen, the aerobic microbes quit.  That leaves only anaerobic fermentation which is a much, much slower process.

The bomb in the backyard

So we’ve got good oxygen and high temperatures, that’s good right?  Well, sort of.  By aerating your pile and by turning it you will release some of the heat that has built up, but not enough.  Most of the heat lost from a compost pile is carried away with evaporating moisture.  That’s why it’s important to make sure your pile stays damp, not just on the surface but down to its core as well.  As long as you keep your pile damp and make sure it is turned or aerated about once a week.  Not only will this prevent a heat build up, it will help your aerobic microbes do their thing quicker.

Most compost fires start because a large pile has been ignored for too long.  These piles are dry, so there is no moisture carrying heat away.  They are also not getting any oxygen and aren’t releasing their heat through air holes, so the heat is building up almost like a bomb inside the core.  These facts also make it easier and more productive to begin a new compost heap once your original compost has reached the humus stage rather than piling new material on top.  It will keep your pile smaller and more manageable as well as making it easier to reach the good stuff.

Every heap of garbage deserves a good turn

So remember, while you are living out there on the cusp of gardening disaster:

1. Keep your pile moist, on the level of a damp sponge, cool it down extra on especially dry days

2.  Poke your compost pile regularly (I prefer a pitchfork) or turn it to release heat and to keep the aerobic microbes happy and productive

3. Good things come in small piles, so keep your old compost and your new in separate places.

Next time we’ll talk about curing your compost pile’s bad breath.

Gardening: thrills, excitement, danger lurking around every pile!

Lots of people get weirded out or scared off when someone mentions composting, but in all honesty, it isn’t terribly technical, you won’t burn your house down and unless you are adding the wrong things, it won’t produce a cloud of stinky, rancid gas. 

There are lots of good reasons for creating a compost heap, but my personal favorites are:

            a. it creates rich, well draining soil for my garden and

            b. it VASTLY reduces the waste I have to send off to a landfill. 

Even if you don’t have a garden or flower bed, I hope you will take a week and just look at what you throw out that can’t be recycled.  Think about all the food that goes bad, gets stuck in the kitchen drain, fruit peels, and is just not eaten.  Also think about flower clippings from arrangements, lawn clippings, dead leaves and twigs.  If your family is like mine, close to sixty percent of your garbage consists of compostable material.  Sixty percent!

If saving the earth is your goal, composting is also one of the easiest ways you can reduce your impact on the environment.  That’s not to say you can’t get extremely fancy with your compost pile.  In fact, the faster you need fresh compost, the fancier you’ll want to get when it comes to compost bins.  But you can also have a perfectly good bin made out of chicken wire or my choice, a box made with movable fence rails.  You can even forgo a bin and just maintain a compost heap in a corner of your yard.  The key is, the smaller the bin space, the more the internal temperature will rise, provided you keep turning it (more on that later) and the faster you will develop garden ready compost.

Selecting a compost spot

Now, there’s two kinds of lazy when it comes to composting.  There’s winter lazy and there’s spring lazy.  Myself, I happen to be spring lazy.  I’d rather trudge all the way out to the corner of the garden in winter to add to my compost heap and not have to lug fresh compost in the spring to spread over the garden.  If you happen to be winter lazy, you’re going to want to keep the compost pile closer to your house so you don’t have to suit up and walk a half mile in the freezing snow to empty your compost bucket into the pile.  It’s completely up to you.  However, you will want to make sure that wherever your pile is, it will be in direct sun as much as possible.  So try not to put it directly under your eaves or it will lose a lot of its potential heat and decompose slower.

Now we’re cooking!

So, near or far, space age bin or pile, what should go into your pile?  Any form of plant life will work in your compost pile.  You will want to keep any animal remains (that is bones, meat, dairy, egg shells, pet waste) out of the pile, not because they will not decompose, but because they attract scavengers of both insect and animal kind, and once you’ve got them it’s hard to get rid of them.  Fruit and bread should be turned into the pile quickly to prevent other pests like raccoons from dragging them out and making a mess on your lawn.

The key to starting your pile is mixing brown items (such as twigs, old leaves, wood chips) with green items or nitrogen rich items (such as grass clippings, cow or horse manure or fertilizer).  The combination of carbon and nitrogen as these items mix will begin the raise the decomposition rate.  Adding soil or old compost (find a composting buddy!) will kickstart the process by introducing the bacteria that starts composting your waste.

You will want to keep your compost heap damp to help the decomposition process, so water it when you water your flowers or vegetable garden in the summer and check it every so often in the fall and winter.  it should be moist but not soggy.  To make sure you get the whole pile, you’ll want to poke holes or turn the pile as you water it.  You can buy all kinds of aerating tools and special shovels to turn your pile, but I prefer one sturdy pitchfork to do the whole job.

If you are starting your pile now, you will want to conserve your pile’s internal heat.  You can do this by making a ring of medium to large rocks around the pile to reflect the heat.  Congratulations, you are now the proud owner of a compost pile!

Next time we’ll debunk a few composting myths like spontaneous combustion, solve a few common problems like stinky heaps and show you how to turn and use your compost.

Domesticated over 5000 years ago and growing today on six continents, garlic has become a staple not only in world cuisine but also for medicinal uses.  Cloning itself from just one clove, garlic is also one of the cheapest and easiest crops to grow. 

Timing is everything.  For regions that have ground freezes over the winter, garlic can either be planted in the late fall just before the first major freeze or in the early spring when the ground is just workable (about the time you would plant your beans), you may end up with smaller-than-spectacular bulbs.   For those gardeners who live in warmer climates, garlic should be planted anywhere from late fall through midwinter.  It seems contrary to the regular order, but the cold weather actually stimulates the clove buds.  This can happen in early spring, but you will probably be left with smaller bulbs at the end of the growing season.  The garlic will continue to grow very slowly over the winter meaning you get an extra long growing season for the bulbs that you won’t get planting in spring.  The garlic will need 2-4 weeks before the ground experiences its major freeze for the winter in order to establish its starter roots.  The freeze won’t kill the garlic, as it is a winter hardy crop, but without those starter roots, it will be as if you did your planting in the spring.  On the other hand, if you plant too early and start getting lots of large green shoots, the leaves themselves will suffer frost damage.

Send in the clones

With your fall tilling probably finished by now, it is the perfect time to plant your garlic in order to get those large, full flavored bulbs next fall.  It is important to make sure your soil is loose and well draining to prevent the garlic from rotting.  Your cloves should be planted with the pointy end facing the sky (that is the part that wasn’t connected to the root or neck of the original plant) about 4-6 inches apart.  If you have several rows of garlic, you will want to keep the rows at least 6 inches apart as garlic is a very poor competitor for resources. 

It’s important to remember that the bulbs you will be getting are basically clones of the original clove that you planted instead of the result of breeding two plants together (I know, it’s been a long time since biology class, basically the bulbs you get, barring unforeseen mutations, will be copies of the original rather than bigger, smaller, or different flavors), so you will want to pick the most flavorful variety (Chinese varieties have more heat while hardneck varieties vary from mildly hot to sweet) and the healthiest, fullest cloves to plant.  Try not to remove the cloves from their neck (or stem) until you are ready to stick them in the ground.  The root needs to stay moist in order to grow, and after a few hours separated from the neck it will completely dry out.

Where did I bury that again?

After placing your cloves you will want to cover them with about 2/3 of an inch of soil.  Covering this layer with an inch or two of mulch, compost or fertilizer to keep the garlic nourished and growing throughout the winter.  If you are expecting a particularly cold and dry winter (how will you know? we like the Farmer’s Almanac there’s a link in our blogroll), adding a layer of straw or newspaper will help keep the moisture in the garlic bed. 

If you are anything like me or have an overzealous gardener tilling your garden (also like me), by springtime you will have completely forgotten which rows you planted with fall crops, so take the time now to add a stake or distinctive stone or sign at the end of your rows to jog your memory. 

Just a small amount of work this fall will give your neighbors bulb envy next year.