Compost Update (Way-Belated!)

While I've written about the compost efforts on our property before, I wanted to give you a belated update on our most recent (i.e. May) batch of chicken-run compost. Now, keep in mind this beautiful compost started out as free hardwood rough-cut mulch from our local tree trimmer. We also added a slight sprinkling of free straw now and again for kicks. Unfortunately I don't have a before picture, but the after pictures are a testament to the power of deep littering your chickens. This large compost pile is the result of our chickens pooping, dust-bathing, scratching, and just doing their inherent chicken-things in and amongst the mulch for about 6 months. This is what it looked like the day we took it out of the coop! The ultimate amendment for the gardens. -Carrie

Isn't she the cutest chicken-poop compost model you've ever seen???

Worm Farming 101

At the end of February I attended a vermicomposting workshop in Dallas held by Heather of the Texas Worm Ranch.  As if the name of her company doesn't give it away, vermicomposting is the act of composting through the use of various worms - in Heather's case (and now mine), red wigglers.  The first time I had ever heard about vermicomposting was about 10 years ago when my "kooky" (what I thought at the time - of course, I am now squarely in this category as well!) college roommate listed worms on her wedding registry! 

Believers in vermicomposting/worms list the seemingly endless benefits:

• Improves soil structure, enriching it with numerous micro-organisms
• Improves water holding capacity
• Improves root growth and structure
• Enhances germination, plant growth, and crop yield
• One pound of mature worms (appoximately 800-1000 worms) can eat up to 1/2 a pound of organic material per day
• In a healthy worm bin, the worms and beneficial microbes work together to neutralize odors, making them suitable for indoor use (while up until now we've kept ours outside, I can attest to the fact that I have never once smelled anything untoward upon opening our bin, despite the rotting food inside)
• Does not produce methane gas
• Worms can eat most fruits, vegetables, grain waste, manure, leaves, newspaper, cardboard, office paper, junk mail, and other sources of cellulose
• Converts waste (i.e. worms eat the refuse and poop out castings) into a great organic amendment that's beneficial for gardens, houseplants, and landscaping

There are huge "farms" dedicated solely to composting with worms and then selling the castings as garden fertilizer.  However, it is just as easy for a homeowner (or even apartment dweller!) to have your own worm bin to compost kitchen refuse.  I'd only seriously started thinking about getting worms in the last year, but wondered what was involved in getting started.  Turns out not much!  Other than the cost of the worms (a hefty $25-$30/pound depending on where you purchase them), it is possible to set up your own vermicomposting bin with almost no expense.

Here's what I did, generally following Heather's instructions:

• Use a 14 inch by 24 inch bin I had on hand (can go smaller or larger)
• Drill some air holes along the top and a few in the bottom (amazingly, as long as the conditions inside are acceptable, no worms attempt to get out of the bottom holes)
• Fill bin about 5-6 inches with chicken litter from the coop, compost, or dirt
• Place 1 pound of red wigglers on top of the dirt section
• Put a thin layer of food scraps (no meat, dairy, pineapple or papaya, minimal citrus) over the worms (not pictured)
• Top with another 6 inches of moist shredded newspaper, office paper, or cardboard (not pictured)
• Snap on top!
• Add a handful of food every second or third day underneath the paper layer (though I must admit I've gone as long as a week and they've been completely fine)
• About once every two weeks I took a hose and quickly (and lightly) sprinkled some water on top of the paper layer to keep it moist

 Bin filled with chicken coop litter

 

 Close-up of litter

 

Added one pound of Red Wigglers

 Finished product after 12 weeks!  The tiny brown particles are worm poop!  

Castings - black gold.  Perfect to side-dress the veggies or fruits in your garden!

Supposedly 12 weeks is a bit too long to wait to clean out your bin.  Ideally it is done every 8-10 weeks.  I think it would be best (i.e. quickest) to make a simple worm/casting separator screen out of a wooden frame and 1/8 inch wire mesh.  I didn't have one today so I just used a cup and scooped out the castings.  You have to be careful because you will get some worms in the cup - especially small ones.  They'll need to be picked out and put in another holding area as you work through the rest of the bin.  As you work your way down through the castings the worms don't like to be exposed to light - so they quickly retreat into the deeper parts of the bin - making your casting collection easier.  In 1 hour I ended up with a whopping 40 cups (!) of castings/excessively decomposed matter - and I only got through half of the bin!  I proceeded to spread this around my blackberries, cucumbers, zucchini, and my lone (though impressive at 6 feet tall and completely unplanned) volunteer tomato.  I then shoved the remaining worms and decomposed matter to one half of the bin, added about 4 inches of new composted chicken coop litter, shoved the worms/matter back over on top of the new litter, added 4 more inches to the other side, and then spread the worms back over everything.  Added new kitchen refuse to the bin along with some moistened, shredded documents - and we're good to go for the next 8 to 10 weeks!  

Up until now we've kept the bin outside and have had no problems.  However, now that the weather is warming up here in Texas I am sure we'll need to bring it in the house.  The problem is finding a suitable location for this large bin in our already small house.  I may need to break it up into two smaller bins.  The worms are really a no-brainer.  Time will tell if my hour spent today will help yield more impressive vegetables and fruit - my fingers are crossed - but I suspect it will! 

Heather at the Texas Worm Ranch is a wealth of information - it is clear she loves what she does!  Please contact her if you have any questions or want to get started with your own vermicomposting operation.  I'm sure she would be glad to assist you! -Carrie

Up To My Ears In Compost!

We love to compost around here. You might even call us composting fools. We can't get enough of the "black gold." Sometimes I feel like we should be the poster family for compost. We currently have four areas devoted to composting in our backyard. What a difference from our non-composting-selves only a year and a half ago! When we started composting in Arlington (read more about that here), I don't think we had any idea how composting would just become second nature to us - to all of us. Our three year old's main job other than helping to clean the bedroom is to take out the compost. Due to our vigilant composting and recycling, the picture below shows the amount of trash our family of 5 generated over a one week period. In contrast, our single next door neighbor more often than not has TWO full trash bins out every week.

One week's worth of trash for our family of five!

We even know gardeners that don't compost! Composting is just such a natural extension of gardening, and helps to bring us to that hallowed closed-loop system you hear so much about these days. You grow the food, to feed your body, and put the food waste products into the compost bin, to make the soil that will feed the food you grow. Perfection! We really started composting as an experiment ("May as well give it a shot!"), but it's quickly become big business around here. I think some people don't compost because when you read some of the manuals (yes, they make manuals!) it can seem very scientific or confusing. Certain percentages of green/brown, etc., etc. We don't follow any special formula. We just throw almost everything into the bin. Garden waste, spoiled fruits or vegetables (no meat or dairy - they attract vermin), straw, hay, leaves, grasses, weeds, sawdust, plain cardboard or shredded paper, chicken poop, and egg shells. We even add a few things some newbies may not have heard of before like dryer lint, ashes from the chimenea, hair (from brushes or haircuts), and even the junk collected out of the vacuum cleaner. Additionally, some grocery chains are starting to print their weekly specials with soy ink on recycled paper - making them completely compostable. I sometimes get their extras at the end of the sale and shred them, place them in the coop as part of the chicken litter, and every few months clean out the coop and add the mess into the compost pile, too.

I figured I'd take you all on a tour of our backyard composting, hopefully spurring some of you who haven't yet tried, or for some reason stopped many years ago and are thinking about beginning again, a nudge. It is truly so easy and is a wonderful (free!) way to make beautiful amendments for your garden beds, container plants, or ornamental landscape beds. You can even put finished compost out on your lawn to help green it up and make it lush. Seeing as we have no front lawn (and the chickens have taken over the small back yard), our compost goes straight to helping produce more food.

Composting for us starts in the kitchen. We've tried out many compost "collectors," but finally settled on an old, large plastic juice jug. It holds about a gallon, and our family routinely fills it up about every two days. It's not pretty, but it gets the job done. We keep it in the fridge so it doesn't start to stink or attract fruit flys.

Kitchen refuse bin

We used to take our kitchen waste and place it straight in an outdoor compost bin. However, now that we have acquired chickens, we're trying out something new. Now this waste goes straight to an area beside the coop. We just throw it right on the ground. The chickens love to scratch through these treats. They eat the vast majority of it. What they don't eat or poop out gets left to decompose. And it does this very quickly. About every other day I go to this area and spend 30 seconds with a rake making it into a pile again. The chickens return to scratch, spreading it out while looking for bugs. My 2 foot wide by 1 foot tall pile gets obliterated in a matter of minutes to just a few inches tall and about 5 feet wide. The chickens have a blast while also reducing our costs for their feed.

Compost by the chicken coop. That bag near the middle is a supposed compostable Sun Chips bag, but it's taking forever - we've had it just over 4 months - probably because the pile doesn't get very hot. In a hotter pile it would decompose much faster, I'm sure.

This small pile sits right next to a much larger pile (3.5' tall x 8' wide) of shredded cedar and hardwood mulch we got for free from a local tree cutting company (note the edge of this pile in the top right of the above photo). I add a bit of this to the "chicken pile" every few days as well. This also decomposes, though slower, and adds some bulk to the kitchen waste.

Free mulch pile slowly decomposing, too.

Note the closeup of the amazing soil being generated between the compost, mulch, and chicken poop.

The last two areas sit on the opposite side of the yard from the coop. This is where we compost larger yard waste (small tree limbs, leaves, dead garden plants, straw, etc - in the wood bin) and other kitchen waste, chicken poop, and the more uncommon vacuum waste, hair, and ashes (in the black plastic bin).

Inside view of wood bin

Inside view of plastic bin. That gross mass in the middle is from the vacuum (ewww!), and yes, to the left of the vacuum mass that does appear to be a beautiful red necklace with a charm attached. I think an older (or younger?) brother has been getting into his sister's jewelry. I need to investigate this!

So that's it, ladies and gentlemen. There is minimal rhyme or reason to our composting madness, yet it indeed turns into compost every single time. It may not happen as quickly as the manuals declare, but it does happen. Don't be afraid. Seriously do it. You'll greatly reduce what you send to the landfill, and you'll potentially save hundreds (thousands?) of dollars over your composting life by not having to go to a big box store to buy it. You won't regret it! -Carrie

Green Ingenuity: Compost Pile Heats Water for Shower

We are going to start a new series here, perhaps once or twice a month, highlighting "green ingenuity" - things you may not have heard of before that make a great contribution to solving problems or challenges of the world, all with a green bent.



I came across this amazing video a few days ago while doing some research. Why didn't I think of something like this? Here's a video from YouTube of Brian Kerkvliet at Inspiration Farms. They made a compost pile around a long hose. As the compost decomposed, enough heat was generated to provide 500 hot showers over the life of the pile. Very ingenious. I definitely want to try this some day. Hope you all find it as cool as I did. - Carrie

Life Begets Life

As a landscape designer and consultant, I often get asked questions about why plants won’t grow in certain parts of a property. The short and skinny answer that resolves 90% of the problems is the soil is as dead as Bush’s bid to write Obama’s budget. There’s nothing growing, creeping, propagating, or crawling around in the garden. Life begets life and death begets death. If you want a garden that’s full of life, you must first make an environment where life wants to be. When asked if he should sell his hay or keep it for other purposes on his farm, farmer Joel Salatin chose to keep the hay because exporting life from his farm didn’t make sense to him. It was as simple as keeping the calories on his farm knowing that somehow, someway, the land would metabolize them. Another noteworthy thought from Joel which lends itself to this article is that death and disease in an ecosystem is mother nature's way of telling you something's wrong which needs to be corrected.

As human beings, we long for association with other living things. We love to touch the plants, pet our dogs, and interact with other members of society. Plants and bugs of the garden are very similar in nature. For plants to want to live somewhere, they must be members of an ecosystem, a community. If the plants and bugs are members of the community, the soil is the neighborhood. The soil, if it doesn’t have it already, should be fortified with compost. This is the neighborhood cantina. I cannot overstate the power of compost. It’s food. Period. Plants draw from it as well as the little buggies. I’ve found that the blacker the soil, the better the growth.

The second point I want to harp on (because I like beating dead horses into the ground) is using mulch. Again, the same people who can’t get their plants to grow don’t know the benefits of mulch. This is the roof to the house. The shelter. It blocks the sun thus keeping the roots cool, provides a moisture barrier, breaks down and feeds the plants, and prevents weed populations from getting too wild too fast. It’s like putting almost all of the change in the coke machine but holding back five cents. You won’t get what you really want.

Here’s a tip if you need a lot of mulch for your property. Call up a local tree company and tell them they can dump for free on your property so long as they don’t give you any diseased material. You get the mulch, they usually have to pay to make the dump, so you both make out. A typical dump could range from 6 to 10 pick-ups worth of material.

In a former life, I worked as a jet mechanic for a private jet company. I can’t count how many times they had me interact with nature for the benefit of the business (because it never happened). It was an artificial environment which begot more artificial stuff. About a year after starting the landscape business, I noticed something amazing. The need to use allergy blockers disappeared. I honestly believe that interacting with nature cured my allergy problem. I believe that a person’s involvement in their garden is as beneficial to the plants as it is to the tender. It not only relaxes and lowers stress, but I believe there are beneficial microbes that could be gained, which is why I advocate for not wearing protection (i.e. gloves)! That’s just the kind of nature boy I’ve become... -Jason

Strange feelings and moving sensations.

It’s the strangest feeling in the world, I mean... besides an enema, dumping a compost item on bare ground. That is how we started. There was no compost starter kit. No special device guaranteed to compost your unwanted refuse in 30 days or money back. Just ground.

So it started. The compost grew that night, most likely from an avocado peel and an apple core or something like that. The next night, a banana peel and onion parts and who knows what else. We got so excited about it I’m sure we piled stuff on it which had no purpose being in there. On and on it grew. One foot. Two feet. Everyday a little higher until it was something we could really be proud of… rotting garbage. But it was our rotting garbage and we were proud of it.

At that time we were living in the city of Arlington when two, no three developments happened which changed the way we look at sustainability. 1) The city, in an effort to get more people to compost, gave away free compost bins to constituents. Hooray!!! 2) We got a $500 electric bill from heating the home we rented in Arlington. Bummer. 3)The tenant in our little two bedroom rental house we owned in Dallas gave notice to leave at the end of the month. Double bummer. It was an eight hundred dollar loss of income bummer. Wasn’t the reason for going back to school to save money? A quick family meeting between the powers that be, that is the “power that holds the purse” and the “power that asks the purse how much we have”, determined that a $500 dollar electric bill was not sustainable. We simply had to use less. So we got closer as a family. Closer on the couch, closer in bed, closer in the shower (I wish!). We turned the heat off at night and put space heaters in the children’s rooms. Meanwhile, I could see my breath in the master bedroom. We were determined to pull through this… until the second $500 bill came! There’s only 237 things I won’t give up on, and this house wasn’t on that list.

Two weeks later, and after a very short conversation with our landlord, we simply moved our family of five into the two bedroom house in Dallas. You can imagine the logistics involved in doing this. We essentially shed one bedroom suit, half a garage worth of “gently used” crap, and a number of other pieces of furniture to make this work. In short, we went from 2250 sq/ft (Dallas), to 1500 sq/ft (Arlington), to 900 sq/ft (Back to Dallas!) Yes, we got closer, we had nowhere else to go... I can vacuum the entire house without unplugging it once. I don’t care who you are, for a family of five, that’s close.

We managed to squeeze everything that we didn’t sell or give away into that tiny house we live in today. What about that compost bin Arlington gave us you ask? Of course we didn’t get rid of that. No, no. We not only brought that with us, we brought the compost which was in it with us. You got it. We sold the good stuff, gave away the mediocre, and kept the trash. Who’d have thought? - Jason