Getting Down and Dirty in One of My Favourite Parts of the Garden
Does anyone else get excited about worms? I kinda squeal when I see big ones. I just think they're the best little critters known to man. I get this kinda childlike glee every time I uncover them in my garden.
Nobody likes me,
Everybody hates me,
Guess I'll go eat worms.
Long, thin, slimy ones,
Short, fat, juicy ones,
Itsy, bitsy, fuzzy wuzzy worms.
Down goes the first one,
Down goes the second one,
Oh, how they wiggle and squirm.
Up comes the first one,
Up comes the second one,
Oh how they wiggle and squirm.
I'm not going to eat them, and I've never seen a fuzzy wuzzy worm, but I swear to god I get this song in my head every time I play in the compost. The more worms in my compost, the more they're breaking it all down, so I do tell them I super duper love them and think they are doing a fantabulous job!
I say play because I love my compost heap. I find it an absolute miracle - how can you throw waste somewhere and have it turn to gold? Are you KIDDING me!
Actually, it took me an awful long time to get a handle on making compost, and now that I've got it figured, I'm making as much as I can. It's a good time of year to get it really going, when it's still kinda dampish and I don't have to water it, and the air and ground are heating up to really turn over bigger quantities. I'm so enamoured with it this weekend that I'm going to tell people who might listen, because J. is too busy mowing out front to care about worms and dirt. What's wrong with the man? I bet if I told him there was a landrover in there he'd be into it.
So here's my basic set up - three bays. One is resting, 'cooking' stuff, and the other two are on the go. I kinda thought I'd have the third one for turning the compost into as you turn it over to help it cook, but I've never really needed to do that so I just do it this way. I love that I have a path going all the way from the house to the bay area and I dont need to get my feet muddy - it's the little things!
Here's a little video walk through, and at the end you can even see my comfrey tea with a slater bug or rolypoly in it. They're absolute pains that eat young vegie seedlings, but they are also really very good at processing toxins in the soil including heavy metals, so you gotta love them really. Oh, and a warning - this video is only interesting for gardeners. There's also a close up of our mulching fork, which seriously is the best tool we have bought in the last year. Why didn't we get one before?
It took me a long time to work out that big twigs were a no no - well, to be honest, I didn't put much thought into it. I don't like being told what to do and I like to figure it out myself, which has worked for me so far. Now I just scream at J. - DON'T PUT BIG TWIGS IN THERE! They just don't break down.
What I do love is COMFREY! I have a HUGE comfrey patch next to the bins to make it easy. They're just beginning to poke through the soil now, so in a month or so I can start doing that again. Comfrey is an amazing FREE fertiliser and if you're not growing it you should. It contains the Big 3, Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium, and many trace elements, and it's high carbon to nitrogen value means it doesn't take nitrogen from the soil as it decomposes - it becomes a source of nitrogen, and has more potassium than composted manure. So that's one of my WET layers, as you need layers of wet and dry in a compost. I also use it for comfrey tea fertiliser, which is awesome, and I have a few bins of that around the place too which are full of broad leaf weeds and comfrey leaves that are breaking down to make a liquid fertiliser.
Artichoke leaves are brilliant green manure as they are so large and the big lower leaves always need pruning! Plus, their fibrous leaves take a little longer to break down, so they create useful air pockets which are needed to help break it down.
Rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid, which is poisonous, but it's perfect safe when broken down in the compost pile. I absolutely love growing things that have more than one purpose - rhubarb is one of the most prolific and easy plants to grow for sweet desserts and flavouring drinks too!
I also LOVE the big leaves of rhubarb and artichokes for my wet layers too - the wet layers are the green compostable garden waste and food scraps between the dry layers of straw. I have a huge artichoke patch and about eight rhubarb plants, so the excess leaves go in the compost. Very occasionally I put grass clippings in, but we don't use a catcher on the mower and I can't be bothered raking it up. Of course, vegies go in there too, the big broccoli and cabbage leaves and so on - just not the stalks, unless I chop them up more finely with a shovel.
Coffee grounds are also a winner for the wet layer and I often grab them from local coffee shops in the area. We put our food waste in there too, but I'm not too keen on doing that as it attracts mice. We're getting new chickens soon so they'll likely eat most of the food scraps anyway. I also layer the bags of chicken manure we get from an organic chook farm up the road, which helps the microbes do their work a lot better and I've noticed much richer compost since I started doing this. Of course, when the chooks are back in the garden I'll be using the straw from their nests which is rich with manure and urine but for now, I have a big bale of straw that I layer between the wet layers. I also use the excess pond weed, which is perfect for organic matter too - just not now as collecting it makes my hands too cold!
I need a sign to remind J. not to put huge branches in my compost.
I'm so impatient with the compost - sometimes it's like waiting for a kettle to boil. I really need a lot of it for the wicking beds that I'm putting in for mid Spring, so I'm really giving it a lot of love and urging it to hurry along!
Well, my fingernails are proper dirty now, and so am I, so I'm going to tend to my bath. It's nearly hot enough, and the sun is very low in the sky, so it's a sunset bath with wine for me! Oh, and J. I suppose, if I let him dirty my bathwater!
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8 weeks wow that's really good, I might have another go making some, I think it took me about 1 year last time. Will try this layer method and no big bits. Do you recommend an open to the air and rain pile, or a covered composting bin, thanks.
When it's really wet, I cover it with a bit of corrugated iron I have lying around, but usually a thick layer of straw works fine. Open air is good most of the year, but if it gets too hot here I also cover the bits with a scrap bit of wood or iron just to keep the worst of the heat off. Yeah it took me ages last time, but then I saw a mate who made it so fast that I was like - aaah! I have to do this! @cryptothoughts I definitely think the extra manure in layers helps break it down a lot faster as does the comfrey.
Awesome, thanks for the tips. I just planted some more comfrey as i found it to be an amazing liquid feed (tomato abundance 😀). I also have lots of rhubarb which has started to regrow the last couple of weeks.
So i have all the materials to try this out again, many thanks for the inspiration.
Oh comfrey fertiliser is the BEST!!!
When you finally get here (LOL) we're gonna need to have SUCH a conversation about techniques and adjustments for flooding, large pythons, rodents the size of Australian cats etc.... haha... I am a composting queen too but Thailand presents some very real challenges. Sweet post!
Oh my god! If I had a snake or python in my compost - eeeeeeeek!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I do put down mouse bait as I simply can't have them eating my vegetables and spreading disease... feel awful but it's them or us.
Lovely post River and so many notes to make, thank you for sharing. Our days on the wwoofing farms taught us a lot, though taking this little tours around your yard has wisdom in abundance!
I see the bays are pretty large and the path all looks luxurious for this highest honor of duties. Do you also store the liquid for fertilizer? Also did you import your own worms?
I really love hanging out reading up on you green fingered ladies! If you are ever here visiting @artemislives we would love to meet you and your J too! Enjoy your bath 💗
The worms just appear! Yes, we have the luxury of space and it makes it easy to get in their and wield a shovel @kenistyles. The path is pretty posh for sure, but we had the pavers lying around and I was fed up with weeding the path, so I'm stoked with it. Yep, we have about 3 big buckets with comfrey fertiliser - I also chuck a few handfuls of chook manure in the brew and broad leaf weeds and though it stinks, it works a treat. Thanks for stopping by - and yes, if we are ever in Chiang Mai I'll be sure to have lunch with you guys!
My trick is a small bucket next to my kitchen door. One person scraps all go in there, bigger and smaller pieces marinate together. The flies seem to like it. The smell as long as unagitated is not there, but when I mix and scratch a bit, there is that very uncanny sweet smell.
I though can quite honestly say I made my own, in my first year of gardening, so that's one to scratch of the bucket list.
Good idea... but how do you deal with mice?
Hadn't any yet. There are of course mice in the garden above my path around the house. My 'garden' is on the lower level, entry door. The real garden is on the second level. There are mice as the cat tends to find some anyway, but haven't noticed these yet especially around that bucket. My way of gardening in buckets on pavement also gives room for frogs to live in moist areas. I only have veggies in there and some gardening scraps, so that might help too.
There are gardeners, that just kill them:
That is a project I wholeheartedly follow, for his clear and concise style. I can learn a lot from him, his way of interaction.
I love what he says about rules.... Its definitely not a one size fits all recipe and nor do any of these rules work for me. I have done all of the rule breaking successfully. This is a fabulous value addition to my post and thank you wholeheartedly for it. My only rule is chop it fine!!! BUT geee... look at his compost!!!! I have big boxes too and that works well. I figured HEAT kills seed and disease. I wonder if the plastics leach into the soil? Hence slater bugs value I guess. Im sharing this with my local gardening group. thankyou!!!
It's always a pleasure to make the world wide web a bit wider. You can always choose to support him for his work for the garden community :)
Plastic, especially thin filmed stuff, so all below a 1 mm thickness generally has a lot of additives to make it that supple, so you can count on that
What about the slater bugs?
It's a real pleasure
I'll just copy from naturalnews.com for the sake of time:
I always used to hate them for eating my young plants but now see them quite differently!
the world is full of leeches and other like minded vampirical 'symbiotic relations' between living creatures and plants of all kinds. There is always a reason behind everything (not that I could name one right off the bat though). Probably even mosquitos somehow have a decent job in here.
Absolutely.. everything has a purpose and works in a beautiful connected network... but.. damn! Mozzies!!!
Composting is definitely a lot of fun! I never have had multiple stages like you do, I just used a giant tub and turned it often during the summer, not so much in the winter. It amazed me that worms even showed up in my tub even though it was an above ground bin. I really want to start a worm compost though, collecting the worm waste juices, heh.
Curious though, why do you mention oxalic acid being poisonous? I can't find anything on it being a poison. It is toxic in high quantities, but it's not necessarily fatal from anything I've read. I also found that it acts as a competitive inhibitor of LDH, which is an effective treatment for stopping the growth of tumors.
I know..how do this works just ARRIVE!!! So cool.
Everything I have read about rhubarb suggests the oxalates in rhubarb leaves are poisonous in high quantities.
http://www.rhubarbinfo.com/poison