patio composting

I think I've found a few things to blog about. It's been a little dry around here lately, but only because I simply cannot find within my life any reason to prioritize blogging or anything else that involves sitting, stationary, in one position because of course (like right now) the children decide I am a jungle gym or suddenly need me as if all of their needs have been reserved for when I sit down for some "me" time. This season with a 2 year old and a 4 year old  (and a 12 year old who sometimes acts either 2 or 4) is EXTREMELY trying. I love them with all my heart, they are my greatest joy. However, I won't lie. I am taxed. They are at such a high needs state and I feel subhuman at times.

Anyway...

So, yeah, we've made a few changes around here. It is a travesty that in East Cobb there are SO FEW OPTIONS for recycling. We live in a condo community with an HOA that uses a sanitation company with no recycling offering. There is NO comprehensive recycling facility or drop off nearby. We did locate one recently that allows cardboard, plastic, aluminum and magazines/paper, so we decided to start recycling those items at least. We recycled heavily when we lived in Woodstock but since moving here it's something we haven't done and seems so wasteful. We didn't have anything like this when we moved in here. This is a recent change (crazy) in the community. 

In addition to that I have been researching composting when all you have is patio - not yard or garden - space. I found several great resources which inspired me to get started. I don't know when or if I will use the soil on my patio garden, but I certainly don't want to waste the vegetable scraps and other compostable items we discard so I wanted to start composting again.

I am reusing the 14 gallon kitty litter bins. I will probably end up with lots of batches of composting soil on my back patio but it can be donated to the Kula Project if I run out of space/use for it. 

To start it off, I began with brown matter in the base of the bin and added a few worms I dug out from under my existing pots. I used pine straw and soil. I probably put 4 inches of pine straw in the base of the bin. I placed a bowl of soil next to the bin to add to the green matter I will be adding as I go to try to keep a balance. 

The key to successful composting is having the right green and brown material balance so that decomposition will actually happen. Since we discard more green material (vegetable scraps, mostly) than we have access to brown material (leaves, hay, pine straw, soil, etc), I will actively have to seek out additional brown material to balance out the pile, which means adding a little brown when I add a little green. The ideal balance of green to brown is 2 parts green to 1 part brown, although a 1:1 ratio of each is acceptable. I am shooting for the latter. I am going to have to take a walk in to the woods and gather up some leaves and whatnot for my pile. Newspaper and paper egg cartons are also a great source of carbon/brown material.

From a scientific perspective, I might add that the brown material is your carbon source and green material is your nitrogen source. The correct balance of carbon and nitrogen provides the right balance of food for the microorganisms in your pile that actually do the work of composting the material. If you don't have a good balance, there will be no composting action taking place. 

Here's what I'm doing (I'm no expert - but learning as I go):

• I use a large plastic bin on my countertop to place compostable scraps into until full. Compostable materials include fruit and vegetable scraps and peels, egg shells, coffee grounds, tea bags, nut shells, etc. Non-compostable materials are pretty much any and all animal products (no meat, dairy of any kind). I chop up my green material as small as possible before putting it into the countertop bin. Smaller pieces compost faster.
• I set up a bin (14 gallon kitty litter bin) on the back deck with a lid. I poked a bunch of holes in it to get the air circulating around it. I placed 4" of pine straw and a sprinkling of soil, a few worms in the bottom of the bin to get started. I have a container of soil on the side to sprinkle on top after each addition of green material. 
• As I add green material I try to keep it balanced with brown material. 
• I give the bin an occasional shake (though I am not sure this is actually helpful since I have worms in there? I am not really doing vermiculture, I just put some in to help the process - like, eight worms... someone school me if I am not supposed to do that!) to keep the mix blended. Like turning the pile if it was in my garden, I think this has the same effect. 
• I try to add a little water with each addition of green material.
• Once the bin is full I put it aside and start a new one. I will just continually use my kitty litter bins as they already have lids and are large enough for our needs. This may or may not work long term... see next bullet!
• I will monitor the pile for the right temperature. If it's not reaching the right temp, it's not composting. The pile should be 110 - 160 degrees Fahrenheit. I think challenges I will face reaching this temp will be the lack of surface area to my pile. But I can always transfer to a bigger bin and see what happens. For now I will keep you posted. 

Great online resources I found about composting:

Home Composting Made Easy

WikiHow: Make Your Own Compost

Patio Composting on Aunt Debbi's Garden blog

Making a plastic composting bin

Hope this inspires you to consider composting... it's something I did before when I was living in a house, but now I realize it can be done living in an urban setting as well with a little modification of our methods.

I can't wait for Spring and to be able to plant my vegetable garden. The patio has been getting more and more sunlight in the mornings which means it's almost time to plant!! 

Thanks for reading...

Brooke

fall patio vegetable garden

This past Monday I took advantage of my day off to do something I love but moreover something I'd been needing to do for a couple of weeks. My summer patio vegetable garden experiment had started to wind down after my cucumber and squash plants croaked and the tomato plant got all spindly. I have about 16 or 17 pots available and I wanted to try to use those so I didn't have to spend any money on anything except the components for my soil mix and maybe a couple packets of seeds. As far as I am concerned as long as I have a superior soil mix I have a good chance of success. Summer vegetables are generally BIG and the pots I had really weren't sufficient to support the big vines characteristic of a lot of the stuff I had planted. I have hope for a better fall "crop" given the fact that one 10- 12" pot should be okay for individual green leafy vegetable plants. 

Fall is my favorite time to plant anyway. It is low maintenance, and as soon as plants like collards and kale are mature you can just take what you need, leave the plant and it will continue to grow leaves that you can continue to harvest. Here in GA these hardy leafy plants fair well over winter and I can usually harvest from them until they bolt in hotter Spring weather. 

For soil I did a modified Mel's Mix recommended for square foot gardens (SFG) which is what I had before when we lived in our house. Mel's mix is typically 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 compost and 1/3 peat moss. I chose to do 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 mushroom compost and 1/3 steer manure. When I started my SFG at my house I did this same mix but with peat moss in place of vermiculite. I had great results. I think also the higher level of nutrients in the soil with my modified mix will be beneficial given that I have things in pots and not in a larger bed. 

We still have sweet potatoes (4 big pots) growing... I am waiting a bit to harvest them. There are also 4 plants down in the community garden that I think will be decent as well. Everything else down there has been pulled out. 

All in all we have...

4 collard plants

4 red cabbage plants

8 sweet potato plants (and lots of tubers by now, just waiting a little before harvesting)

2 mustard greens from seed

2 turnips from seed (won't do much with the turnips but I can harvest the greens at least)

3 spinach from seed

tons of radishes 

2 rosemary still growing + basil is struggling along

It's not much but it's enough to keep me going. If the light is low enough and the community garden spot gets enough sun I might consider going down there to put some plants in but I'd have to redo the soil mix and that's EXPENSIVE! 

Anyway, we took some photos of the process...

here are things BEFORE... mixing the soil components and cleaning out pots

our shovel = fireplace shovel. yep.

Shiloh on camera duty...

dumping  soil mix into pots...

...and smoothing out, ready to plant

best thing in the world. wish you could see the shimmer of the vermiculite...

she's finished!

happy and dirty :)

freshly watered...

garden update!

It's been a square two weeks I believe since I planted my fall vegetable garden and as promised, here's an update on our progress.

We've had some very interesting activity in our beds. When I prepared the soil this year I used manure from a friend's horse barn and my own compost. Of course, compost is the result of decomposed fruits and vegetables, among other organic and biodegradable things, and it's natural to think that maybe seeds from those fruits and vegetables may linger behind, storing up life within themselves and waiting for the right environment so that they may release their energy and grow into food.

Now, I am not sure if the "mysterious" seedlings that have been popping up are from seeds in the compost, or if they were dormant seeds in the beds that came to life because the soil was attended to and amended. I do recognize the seedlings but am not sure of the variety of each plant. The sad part is, this is not the growing season for those fruits, so we may not get the chance of seeing any of the plants bear fruit at all, but it will be fun to watch and see.

I'm also starting a garden time lapse page so you can see our progress cumulatively.

this bed has collards, kale, radishes, strawberries and lettuce, along with other seedlings that have sprouted up that I will point out to you.

this bed has collards, turnips, lettuce and kale and also has some mysterious seedlings

here are the radishes (strawberries far left), and right in the spot where a radish plant should be is some kind of squash plant... at least some kind of vine plant TBD

in this picture you can see a kale seeding (I think... maybe collard) and a tomato seedling

growing up against the edge of the smaller bed are these two plants... not sure what these are but I do think they are vines? I dunno...

The type of gardening that I do is called square foot gardening. The approach involves building raised beds that are a good 10"  to 12" deep (2 2x6s end to end work well), filled with 1/3 vermiculite (for drainage), 1/3 compost and 1/3 manure. This allows you to have perfect soil without having to till up any of your own soil and try to amend it to work best for your plants. Also the nutrients in the soil are dense and contained. Another added benefit is that you can grow more food in less space, with less water, less seed and minimizes your watering needs. I also have only ever had to use neem oil to prevent any insects from affecting my plants, which is totally organic and natural. Because of the diversity of the plants in your raised bed pest problems tend to be minimal and contained to summer months (at least that was my experience).

If you live in an apartment, or in a big house with a lot of land, you can garden this way.

Here are some photos pf my garden over the last few years.

and so we grow...

Welp, she's planted. The seeds are in the ground and now we begin the period of nurturing and patience to see if these little seeds will germinate and grow something good for us to eat.

DAY: 1

from furthest row to nearest: turnips, collards, lettuce, kale

from furthest to nearest: (I think!) collards, kale, lettuce, radishes, and a leftover strawberry plant

Normally I plant a garden both Summer and Fall but with a new baby and it being so overwhelmingly hot, and with Summer gardens being so high maintenance, I opted out... in fact I really totally neglected my garden this Spring and Summer. I just haven't had the money to buy pine straw and mushroom compost and all that... or the energy to pull weeds. But I realized that the compost pile I started a couple years ago and left to finish decomposing was ready, and if I put forth some effort I could get some manure. So I got out there and got to it in time to plant for Fall. 

My raised beds were refreshed with my own compost. Then I took a trip to our friends Rob and Kim's house to get into the manure pile behind their barn that had been sitting and aging for over a year. I shoveled seven garbage bags full of PERFECTLY aged manure. Didn't even smell! :) Totally free, except for the use of a little muscle and gas.

Also, I am crossing my fingers about my seeds... they are a year or more old, and I am hoping they will all germinate. I put an extra (or two) in the hole against my better judgment just in case... if they ALL germinate, I will have to thin quickly. Nothing worse than messing all of the seedlings up in the thinning process. That is one of the most fascinating things to me ... the life stored up in just one little seed. We underestimate it... and in doing so we mess up it's chance to really become all it was meant to be. So many spiritual applications!

I "do" my vegetable gardening via the Square Foot Gardening method which really means I work with the space I have to get the yield I want, in perfect soil, with minimal pest issues as a result, among other benefits. It also means I don't have to use pesticides (which I don't anyway, except Neem Oil in Summer). By now I should be able to certify organic, but I am not sure that's worth it since I really only have about 40 square feet of gardening space!

Shiloh helped me get everything blended and raked out and even helped me plant. It was a fun experience for her and I can't wait for her to see the results of our efforts!

I will post a daily pic of our growth progress. I hope to harvest in November before our first real freeze. Though my collards and kale can over winter...

we started out on Tuesday... Shiloh brought the kitchen sink out into the yard.

one of my raised beds and bags of manure

observe... lol

my sweet one <3... who shortly hereafter bonked his head, and we were done...

and this was our work resumed on Wednesday morning... notice Shiloh wearing her baby and my old madras Kangol cap :) that's my girl :)

the smaller bed...

now we've mixed in the manure... it's all smoothed out now, thanks to Shiloh :)

planting collards, kale, lettuce, turnips, and radishes

reclaiming water that had accumulated in our dump wagon to water the beds

Shiloh made me promise she could have a turn using the big watering can. 

my wild growing Lantana (Miss Huff variety is perennial )... 

Jack (cat) in the blueberry bushes, Shelby (dog) and some dead azaleas I need to take out 

 I'll be posting a photo every day of our progress and hopefully we can do a time lapse! I should do the same for my hair... ha!

Love B

what I did today...

Howdy do friends and neighbors...

Well today was a good and productive day. I actually slept in a little and Dakota didn't make a racket in his room trying to be "patient" for us to wake up and get him fed... which usually results in grumpiness on the part of us, the parentals. I actually had to wake Shiloh up to feed her, which was a surprise.

And the weather was nice - nice and breezy and in the 70s. I love this time of year - a great day to be outside.

Before I started any yard work I made Jason and I some breakfast. I mimicked the Southern Scramble from Flying Biscuit and made a version of my own which was just as good if not better... I took four farm fresh eggs (yes they are truly farm fresh, we get them from ), 1/2 a medium onion (diced), 1 cup of cooked mixed greens or collards (I have a huge pot made up in the fridge) and four slices of bacon (cooked). Saute the onions and greens, add the bacon and beaten eggs. Turned out REALLY good! We had a muffin with it too. Yum!

Today I tackled two big projects in the yard - they were to finish the compost bin and start a pile and build a trellis for my sugar snap peas in my little vegetable garden. I've been gathering kitchen waste for the last couple of weeks and the bins were overflowing now with egg shells and coffee grinds.

The compost pile was first. We chose the spot under the landing of the stairway coming down from the deck as a good spot that gets medium indirect sunlight and medium amounts of rainwater. I found a good "recipe" for a starter pile - 2-3" of very small woody material - twigs were what I used. Then 2-3" of dry material such as leaves, newspaper, egg cartons, dry straw, etc. Then you add your green material and kitchen waste and soil. The next step was to water it down... And voila, the beginnings of rich organic matter to use in my garden next spring!!



After I got Shiloh down for a good long nap I tackled the trellis. Now, all I have to work with is some old stakes we used to stake my tomatoes and gladioli and chicken wire. So I made-do. Now my sugar snap peas have something to climb on.

My garden doesn't look half bad, I might add! I need to figure out when I need to harvest my radishes - they're getting close.




Okay, enough of this housewifey post... I need to go change Shiloh's britches as she just shared with us all that she needs to be changed! Lol! I love my sweet baby girl.