Open a Heap o Worms

 

I've never been the best composter, but even so the Northwest is the most difficult place by far that I've ever tried to do it. People talk about it a lot, blogs and newspapers run articles about composting, hell, even the county will subsidize your purchase of a bin. But some of the best gardeners I know, when pressed, will admit that our cool wet Winters (and Falls and Springs--let's be honest) make it a challenge at best. Sure, selectivity of materials, great diligence, and willingness to have multiple composts in the works at any given time can cook up some fine black gold, but it ain't easy.

So a couple of years ago, I figured I'd try worm composting, but again, I was not so good at it. Ultimately, I did not have enough bedding and space to accomodate the volume of kitchen and garden waste I produce. In the meantime, I am pretty sure, rats gobbled up many of the specially purchased red wiggler worms alleged to be master casters (although I've had no luck to date finding reliable information on vermipredation).

Now I live alone, and don't have as many daily food scraps, but since I press cider, pickle, and can in bursts, I produce occasional heaps of peels and pulp. Add to this a helpful neighbor who makes a lot of juice and gifts me with bins of finely ground veggie and fruit every week or so, and I have so much fresh material that any compost or worm bin is bound to be overwhelmed.

Until I gave up. 

At least, I stopped trying to go the usual routes, like paying for special worms or compost bins. Taking the DIY ethic to it's sometimes backbreaking and stubborn extreme, I resolved to make due with the tools, soil, and critters I have. 

Over the carrot and kale pulp, a layer of old leaves.

I pushed my failed compost into a heap. The humble heap (a word of Anglo-Saxon origin, more faithful to the spirit of a shapeless mass of rotting vegetables than the Latin-derived "pile," which is a bit too prissy and upright for what this is). Somehow I got it into my head that I could coax the local earthworms up into it. The up-side of our cool wet climate is that it is rarely outright freezing, and worms are often close to the surface throughout Winter. In fact, I knew from my compost failures over the years that they would migrate into a heap if it weren't burning up at proper compost temperatures. [You may not be a big worm fan, but they probably beat my similar cannot-compost-adaptation/rationalization involving rats.]

So I decided to set the table a bit more to their liking. When I go on a cooking binge, or the juicaholic neighbor has one of his own, the debris goes on half the heap, as in the opening photo. Then I scrounge up some old dead leaves for variety and anti-bird cover, and toss them on, like in the second photo. Finally, I layer on some mineral soil. Luckily for me, moles are constantly kicking up backdirt from their endless tunneling under the lawn, and all I have to do is scoop up a few shovels of that nicely broken up soil and toss them on. Like in the last of this most un-photogenic series, here:

Yep, that there's a dirt-covered heap. One of the internet's finest photos.

The dirt is something earthworms like, even need, giving their guts the grit to digest the vegetative matter. According to my reasoning, which lies somewhere between superstitious hunch and scientific hypothesis, the combination of new scraps with old microbe-laden duff and mineral soil should be a balanced meal that lets the worms thrive and make more worms. Lately, as I turn the heap, the number of worms suggests that I am onto something.

Speaking of turning, my hunch/hypothesis is that this is the crucial activity on the part of me, the human steward of this worm mountain. Earthworms are good aerators, but the frequent addition of more fresh vegetable peels and pulp, of wet leaves and often sodden soil, is enough to compact the heap into a stanking anaerobic mess that will never decompose fully. Turning the pile loosens the material, creates new air pockets, and facilitates migration of interior to exterior and vice versa.

This is why, in the first photo, you see carrot pulp on only one side. In a week or so, I'll dig in deep to the other side with the fork, and turn it over on top of the left before depositing a new load of scraps, leaves, and soil onto the right. If I see any slimy clumps, I'll break them up. Maybe toss on more leaves or soil, or just pull out a few twigs; I respond to the moment. In time lapse photography, you would see the heap shift from one side to the other. 

This hypothesis/hunch has yet to run through the test. The look and smell of the heap, not to mention the burgeoning worm population, suggest it is working. As time passes, I imagine that I'll be able to harvest shovel-fuls of fertile dirt-compost-castings, as the pile continues its slow swaying dance and the worms shimmy inside. I may set up a half-inch screen box nearby and harvest the fine fallout that way, tossing the rest back into the pile. Or maybe, some other idea will occur to me. In the meantime, I toss dinner scraps on every day or so, a pile of pulp every week or so, and engage in a burst of heavy labor now and then. And the worms eat and make more worms.

[Oh yeah, it worked great! See the Update, and Round 2 experiment here.] 

Toeing the Line

February is time to dig. The frost has only reached skin deep this year, and the rain rain has stayed away to come again some other day. This perfect non-storm afforded me the opportunity to dig, shake and rake. I dig up some sod, shake off whatever topsoil and worms I can (most of 'em, when to soil is not saturated), and use my grandma's long-handled garden rake to get the beds ready.

My maternal grandma, whose rake I think this is, was more unruly than row-ly. Like her, I plant haphazardly, tucking things in here and there. But a true chaotic high note takes some time to achieve, and being on rented land (owned by someone I have reason to believ would not appreciate random island of plants in his lawn), I've gone for a more orderly, rectilinear garden layout this year.

Ergo the row-beds and rectangles that comprise my garden this year. The ones pictured above (wide one is for a hoophouse full o' tomatoes, other one for taters and pole beans), and a strip along the house's eastern front for snap peas, the early potatoes and various herbs and flowers. Oh, and another rectangle in the far back where there is sun in the morning and again in the later afternoon, when rays sneak in beneath the neighbor's trees. 

Planting has begun--early taters and snap peas in the sundrenched east, poppies and the first lettuce and radishes wherever--but February is mostly about getting ready. Dig the bed. Apply gore (blood and bone meal).

The linear beds will flow and then ebb, and probably become a grassless mass by Summer's end. If this became my place for more than a year, a piece of ground I could count on long-term, the lines would meander, the rectangles would chaoticize. But however anarchic my gardening may be(come), however prone I am to planting hither and yon like my grandma, a Year 1 garden looks tamer, rowed, and conventional.

Garlic year: Sprouts, Procrastination, and Loving Your Volunteers.

Everything's tilted but the garlic.

Here it is the first week of February, and the tentative sprouts of January are already nearly a brick-width high. These were planted in October (barely) in accordance with (barely) The Year According to Garlic Calendar. Blanched tips were visible weeks ago, but now the Sprouts are well on their way to Shoots, the almost-halfway-to-Equinox sun tempting chloroplasts into action. Stand back and enjoy.

 

Meanwhile, those few cloves not already et, dried, salted, or drowned in olive oil are impatient with waiting, and haved decided to grow now. Mostly, these are the center cloves of large softneck garlic (Inchelium? Music? I stopped keeping track years ago.) that were already getting spongy a month or so ago when I was putting up the crop. These were the impatient individuals of their respective knobs, itching to sprout and grow as soon as the Solstice passed, and hence past their prime by the time I got around to preserving.

As is my wont, I procrastinated on the planting as well. They could have gone in my Puget Lowlands ground a month ago, but an additional month of delay--no, outright neglect, tossed on a side counter in the kitchen without even the benefit of decent light--is my bow to evolution. Or more precisely, selection. A month gives mold and rot a chance to attack, and forces the malingerers and weaklings to show themselves. Maybe they would not die, but I would kill them (in soup or fried with onions and sausage, if they grew not into blue  fuzzy mold-bombs), and plant only their virogorous sistren.

OK, I admit it, this picture is from October. There are no green poplar leaves on the ground now.

And so today, at long last, I poked holes in the ground and dropped in the sprouting cloves. Yes, you are supposed to plant in the Fall. No, I won't regret this come Summer when I am getting big-ass bulbs of garlic from this procrastinatory planting. 

Meanwhile, back at your ranch, check and see what's sprouting this month. The forgotten and ungarvested garlic will be popping up, and you can uproot and split these heads into cloves and re-plant if you want. Sure, it's not what the books tell you to do, and it may not be optimal, but as long as you have any space to spare, it's better than letting them cram together and produce nothing, and way better than pulling and tossing them out. Let the volunteers know they are loved, give them room to grow, and your nurturing will be repaid.

New Ground: Making a New Garden Bed

To begin with the end, a sunken raised bed, canted to the sun.

 2012 was a rough year in many ways, including gardening, but the world did not come to an end, and so another garden begins. Only a mile north of the last one, and in the same sandy loam glacial outwash soil, it's basically in the same ground. The main difference is that there is less shade, and should work out better for growing food.

With several days of rainlessness and the earth not frozen, I went out and started a new bed. I've explained before why I don't go for raised beds penned in by boards or stone, and attempted to explain why a sunken raised bed works better, but this post dispenses with the arguments and gets to work. Read on to learn how to start a garden bed and harvest some sod in the process.

10 AM. Ignore the row for beans at the right; the new bed is just a few lines cut through the sod at this point.

This yard has the advantage of a solid half day of sun, level ground, and not a bunch of trees or shrubs in the way, but the distribution of lawn is not what I'd like. The best garden spot is covered in grass, and an area where I'd like some grass is bare. So one objective here is to redistribute some sod. I know, redistribution is a dirty word to free market folks, but I am an unrepentant sodcialist. 

To harvest some sod means that just ripping away is not the way to go, and so I adjusted how I start the garden bed to yield pieces a bit over a foot wide, with enough roots to survive. The diagram below gives an idea of the sequence. 

The bed may expand later, but for now it's 25 feet long and 3 wide, and this image is looking end-on. First, I take the shovel and cut four lines down the length of the bed, as deep as the blade will go. Then, I take a pickax and peel back sod from the center section, cutting mats of sod about 18 inches square. If you want more, skip the middle two cuts and peel off the entire surface. Take the time to yank dandelions free as you harvest the sod; this job will never be easier.

As the green peels away, shake free some of the topsoil and earthworms (grass does not need them the way your garden does). I also chunk out some fo the soil beneath with the pickax to loosen it up, but because the soil is not too clayey and I hate cutting worms to pieces, I don't work too hard at it and this middle section is not cultivated as deeply as the side sections will be.

Speaking of which, the digging on the sides is done, and after you've skinned whatever sod you want, the work consists of shaking soil (and more worms!) free of the grass. I try and keep dirt toward the center of the bed. The grass will go in a heap in a shady part of the yard to slowly rot, or become a berm, or whatever. I am a miser when it comes to organic material, and will not put it, weedy as it may be, in a city greenwaste bin. In my old yard, I piled years' worth of grass by the fence, and eventually it became a berm where I planted berries.

2 PM. Done, with a side of sod.

At this point, all that's left is to go through with a garden rake. Lap after lap, I work up one side and down the other. First, the aim is to break up clumps of soil and remove roots and grass. Then, the job is sculpting the earth. I keep a bit of ditch on either side, and slope the bed surface down to the south to gain a few degrees advantage in soaking up sun. 

Blessed with nice easy soil, no rocks, and no freeze, the whole process took no more than 4 hours. The result is a bed the length of one soaker hose, amenable to making a hoop house (how? look here), and ready for planting. I'll probably toss in some early greens just to make use of the ground, but later in the spring, I'm pretty sure this will be the tomato bed. It may get wider to accomodate carrots or somethign else that doesn't need hoop house cover, or it may just stay the way it is. That's the beauty of working with this soil and not boxing myself in with a raised bed.

Recycled Christmas Tree Post

Every year before Christmas, newsrooms in cruise mode revive the great Real Tree vs Plastic Tree debate. Every year as Hannukah kicks off, my college room-mate attempts to understand why so many goy insist on killing a fir tree every year. After all, Jesus only killed a fig tree (Matthew 21:18-22), and didn't do it again every year.

In terms of appeal, fake trees win only among the extremely fastidious and the lazy, for whom cleaning up a few needles is too much of an imposition, so the articles in recent years have often focused on the environmental aspect of the debate. Initially, the ersatz Tannenaum contingent had the upper hand, asserting that cutting a tree down every year damaged forests, whereas plastic trees last forever. 

But nearly all live (then dead) trees now come from farms like this one, just outside of Olympia. People like me come and cut trees, and the farmer plants more. A recent study shows that if the tree farmers don't kill the groundcover plants between trees, such farms are good for carbon sequestration--not as good as a forest, but still significantly better than fields of annual crops or pasture lands (and bonus: no cattle farts), which is what most Christmas tree farms were previously.

In my case--recognizing that this will not be true in all parts of the country--there's the added benefit that the round trip to get the tree consumed less than a gallon of gas. Plus, I'm supporting the local economy, helping a farmer make ends meet, and helping forestall the loss of farmland to development. Because this is an ongoing operation, new trees replacing old every year, it's a relatively stable habitat for birds, deer, and other critters that like something between grassland and forest. No, it's not pristine, but it has some ecological value, and it beats the hell out of a lot of the alternatives.

Meanwhile, fake trees are made of petrochemicals and metal ripped from the earth, processed in factories that consume more oil and create toxic waste, packaged in cardboard boxes (killing trees! the horror) and more plastic, and shipped from China the trucked to your locality. The carbon footprint is large, and the sequestration value zero. If these trees lasted forever, the footprint might be amortized, but fake trees make their way into landfills, not from generation to generation. 

[A Digression: The same goes for ornaments on the tree. If you are stingy and nostalgic like I was this year, then you have ornaments that have somehow stayed out of landfills for decades. A bunch are made from Christmas cards and chicken pot pie tins recycled when I was in second grade, waylaid from the waste stream for twoscore years.] 

All this should be famliar to those of you who reard or read reports on the Real vs Fake theme before Christmas, but what about after? Fake ones go back in a box or into the garbage, so making them less environmentally harmful is a matter of holding on for as long as possible before trashing them.

For real trees, the environmental impact can vary a lot depending on what you do after the holidays. At one end of the spectrum, you  could burn it. Torching a dry fir can be a great show, but it exhales the carbon it breathed in from the atmosphere for years right back into the air in a few minutes. You could douse the flame before it consumes the wood and bury the charcoal, in which case the carbon could stick around for tens of thousands of years. 

Many counties and municipalities have programs to mulch Christmas trees. Olympia even comes around to pick them up. The chipped trees become mulch in parks and in some cases may be sold or given to citizens; this extends the useful life of the tree, provides a local source of mulch with a lower cost and fuel use, and ends up in the soil. Sequestration time varies depending on conditions and from needle to branch to bole, but again something is better than nothing, and the breakdown feeds soil microbes, fungi, arthropods, and so on--it is carbon recycling, not emission. 

I'm stingy with biomass, and would no sooner give the city my tree than I would my compost. At some point in January, I take the tree outside, stand and all. This being the maritime Northwest, it can stay there looking green and alive until April or May, and in years past I have placed to to seem like part of the landscaping. Some years, as Spring comes round, I cut off the boughs and lay them among the blueberries as a nice acidic mulch; I may come back the next year and toss the skeletal branches aside. The trunk gets tossed in back for the native blackberries to clamber over, and eventually to return to the soil. Other years, I remove the stand and toss the whole tree in back. Birds hide in it, berries climb through, and the soil beneath gets better year by year. 

I rationalize habitually, but in this case I really do think that my choice of tree and my treatment of it after the holidays is as good a way to go environmentally as most of the alternatives. A live tree, planted out after Christmas, would be better, but I don't own any ground to plant in, and I don't know many people who have the space to do that year after year. No tree at all could be better, maybe, but it sounds like no fun. Besides, I want my local tree farm to stay in business.

Garlic Winter

If you tuned into the Garlic Calendar, then you know that the cloves sense the Winter Solstice, and commence to sprouting, threatening your year's supply of homegrown flavor. But I'm such a procrastinator that I cannot follow my own advice, and it was only in the new year that I got around to peeling and storing the dozens of cloves that were sitting in the garage. Just these couple of weeks had the garlic doing this:

Hot hot garlic porn, or just reproduction?

While they're starting on the new cycle that would birth a new plant, the cloves are not yet too far gone (besides, I kinda like the look of slices with the green circle in the center). But before the sprouts get as long as the cloves from which they spring, before the flesh gets soft, before pungent aroma becomes putrid regret, I need to somehow stop the process. In years past, this has been a matter of dropping peeled cloves into a jar and drowning them in olive oil. I did that again, but this time I'm trying a couple of other methods.

Salt and the earth.

Here's experiment #1. Good old fashioned salting. Pour pickling salt into a jar, put in a layer of peeled cloves, then bury them in salt, then more garlic, more salt,...you get the picture. The cloves are firm, and I did not irrigate, so I don't expect osmosis to create a saline slush, but it's an experiment. For reference, the majority of the cloves in the first photo and a bunch of salt filled a pint jar. I'll check back in later to let you know if this is a fail, but I suspect that what will happen is that the cloves stay intact, and I get a batch of garlic salt.

Experiment #2 is yet to be done. I had a bunch of large-cloved heads of garlic this year; some are elephant garlic, but not necessarily all. The plan is to roast them, smoosh the result, spread it out on parchment paper, and dehydrate it. I'm aiming for something like fruit leather, a hide of garlicky goodness that I can snip into strips or drop into the pot whole whenever I want that twice-roasted garlic flava.

And then there's this, the old standby: cloves in oil. Chopped or pureed garlic tastes harsh and goes bad quicker. Drowning while cloves in oil and keeping them out of direct sunlight seems to halt the sprouting process. I'll remove the rubber gasket from the jar above so that the occasional fermentation fart can escape. In time, the cloves will soak up the oil and become beautifully translucent, edible amber. 

There are other ways to preserve garlic, but I don't like them (pickling? I just throw some in the cuke pickles I make, and that's plenty for my taste), or I don't know them. If you want to write in with others, I'll listen.

So if you have not yet dealt with your garlic, do it now!

The Year According to Garlic

Sitting down to peel some of the 2012 harvest, 2013's cloves in the ground, I have time to think about garlichronology. Like its pungent Allium kin, it's ideally planted in the Fall, not too long after harvest. Add to that the need to cure the crop to get the best out of it, and the garlic cycle tales a year.

This will be my 5th year of garlic growing near the southern tip of the Salish Sea, and I feel like I'm getting the hang of it. At least on a forgiving glacial sandy loam at 200 feet above sea level. In this 5th year, I feel like I get the rhythm and finally can write about it without being a (complete) fool.

The goal is to write the garlic-centric year, and to post in time to be useful, instead of my usual procrastinatory irrelevance. Today, I'm posting a calendar, beginning with October planting. As the garlic cycle rolls on, I'll post with more detail.