Growing Soil

This idea of "growing" soil is not really far-fetched. Soil is more than just its mineral component of sand, silt and clay. A good healthy garden soil is actually a complex community of interrelated organisms. This living part of the soil includes bacteria, fungi, nematodes, protozoa and tiny arthropods (insects and their relatives), as well as earthworms and the bigger arthropods that we commonly see.  Holly S. Kennell WSU Extension Agent



I have been 'harvesting' my soil builder over the past several weeks.  I have been adding it to the beds in the NE Garden.  This is my compost bin that hubs and his folks built from oak tree parts, back in June.  When I finish getting the last bit out, I will have harvested about 30 cubic feet of organic compost.

Or, about $125 worth.

Pretty nice for a few months of little to no effort.

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I do 'midden' style compost piles.  Much like my grandmothers did.  If at all possible, waste goes onto the compost pile rather than into the city trash can.  All sorts of things go into this pile:  yard trash, kitchen scraps, cooking leftovers, shredded paper, napkins, tissue, dog hair, dryer lint, fireplace and charcoal grill ashes, garden trimmings, dead fall, cardboard scraps.  Oh, and coffee grounds.  Lots and lots of coffee grounds.  Egg shells, clean bones, fish parts are also good.  Other than paper with personal information and sheet paper that we shred, nothing gets shredded or chopped up before I toss it on the pile.  It will all break down in time.

If you think about how debris piles up in nature, there is inevitably a branch, fallen tree, or something larger than a small leaf laying on the ground with other debris and matter piling up with it.  Nature's litter laying on the ground.  Mother Earth's midden pile.  The uneven sizes, and the occasional larger branch in the compost pile helps to keep the pile aerated.  Soils is a living, breathing entity that houses many living creatures.  Air is needed for good health.  Mother Earth doesn't own a tiller, she doesn't need one.  Nor does she double dig. 

Normally my bin is a bit neater looking than this photo.  I'm in the midst of harvesting sweet potatoes and harvesting compost.  The back section of the bin generally holds the excess brown stuff overflow.  Right now I'm tossing on anything that hasn't broken down enough, and pulling out the good stuff.  After I'm done harvesting, I'll toss the branches back into the bottom of this front section and repeat the building process. 

I don't 'turn' the compost.  If you dig around in the pile, all sorts of living organisms and fungi are busy eating up and decomposing.  Those living things in the pile do the work for me.  And heck, they don't need my help.  They are lots more efficient and expert at the matter of breaking down organic matter than I am.  My favorite creatures of all is finding earthworms and Black Soldier Fly larvae in the bin.  Black Soldier Fly (BSF) larvae at first glance looks like maggots.  Fear not, these jewels eat many times their weight over the span of a few days.  I've watch a swarm of BSF turn a spoiled watermelon into lovely organic compost in a matter of a few days. 

We collect our kitchen waste in a small trash can under the sink.  When that can is full, I'll take it out to the compost pile, use the fork to lift out a hole, and dump the bin.  I'll scatter a few leaves, clippings or bark chips over the top.  Lawn maintenance days, I mow the grass and the naturalized leaf zones.  I bag about 75% of the time.  The bag mower clippings always have some brown mixed into them, and they get dumped evenly on the pile.  Whenever I can manage it, I bring home a big bag of coffee grounds trash from Starbucks.  I'll buy a coffee and ask if we can take out their coffee grounds trash!  Works great so long as I can get somebody to go with me.

Time, mother nature and the creatures that inhabit the pile quickly break down the debris.

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After I have harvested a section of garden, I lay out cardboard or newspaper then I will dump several loads of compost from the bin and spread it out.  After it sits in the sun a few days, I'll sprinkle some dolomite lime, azomite and green sand on top.  Then let it sit for a few more days.

Each layer needs to be damp; the existing soil, sheet layer and mulch layer.  If conditions are not damp enough, make sure to water in each layer.

The compost is not completely broken down.  It isn't 'aged' and very fine.  On the other hand, it isn't really 'hot' either.  And, we don't put meat products or pet waste in the compost pile.  Pet waste and any organic waste that is deemed inappropriate for the pile gets buried in a deep hole.

Right before I'm ready to plant out transplants, I layer on several inches of pine needles (aka pine straw).  I like pine needles because they are freely available from our yard and don't have seeds to sprout.  I am thinking of buying alfalfa bales now and again.  I think a bit of alfalfa mixed in with the pine straw would be a good balance.  I'll check the moisture level, and water again before transplanting seedlings if necessary.

I have found it much easier to dig out a depression to place the transplants in to than it is to put pine straw down after the transplants are in place.  I like to snug the pine straw up close to the transplants to help provide some shade while it is still hot and for some protection from heavy rains.  Just don't snug too tightly; leave air circulation paths.

As a side benefit to the thick pine straw mulch, the squirrels this fall are not frantically digging in my vegetable gardens!  Huzzah!

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 Of course there is the down side.  The disadvantage to this method is that I can't direct sow seeds.  And for now, that is fine.  The weather and the squirrels make direct sowing challenging right now.  With hubs all worried about the cost of seed, I've a much higher seed to chow ratio by starting seed in the garage under lights.  Later on, when it has cooled off a bit more, and the squirrels aren't frantically digging, I'll direct sow.

Oh, almost forgot!  I do want to start some radish in this bed in the foreground.  What I plan to do is move some straw aside, put out a dollop of Black Kow and plant a radish seed.  I'll be sure to come back and report on the results!

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I am very fortunate to have a spot here to do an open compost pile with the 'midden' style.  When we lived on postage stamp size lots in South Florida and Southern California, we didn't have this luxury.  We used the standard plastic kitchen scraps compost bin tucked away on the 5' side yard beside the AC.  They work, but not as well as a midden pile.  What I did do in both those places is to use my yard trash and dead fall to the utmost.  One thing I've done for years that is super easy is to make walking paths out of yard waste.  Over time, the organic matter in the walking path will break down.  Periodically, this lovely stuff can be raked from the path into the garden, or raked up and moved.  Bits of it can be added to the kitchen compost bin to provide some brown matter.

Adding a lot of organic matter and compost to the garden does not eliminate the need for macro and micro nutrients.  What the organic matter does do is to better store and utilize the nutrients you do add, and to eliminate the need for fast release chemical fertilizer.

"Organic matter and soil life keep plants healthy by: 

- supplying balanced nutrients to growing plants.
- fighting plant diseases and pests.
- storing fertilizers and natural nutrients for gradual release, while
preventing them from washing into streams.
- storing water, which reduces runoff and your garden’s irrigation needs."  - Growing Healthy Soil - Seattle

 Starting my first vegetable garden in a month of zero rainfall led to a quick appreciation of rain water harvesting.  Or for that matter, water harvesting.  No matter whence the water arrives near my garden, I want it to percolate and stay as long as possible in my garden.  A healthy soil ecosystem, organic litter and mulch does most of the work of storing and releasing water and nutrients to the growing plants.  I've taken to digging trench borders around all my gardens with strategic ground shaping to divert water run-off into the trenches around the gardens.  These trenches are filled with loose layers of - trash and litter!  I usually line the bottom with junk mail, then toss on leaves, tree chips, grass clippings.  Whatever.  Oh, and the earthworms love these trenches.  I usually end up with a bounty of earthworm castings along the edges of the garden and trench.  Excellent!  Worm castings mulch with zero extra effort or financial outlay!

When I am starting, or extending, a new garden bed, the first season is for soil building.

This is an extension to the rotted out oak tree garden.  Underneath all that near the tree in the background is an oak tree stump that is rotting and decomposing nicely.  I've been collecting dead fall branches and stacking them to frame the edge of the garden-to-be.

I was tossing in various yard litter, pulled weeds, clippings and what have you.  Then we cut down a sapling, and it's branches went into a pile.  Next, my neighbor cut down a norfolk pine and it's branches are being added.  All the while, continuing to drop in yard litter and garden clippings.  In a short while, the winter rye will have grown in and the late fall cutting will result in bagged winter rye clippings and deciduous leaf fall.  Several of  bags will cap this pile, and then it will sit for the winter season.

Somewhere along the way of sitting, usually dictated by access to cardboard and newspaper, I will lay out some sheet mulch and then top that with leaves and/or pine needles.  It will look something like this photo ->.  Not horrible, just mimicking nature's litter.

Next spring, when I'm ready to plant this section, I will layer cardboard/newspaper, compost mulch, nutrients and some bagged garden mix.  Much like I do when I'm refreshing a garden bed for a new growing season.

This is part Sheet Mulching and part hugelkultur.  I start with a thick overlapping layer of cardboard atop the current ground covering.  Then I'll start filling in with yard trash.  Clippings, weeds, dead fall.  Then I get serious and pile up a bunch of branches. And usually some more weeds and clippings.  Top all that off with another overlapping layer of cardboard/newspaper, finished with a top dressing.

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When I built the raised beds this past winter, I was in a hurry to get the street side bed finished and growing.  To overcome hubs feeling that it was ugly.

That one little bitty pile of leaf clippings is all the yard debris I used.  I needed to plant the bed as soon as it was built, so I didn't have time for a deep pile to start decomposing.

I built this bed using Lasagna Gardening layers.  I hauled home stacks of cardboard and a van load of garden soil, black kow, peat moss and pine fines.

Two days later it was planted.  Nothing too serious.  Flowers along the driveway edge and some bush peas on the veggie garden section.

This summer this bed was planted in sweet potatoes.  This was also the last bed that I harvested.  And the upmost worst soil condition of any garden in my yard.  Soil life was not balanced, soil moisture and compaction was unbalanced - all in all not a healthy soil system.

And it showed in the sweet potatoes I harvested.  This garden more dramatically than the others had a significantly higher rate of tuber damage.  Oh, and the extension office says that it is wireworms.  Oh joy.

The following rectangular bed was built using a midden pile, or the Ruth Stout System.  With a few hugelkultur items tossed in.

In other words, I tossed random debris on it over time.  Periodically layering more cardboard/newspaper and tossing on more random debris.

Keep tossing debris onto the pile.  Layer occasionally with leaf litter or grass clippings to keep it looking semi-decent.

There are various things you can plant to help build the soil.  Any legume, let it grow out and die in place.  Many plants with long tap roots or tubers will draw up nutrients from deep in the soil.  Let them stay and die in place.

Reading up on how Huntington Ranch developed their soil is quite interesting.  In one article, they talk of planting daikon radish over many seasons to break up the compacted ground of a gravel parking lot.

In one of the Huntington Ranch articles, they talk of Food Forest, and write:

Minimally, a food forest must composed of plants that are useful to us (food, medicine, wood, etc.); they must build soil through producing mulch or directly adding nutrients to soil; they must provide food and habitat for beneficial insects to keep our pest insects in check.  Some plants can do more than one of these.  The trick to a food forest though is not just the functions of the individual plants.  The true beauty is in the relationships between all of the plants, supported other forms of life including humans, soil, and water to produce this resilient edible system where nature does most of the work for us.  In this ecosystem based paradigm of gardening, every element can be appreciated for its functions.  For example, plants deemed “weeds” are less of a nuisance and more of a grown in place mulch to be harvested and left on the soil to decompose, improving the soil until it is ready to host other plants.

While nature is doing all this work for me; building and improving the soil - I can sit potted plants on top the bed.  And plant out seedlings to feed the soil.

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I planted this bed with sweet potato slips I started from one package of grocer bought organic sweets.  I planted the bed sometime around late April.  All summer, I pulled out vine cuttings and planted them in other places around the property. 

I harvested the sweet potatoes recently.   In the process unearthing the most beautiful crumbly soil.  Just lovely.  But growing the soil is an ongoing process.  I layered on the newspaper, compost from the bin, micro & macro nutrients.  Topped with a bag of Jungle Grow, pine needle straw and planted out salad greens.

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There are probably as many different ways to compost as there are people composting.  The important thing is to  - compost.  Do as little or as much as you can.  Whether you compost kitchen scraps in a back stoop worm bin, or have a 50' section of concrete block bins that you turn with a backhoe  -- the important thing is that each and everyone of us does our own little bit to turn our litter back to the soil. 

And me, I want my litter and debris improving the soil in my garden.

Here are some interesting and educational articles on composting in Florida:
- Florida's Online Composting Center
- Living Green: Composting
- Compost Tips for the Home Gardener