My easier, better soil, no fuss, less work, composting

Here is a PDF for compost tea brewing. I have yet to try it but tell myself I will one day.

http://dchall.home.texas.net/organic/teamaker/PDFs/brewer.pdf

After reading this thread last week I went out and got ~40 bags of leaves and grass from around the neighborhood and sheet mulched the side of my house. I loosely followed the plan from a book I am reading- Gaia's Garden. Someone recommended it here on some thread. Anyway, I had read it but this thread inspired me to do it.
Thanks.

David

David, SO happy to hear of it!

Hey David way to go, thanks for the link.

David.............welcome to the Lay Z Club. You will enjoy your membership. Next thing you will be noticing is the return of the worm. When the worm poops all life begins to pulsate and move towards your better soil. Mercy this gets exciting. :)

oh, yeah!

Nice! I'll have to check that link out. Thanks.

Dave--did your book have anything to add to what we have mentioned here?

I've just raked up my mulching leaves...signs of spring are starting everywhere.
My experience is if they are left while spring is in progress, the new leaves and buds pick up fungus, rust and other things..so the key is to get them out of the beds by the time new leaves and buds come out too far.
I saw a pink magnolia full of buds on the way to work today.

This past Sunday, the weather was nice enough to cut off all the remaining leftovers from last year off my irises and sure enough they were resprouting. I leave dead daylilly leaves in place as I think they are a great mulch and removing them would expose more bare soil to weed seeds. They disappear nicely once they resprout.

My camelias are blooming :)

However, we might be in store for "winterty precipitation" this afternoon.. so spring will have to wait some. Rj, I mulch with shredded leaves (leaf mold) after I've left the leaves from winter in my beds and haven't seen any disease from it on my plants. Maybe it matters as to how much and what type of leaves you have in your beds?? What plants?? Hmm?? What plants of yours get rust and the other things?? :) It's sad when plants are putting their buds out to bloom and a hard frost comes and nips them.. Oh well, makes the blooms that much sweeter if they make it I guess. :)

Susan

Texas may be different...........however I have raked or blown all my leaves into or onto my various beds and gardens for over forty years.

I go to the township leaf piles and haul in trailer loads to add to my own gold mine.

After the leaves have settled down from snow pressure we place a lite sifting of course ground or single ground bark mulch to pretty up the place and hold those leaves in place.

Mother Nature drops hers to earth where they fall. She may blow them around a bit and make some spots deeper than others, pee off a few neighbors but she never rakes them or removes them except by rot where in they drop into and nuture the soil.

You know, funny you mentioned that..because I was just thinking about that yesterday..wondering how a layer of bark mulch on top of the leaves would work. I usually don't experience any problems until the weather starts warming up, and that's when I take off the leaves.
Susan, yes..your right it does matter on the leaves... the leaves not so good is from the water oak tree and the darn million marble rolling nuts it throws out.. ultimately it become good mulch, but the break down process seems to leave a bit to be desired.
The other leaves that the garden loves, is yet from another oak tree- the big oak trees. That gets the aft part of the garden and seems to present little issues. Keep in mind that my garden is of a jungle variety and there is alot of close quarters, so ventilation might be a contributing factor.

i was planning on leaving my leaves in place--of course i hope they are a bit more decomposed by spring but i had no intention of removing them--sure hope no desease/fungus comes from that!

Mixed leaves when composted or rotted in place to feed where they fell or collected have roughly the same nutrient value as fresh cow manure. Part of the reason is that the plant material leaf or blades of grass have not been run through the animal. When it goes trough the animal quite a bit of the value is extracted to grow the animal.

true, and I'm sure we're not using this as total source of nutrition, just suplementary.

Total nutrition...............Leaves and wild animal poop in very small portions is what Mother uses.

Gardeners tend to fertilize quite a bit more in order to produce much more than Mother plans with her leaf mulches.

Indeed... I have a saying I go by ...
In the garden world... " A little is Alot!"

"a little is a lot" is a good saying for new gardeners like myself who tend to get overwhemed with all that can be done!!

I still have to tell myself that too when mixing ...the kitchen it's not!~

Soulgardenlove--love the link to your garden thread! You get pretty good results from your leaf mulch 'no fuss' approach! I hope you write an article for DG about it!

I'm trying the 'no fuss' mulch method you described and I guess the jury's still out 'til springtime! I'm hopeful, though...

I did make a couple of Lasagna beds last year and they are pretty neat. I didn't read the book, either, but found lots of good info on DG. The book is available from Amazon used for about $3. http://www.amazon.com/Lasagna-Gardening-Layering-Bountiful-Gardens/dp/0875969623

Now, about the Double Digging--I wonder how many gardeners use that method? It would be worth a new thread just to hear different opinions...I do know it's loads of work and I used to do it eons ago...but I can't remember what the results were--I know we didn't get any 710 pound pumpkins!

Great thread~~ Thanks for all the good info! t.

Thanks Tabasco :) Actually... a very similar article was just put up! Be sure and check out another like minded composters methods in a newly written article on DG..by Summerkid.. Confessions of a crude composter
http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/497/

She's actually wilder than me.. Summer does animal products too!

We all have to find what works best for us individually in our garden, but I think it helps to lean as much as possible from the folks that have been doing it for a while and found better ways for themselves along the way.

Tabasco, I hope the no fuss method works out for you. I bet if you asked how many people did the double digging method on a new thread and they had been gardening for any reasonable amount of time, it would be a very quite thread! :) It's just a crazy amount of work. When I pick up a gardening book that contains that information and recommendation at the bookstore, it's automatically passed over in favor of one written by someone that still has their back intact.

Snow on the ground this morning, but spring is around the corner...

Susan

And thank goodness for that. It is a massive amount of work. My garden wouldn't know what happened to it if I double-dug. Single digging is tough enough. I always thought it was my quiet little dirty secret. I love the fact that it is now viewed as old-fashioned and unnecessary. I love the idea of lasagna gardening!!! And composting in place (though isn't that a little unsightly???).

Tab,

I've lived in this house since 1979 and read the White Flower Farm book advocating double digging, so I went out there and double dug. I didn't really notice anything really jaw dropping, probably because I didn''t add anything organic at the bottom of the trench. (In my defense, I don't think they said anything about that, probably you were just supposed to "know".)

Time passes, oh, about 20 years LOL! and my daffodils are just not doing what you'd think they should be doing with that great drainage. So, this time, I start really digging, DEEP and I run into a piece of concrete. No Matter when I put the shovel, I literally run into concrete...so I dg and I dig and I finally find all the outline edges, but I can NOT get that sucker up and out of where I dug. It was freeform, but roughly 48" diam. with a long tail.

Mr. Clean (mah hero!) comes home after a hard day at work and sees me down in a hole about 36 inches deep with a big piece of conrete and he thought I put it in there for a rock garden! But when I tell him what happened, and with herculean strength, he gets it up and out. (It was almost shell thin on the edges, and about 2 or 3 inches thick at the thickest, but that was enough to prevent water from perking through, and it was thick enough that a shovel didn't break it apart.)

Apparently on new construction, when the truck comes to pour cement for the garage, sidewalks, porch, steps, they clean the cement out of the truck and chutes right there on the spot and just cover up all the junk with soil. My house was built in 1949 and that concrete slab had been there for 50 years!

My drainage is really good now, and the daffodils are growing and multiplying...but I never would have known if I hadn't dug waaaay down.

Other than that I can't think of a reason to do it ;))

Suzy

Now that's dedication. I have never gone down 36" anywhere in my yard, and I don't see that in my future either!

That might have been overstated - I was knee deep, or maybe a little seeper, so probably 20-24 inches. LOL! It just seemed like 3 feet down when you're doing it!

Hi Happy, Long time so see. I lost your seeds! (But I didn't forget) Did I tell you how bad the seed set was on the impatiens last year? I had a pack of 7 seeds for you, but I wanted to keep adding to as I could catch them, but after the middle of June, I didn't have any seeds at all, and then I lost (misplaced) the original 7 seeds! It was really sad, and I kept going out to look but there was nothing. It was especially sad because I got some fancy impatiens from Annie$ Annual$ and they didn't set one seed, either, even though they practically wrote in the catalog, "THIS IS A WEED!!!"

I will try again next year.
Suzy

Suzy: I have exactly zero recollection of expecting any seeds from you. And it's a tragedy narrowly averted, in my view. It's an awfully good thing you didn't send me anything, because despite huge and magnificent intentions, I grew just about nothing from seed last year -- and it isn't looking good for this year either. I bit off way more than I could chew last year, and I'm really trying to be a little more disciplined next year. But (and with your sage advice) I did plant a lot of bulbs -- I hope not too late in the season. I still have more to plant -- I hope they'll get enough of a chill period this late in the season. It'll be a noble experiment!

Your late planted bulbs may come up and even bloom for it is last year's stores that produces this year's bloom. Your plant leaves will then attempt to produce from possibly less roots that desirable the bulbs for next year. Therefore you may have bulbs and their roots that will have difficulty getting the job done not for this year but next. They usually however do recover and show proper bloom the third year. If you can live with this there should be no other loss. Bulbs are pretty forgiving. Chevy Chase has a relatively mild winter. When I lived in Waynesboro, Pa. near Hagerstown, Md. I planted bulbs late and got away with it on several occasions.

That is very reassuring. I googled the chill period requirement, and was appalled to see that at least 14 weeks was considered necessary, and my poor bulbs won't get anything like that. I don't mind at all losing a year of bloom, if that is the price I have to pay. I was afraid I'd lose them altogether. I want them to perennialize, so I am in this for the long haul.

Happy...........when we moved to this location my wife's dad died in late spring. MIL had to go to a home. The closure included selling the homestead.

Right there in late spring I moved some of their bulbs. That would likely be the worst possible time to disturb them. The were really pouting when I replanted them around the first of June. It took them three years to recover but recover the did. We have them to this day. That was an emotional based chance I took. My wife remembers picking that specific flower as a little girl for her mom.

Docgipe -- that is very reassuring. I appreciate you post!

What a wonderful thing you did to move those bulbs. I'm sure it gives enormous comfort to your wife. When my mother sold her house many years ago and moved in with me, we moved some of as many of her plants as we could to my yard. We had to do it under the stealth of darkness, because the new owners would not allow us to move any plants, even before the closing. (Silly of me to have asked, I suppose.) Of course, they then tore up the years and destroyed everything -- totally ridiculous, but that's another story. But I still love the plants I can identify as coming from my mom's yard.

Happy and docpipe, I love your stories about all those beautiful living remembrances in your gardens of your DM and DMIL. How lovely.

I've been doing something a little different. My own mother was not really a gardener when we grew up in Southern California, so I have nothing from her garden. But now that DH and I live in a cold-winter climate (two years so far) I've been planting things in her honor that Mom always told me she missed from her childhood in North Dakota--plants that like a winter-chill, like lilac, forsythia, and tulips. (Yep, they get a HECK of a winter chill in ND.)

And just to bring this back to the original topic of this thread---last fall, I planted some Darwin and species tulips in honor of Mom in my first real lasagna-bed. The layer of compost ended up being only about 4 inches deep over our good ol' Cape Cod sand. I threw in bulb food at the bottom of each bulb -hole. Hope the bulbs get enough "nutrition" to keep coming up again--I plan on top-dressing with more compost every year.

Happy, Your daffies will be fine if the bulbs were hard and firm when you planted them (not soft, or mushy). I routinely import bulbs from NZ and AUS and plant them when they get here in Feb-Mar-April. They usually bloom in July or August (the flowers lasting but a day or two in the hot, hot weather). Then they go on to ripen, and then come up the following spring as if they had beenborn and raised north of the equator.

Suzy

Suzy: Bless you! What a relief! I have been planting daffodils for years in my perennial beds that I periodically over water, and finally caught on that daffs need a dryer summer (not that they had been doing so poorly, but still. . .. ) so I planted a ton -- late -- in front of my house, and was so hoping they'd be happy there forever. Come to think of it, I think you've given me this advice in prior years, and the daffs did ok, but I started to panic this year for some unknown reason. I guess it was all that random googling!

The bulbs were in great shape, thankfully.

Double Digging is what the mean, experienced gardener tells the newbie to do in order to break them into the world of dirt by paying their dues upfront for future flowers. No one in their right mind does that and it's about time the British gardening horticultural aristocrats came to their senses as well. (rolling eyes and shaking head!)

Happy.. Okay, I'll admit it.. The garden outside my back door and nearest to my kitchen door looks very trashy right now. I've got broccoli stems, orange peels, banana peels, spinach, apple cores... all types of vegetative waste laying right on top of the soil.. However, soon enough it will be covered with either fresh compost which I'm waiting for the weather to warm some so I can work outside or leaf mold... I wont do the lazy back door toss during spring and summer and when I have guests coming over.. But yes, it can look quite "funny" if you leave it on top. During warmer months, I will take it to a fallow veggie bed and lightly cover.

Suzy, glad you got the concrete out and I have a similar tale.. This home was designed by my father in law and built in 1970. Right before we completely redid the entire front yard and took out many weak and dangerous pines and had a grader come though, there was a large depressed area that kept sinking down more and more every year. Turns out that back when the house was built, it was legal to cover the building waste trash in the yard and cover with soil...so that area obviously had stuff that had slowly decomposed over the years and a sink hole was formed!

Susan

Good story, Illoquin! Though I thought you were going to tell me you dug down and then pulled the cement lid off the septic tank! Now that would be double digging!

I first double dug in 1976 when I watched 'Jim Crocket's Victory Garden' (I think) on PBS and he explained the strategy. So I had my DH double dig our garden patch at the grad students garden field at Univ. of Wisc. That was a glorious garden, if I do say so myself. So much great manure from their dairy cows (very contented). And all the grad students were from all over the world so there was such a huge range of veggies planted and strange gardening methods for each 20 x 40 plot. I remember I sent to Paris for 'les haricot vert' seeds--such a thrill. We hauled a lot of manure that summer but the beans were delish! I always loved Jim Crockett even though he recommended double digging and almost caused divorce that summer!

Isn't it horrible and nasty cold out..? did you guys get any rain...? It poured here.

I have never heard of the double digging until I read this thread. I'm not even sure it's possible here as you'll hit clay a couple feet down.

I want to plant some carrots and the soil is rocky. Instead of double digging should I single dig. I want to go no till, but it starts some where right?

Why not do a raised bed? So much easier. And you can make up just the right soil mix.

FYI. Here's the RHS version of double digging: http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profiles0105/double_digging.asp

Yes, I think double digging could very well cause a divorce! :) Those pictures remind me of someone digging a grave!! And that's what you'll eventually do if that's your method..Dig your own grave! Feed the worms and let them take it down for you!!

Dean, can you incorporate what you've learned here with the concept of a raised bed?? have you read http://www.amazon.com/Lasagna-Gardening-Layering-Bountiful-Gardens/dp/0875969623/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200742034&sr=8-1
?? It would be a helpful read for you.

Rj, expecting more snow here today.. The kids love it!!

Dean, this is a must see for you to understand the concept of how building your soil "up" can give you the garden of magazine covers!!

http://www.witsendbb.com/lasagna1.html