A Few Reasons Why Compost Could Save Us.

Yes, the news on the environment is really bad this week.  We have an estimated  200,000 thousand gallons of crude floating to the surface in the Gulf of Mexico every day for over a week adding to an environmental wipe out that could reach unprecedented proportions and stretch from Louisiana all the way up the east coast..

But even if you are convinced that burning fossil fuel will destroy the planet, you're probably no more prepared to live without it than I am.  Lets face it we all need to find some answers and we may not like the answers we find. But obviously the time has come to get serious about alternatives. So how DO we get control of the mess we're in and keep everything from spiraling out of control?

Let's start with compost.

Now, I'll disclaim this post here and now with an admission that I am not loaded with research grants or University degrees but there is such a thing as experiential learning.  And I've been working on this for a while, so I hope you'll follow along and add your comments.  Even if I put a foot out of step here, I hope you'll see that what I'm saying makes sense on some fundamental levels. So let's check out the basics.

Plants take in Co2 and breathe out oxygen.  The carbon taken up by plants create the structure of the plant itself. Stems of grasses, wood, leaves, etc are all rich in carbon.

A lot of this carbon comes from the air - the Co2 in the atmosphere.  And we humans put a lot of carbon out there when we burn fuel. There's more there now than there was before we stopped taking a yak to work and drove an Audi instead.

If we park the Audi and take the carbon that plants have soaked up and put it back into the earth, we are sequestering this carbon by taking it out of the air and putting it back where it came from and we're doing something else too.  We're creating plant based fertilizer for new pants to use and eliminating the fossil fuel we were using to create synthetic fertilizer like ammonia nitrates.  Nitrates make plants grow, but they are produced by burning large amounts of natural gas which enters the atmosphere (more Co2) and the leftover nitrates tend to drift into our drinking water which isn't good for people.

With me so far?

OK, so in our organic system at Dunn Creek Farm we really can't rely on chemical based fertilizers.  But without them, we quickly exhaust the fertility of the soil which means that crop yields drop.  And they drop fast.  Enter compost.

First, we harvest all that collected carbon. Dead plants, horse manure, old hay, cleared brush, wood chips, and we mix it in with other stuff like green waste from the kitchen, green plants that have finished producing, vegetables that aren't good for market, grass clippings and seaweed.  Yes, I've been seen on the beach after a big storm scooping up tons of seaweed for compost.       

This material gets layered up in big windrows in a field. Each windrow is about 4 feet wide and 20 feet long.  In short order it gets all hot and steamy, as an army of bacteria feed on the air, moisture and nutrient dense materials in the pile.  The plumes of steam from a working pile look really magnificent on a fall morning.

I cover it up with a tarp to keep weeds from growing on the top and let it work.  By the next fall it looks like dark brown earth.  It's full of worms and bugs and fungus and bacteria...just the stuff to inoculate the field and feed the plants we'll grow next year.  Now some people are saying that hot compost destroys biological benefits like microorganisms and fungus and that a low temp or cold process is actually more beneficial. Hot compost is a means to kill pathogens and weed seeds, so material that is hot composted is thought to be cleaner. The rules for application require a hot composting process in order for the material to be called compost.  Otherwise it is regulated as "manure".  This kind of thinking can give you a headache.  But in order to get the most benefit from the input we make and to comply with regulations that are intended for food safety, we apply our compost/manure in the fall and that way it is never in direct contact with edible food crops.

Now, the fact is that we cannot produce enough compost to meet our fertility needs.  So we also rotate our plantings and we plant about a quarter of our production area in "green manure" to increase fertility in place. We are always farming soil by producing biomass to put back in the ground each year. The plants do their job of taking in carbon from the air and fixing nitrogen in the soil and we chop that material up and put it back in the earth. 

What we spend on seed and time and labor is spent instead of buying more fertilizer.  Our fields test low in organic matter which promotes the biological benefits I mentioned and helps to regulate moisture in the soil. So putting more organic matter and trace minerals from things like seaweed back into the soil improves the health of our plants, the yields we get to market and, we might expect, the nutritional value of the food we grow.

We're doing all this to create a solid system that will continue to produce good yields of healthy food for years to come.  But there are other benefits to consider.

You may be someone who doubts the value of organics.  But it's hard not to like a system of agriculture that isn't entirely dependent on fossil fuels, doesn't use airborne toxic sprays and eliminates the environmental hazards caused by the runoff of chemical fertilizers and pesticides into the ground water we eat and drink.

You may be someone who believes that climate change is a hoax.  But it's hard not to agree that our current  choices have made us dependent on buying fossil fuels from people who may not have our interests in mind.  And the supplies are limited - which limits our potential to grow our own food, the economy...anything.

If you do think that humans have tilted the balance of our environment into a wobbly and unpredictable scenario, then you might agree that supporting a system that can actually help reduce the carbon footprint of all the humans on the planet is a good thing.

Saving a Tree - And a Recipe for Growth

For the past few years my apricot tree in Santa Barbara has been struggling against an attack from the vile oak root fungus. Oak root is a soil borne fungus that attacks the tree from the the ground up and the inside out. It spreads under the bark layer and eventually girdles the tree - preventing the tree from taking up water and nutrients - which kills it.

For the past couple of years we've experimented with worm composting of kitchen waste and we also compost yard waste. I've been applying lots of compost to the soil around the apricot and I even applied worm tea directly onto the bark at the trunk. Worms break down organic material into tiny particles that are easy for plants to absorb. And you can, um, smell the biological activity.

There's theory (and anecdotal evidence) that applying active fungus and bacterial agents can help a tree fight disease. Fairview Gardens in Goleta actually applied a soil/manure paste to their avocado tree trunks in attempt to strengthen the health of their trees.

The idea is that certain live elements in soil produce natural anti-biotics that fight infections. (penicillin comes from naturally occurring anti-biotic fungus). And whether or not I produced the results by applying pro-biotics, the tree has not died and is in fact re-growing bark to cover the area of infection and lost tissue.

To strengthen the roots and help the tree fight back, I pruned the tree back, cut all the dead wood out and thinned this years apricot crop by more than half.

Then I gave the tree a serious booster shot of nutrition. I found a useful organic fertilizer recipe in the June/July 2006 issue of Mother Earth News. I mixed and applied the fertilizer, then covered it with about a 1 inch layer of finished yard compost - just a few inches back from the trunk and out to the drip line. I watered it down and now hope that I've given the tree a quick hit of nitrogen along with a slow release of nutrients, trace minerals and organic material, combined with the living mulch of native plants that cover the ground under the tree.

Follow the link to Mother Earth News for the fertilizer recipe and the directions for use.

BTW - you'll find that buying the ingredients in small quantities by the box at your local garden center is REALLY EXPENSIVE! If you're serious about greening up your yard and garden either find an online supplier who will ship in bulk bags or visit a garden/farm center that sells in bulk.

In Santa Barbara/Goleta that is Island Seed and Feed. Buying measured quantities from the bulk bins cost less than half what it cost to buy small packaged quantities at another nursery nearby. Plus they had additional cool stuff to mix in like phosphate rock, green sand, blood meal and gypsum! (One other tip - for fast green-up and to energize the soil quickly, I substituted 1 part blood meal in exchange for one part seed meal.)

Happy fertilizing!