Some Thoughts about how I make my Compost

For those who have never composted before, it is pretty simple. Generally speaking, you put a bunch of food stuff (not meat, dairy or fats) in a pile, they decompose and eventually nice soil is made. There are some specific ratios you can utilize to speed up the process and make a “hot” compost that can be ready in a month or two, but cold compost – made by the slow breaking down of material by bacteria, fungi and other living organisms – can often take up to 2 years. In my home we compost a lot of things that we probably shouldn’t. Part of how I can do this is because we have black soldier flies. The larvae of Black Soldier flies is able to eat meat, fat and dairy. In fact, they are extremely effective at doing so – especially in the heat of the summer. When the larvae have consumed the majority of the food in the bin I use for them, I clean out the bin, leaving most of the larvae, and spread the effluent and residual material around in my leaf pile. While I do not make an exact science of my green-brown (nitrogen-rich vs. carbon-rich) material, given that I utilize worms to consume much of the material, it works out pretty well for everyone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The other aspect to my compost making is leaves. Lots and lots of leaves. The majority of the time, there is only 3-10 days in the fall when I can gather leaves. They are in a neighborhood in another part of the city that has a lot of deciduous trees. I bring my van, lots of black bags and a rake. If I am lucky, I can get a family member or two who is willing to help. I gather the leaves then store them in my backyard as the base for my future compost.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When all the leaves and other stuff has been broken down by worms, bacteria, fungus and bugs, I sift it through some ½ inch hardware cloth (a type of metal screen) then I add it to my pots, plots and anything else I feel will benefit from some additional compost.

2020 in the Backyard Garden

What a year 2020 was - even for my backyard garden. Prior to winter setting in, I stocked up on leaves. When I say stocked up, I really mean it. 2019 was the year of leaves. I probably gathered at least 50 bags of leaves. I had so many leaves that I had leaves stored at the side of the house, waiting to be put into the compost. This year I decided to grow oats as a cover crop. 

The backyard garden later in the summer

 

My compost in the side yard

Robin Hood Fava and Oats

 

 

 

 

The oats take over

 

Meanwhile, the squirrels kept either digging up or eating my lettuce plants, no matter what I did – so I eventually decided to grow my lettuce on our upstairs balcony with aluminum foil around it. I’ll discuss the joys of this experiment later. As the weather warmed, I brought out some banana trees, which I nurtured in my greenhouse along with some trial cucumber varieties. While growing out these varieties I also started my spring transplants in 2 inch soil blocks in the greenhouse.

  

 

Squirrel damage to lettuce. Only stumps remain.

 

 

Doing what I can to grow lettuce.

 

Clearing the garden for the summer crop

 

 

 Over time, the lettuce bolted and the summer cucumbers were put out. I grew a round Carosello variety this year called Carosello Tondo Massafra. I transplanted the bananas off to the side yard where I had previously grown sweet potatoes and tomatoes. Unfortunately, due to further squirrel damage (a child chose not to heed my request to not give the squirrels nuts), I had to set out another round of Carosello Massafra transplants. This really ate up my light hours and made my Massafra harvest last through late July to early August.

 

 

Growing the Carosello Massafra

 

 

As our new neighbors were growing very tall corn, my August garden was really shaded my garden in the afternoon. Unfortunately, powdery mildew was already starting to kick in near the end of the season when I decided to transplant the long dark Armenian cucumber - so it was only a matter of time before the plants succumbed to its effects.

 

Powdery Mildew on my Dark Armenian Cucumber

 

Growing out Taxi Tomatoes and banana trees in early spring

The corner plot later in the summer

Meanwhile, in the small corner garden, I grew out my little banana trees and Taxi tomatoes. Both the banana trees and the tomatoes suffered until I applied some biologically-based bacterial fungicide on the plants. Then they went from dying to thriving.

 

This whole time, I was also trying out cucamelons. Not that I am a huge fan, but since a lot of people seem to like them, I decided to try growing them out.

 

 

My cucamelon vines

 

 

A cucamelon

 

Around June, I put out sweet potato sets out of my Dingess purple sweet potatoes which I later harvested after Thanksgiving. In the autumn of 2020, I was unable to harvest as many leaves, due to the fact that they all comedown at once. We had a combination of high winds and cold nights that brought all the leaves down. The neighborhood in which the leaves fell called up the city and they were quickly removed before I could gather very much, so I am glad that I had plenty of leaves to compost from my 2019 leaf harvest.

 

Harvesting some Purple Dingess sweet potatoes

 

Another look at the harvest

 As for my winter garden, I decided it was finally time for a rest. I had tried planting out some Bolero carrots, but the pressure from squirrels was too great. Instead, I would compost my garden and focus on finishing the cucamelon harvest and seed processing.

 

trying out new things as I begin fallowing the garden

Processing Cucamelon Seed

Black Soldier Flies vs Chickens

If you happen to live in a warmer part of the world, you may have seen some weird scaled dark caterpillar larvae thing crawling around your compost. These are the larvae of a very interesting fly. The black soldier fly is a long dark fly that looks very much like a wasp. The flies are rarely seen buzzing around and instead prefer to sit around near piles of food waste. The majority of the time, I will find them just sitting on the leaves of my cucumber-melon plants.

Though they are unassuming as adults, these little critters are power-composters as larvae. Over the summer, I have utilized these critters to get rid of several large catfish and a whole rotten turkey (my freezer died). They digest every kind of food waste that people can eat such as fat, dairy and more. Though I have not seen them eat Styrofoam, like mealworms can, they can definitely eat much more than humans would even think of eating. The results of their digesting so much is a waste product that is very high in nitrogen. Each winter I mix the leftover content of their digestion with autumn leaves as a compost starter.

Most of the time, the adult black soldier flies rest on leaves

If you ever try raising black soldier flies there are a couple things to keep in mind.

My beautiful black soldier fly container.

First: they require a certain amount of heat to be able to digest well. This heat can either be from the surrounding area, or can be produced by having a high quantity of larvae. Before giving them a ton to eat, make sure that you have enough juveniles. They require a critical mass (thousands) to be effective in consuming large amounts of food. I have been told if they are given too much food proportional to their population, they can suffer adverse consequences. On the other hand, once they establish themselves they can handle a large amount of food. They will easily outcompete fruit flies and, if fed regularly, will consume all the waste food that a family can produce.

Second: They require ventilation. Though black soldier flies can survive several inches below their food, the container that they are in does need to be aired out.

Third: The mature juveniles will want to pupate. At this point, they will want to leave their foodsource and burrow into regular soil. If they are in a container, they will try to get out by climbing up and out of the container. Although I do not have my container set up properly for this, I have a friend who made a container that has a ramp for the black soldier flies to climb into a feeding tray for his chickens.

Speaking of chickens, I had such a large population of larvae over the summer that I decided to share my wealth with my friend who owns the chicken garden. More specifically, with his chickens.

I hope you enjoy the video.

https://youtu.be/c6k---Ka1vI

Increasing soil fertility by combining compost with water-soluble nitrogen

As a gardener, I often want to take the greatest advantage of the growing space and the amount of time I have full sun during the summer. In order to do this, I work to ensure that my soil is both healthy and fertile. Though there are many definitions of fertility, my definition is that the soil is imbued with the capacity to provide plant roots with the nutrients the plant needs at each stage of development in order to grow to its optimum potential.

My compost pile(s) earlier in the summer  with my green compost bucket nearby

A closeup of my compost pile later in the season

Sifted biologically active compost

Over the years, as I have worked with soil and my gardens, I have observed something about soil and fertility that my garden was kind enough to share with me.While in the past I have taken the approach to add compost at the beginning of the growing season and adding water-soluble fertilizer later, throughout the season, this practice only worked well near the beginning of the growing season, but as the season progresses I have found that the plants have not been able to handle the fertilizer. At first, I decided that this means that I need to add less nitrogen at a time, but I continued to have either foliage die-off or high periods of growth followed by signs of plant stress.

Planting my garden on July 20th

In my last planting, done on July 20th, I added both a layer of biologically active compost and organic water-soluble fertilizer. The results were both immediate and sustained. The amount of water-soluble fertilizer that I added was more than I usually add throughout the season. Since that time, I have not added additional amendments to my garden soil. As a result the plants have continued growing at a high rate and all the foliage has looked wonderful.

So – why has this happened? One possible factor is that with the garden doing so well, I am not walking on the boards in my garden as much and not compressing the soil. Another possibility is that the soil in my garden was at an optimal temperature when the plants were put in. Though these may be factors, another more likely reason for the improvement in fertile soil is that the biologically-active compost is acting as a biological sponge. When the water-soluble fertilizer is added to the mix, the compost began to digest the fertilizer, chemically holding it for a time, and slowly released this nitrogen-rich material to the plant as the roots came into contact with it.

My garden on August 28th, 39 days later with no additional amendments.

I highly encourage any gardener to try combining their own biologically active compost with organic water-soluble fertilizer when planting their summer garden. Hopefully you will have similar results.

Below is my little video, so you can see more of the results.