Rvabiointensive’s Blog

As I said earlier we have been able to get two beds double dug and planted so far this year.  One is planted with vine peas on the trellis, and the other is planted with spinach, bush peas and some white onions.  I’ve heard onions are difficult to grow but I’m going to give it a shot anyway. 

 I’ll probably get a bed preparation tutorial up here next time I dig a bed which should sometime in the next two weeks.

For now here is a pic of the garden right after planting the onion sets, the row down the middle is planted with spinach and the near end is planted with bush peas.

Here’s a good pic of what the garden looks like right now:

Hope you all have a good week.

There are many ways to make a good compost, this is just our method.

When building a good compost pile you must keep in mind that you aren’t just piling a bunch of stuff together and waiting for it to rot.  We are seeking to create a suitable habitat for microscopic soil bacteria, fungi and earthworms so they can break down our compost ingredients.  For these living organisms to thrive they require 4 basic conditions: 1 good aeration, 2 a properly balanced Carbon to Nitrogen ratio (C:N) , 3 correct moisture, and 4 sufficient thermal mass.   Thermal mass is vital because the pile must be big enough to create enough heat for the composting process to work.  A minimum sized pile should be about 4 ft^3 to gain sufficient thermal mass.

Making a good compost pile is like layering a cake, you want alternating layers of the ingredients.  The 3 main components of a good pile are: 1 Nitrogen (N) rich green materials like kitchen scraps, grass clippings and fresh garden residues, 2 Carbon (C) rich brown materials like fall leaves, straw and dried garden residues, and 3 some garden soil or well aged compost.

To layer the ingredients properly:

First we start with an empty bin.  Take the digging fork and loosen the soil at the bottom of the bin to a forkdepth , this allows for aeration and better drainage of the pile.  Then add the first layer (brown C rich), about two inches, of a material like straw or plant stems which will help maintain the aeration just dug into the soil.  Ontop of the first layer we spread a layer of nitrogen rich kitchen scraps, then a layer of garden soil or finished compost.  Adding the soil or finished compost ontop of the layer of kitchen scraps will innoculate the pile with beneficial soil bacteria and reduce the access of flies to the fresh kitchen waste.  On this layer of soil we spread another brown carbon rich layer of a material like fall leaves, partially decayed straw or finely shredded woodchips.  Each layer should be of approximately equal weight and any dry materials added to the pile should be watered as they are layered.   You want to keep the pile moist, about the dampness of a wrung out sponge. We just build layer after layer in this order until the bin is full.

After your pile is built it will start getting hot.  You can purchase a compost thermometer to check the temperature of the pile but generally it will get hot for about two weeks.  After this initially heating the pile will begin to cool, this is when we turn the pile to introduce more oxygen and evenly distribute the ingredients, it will get hot again. We turn the pile about every 3 weeks.

Your compost is done when you can’t tell what the ingredients were.  It should have a light brown color and rich earthy smell.  The more often you turn the pile the faster you will have finished compost.  Also, the seasons of spring and fall are when soil bacteria are the most active, so compost will finish more quickly these times of year.

A common problem in composting is if the pile goes anarobic.  This occurs when there is insufficient oxygen for the beneficial compost microorganisms.  When the pile is anarobic, harmful bacteria and nematodes will outcompete the beneficial aerobic micoorganism, making the compost harmful to your garden. The main causes of low oxygen are overwatering the compost and not adding enough brown carbon rich material.  You can tell your pile has gone anarobic if it really reeks and is a very dark brown color.

If your pile goes anarobic its not permanently ruined.  Try turning the compost more often while adding more brown carbon material.  Hold off on the water, you want to keep the pile as damp as a wrung out spong.  If its getting too much water from rainy weather, you might want to cover the pile with a tarp.

Once the compost is finished we sift it through a 1/2″ wire mesh to remove any uncomposted grass roots and rocks.  Some people think its possible to compost rhizatomacious grassroots. I don’t, they’re going to go in a fire barrel soon. haha

Here are some pictures of our operation.  We use a three bin system which allows us to have two piles going simultaneously while still being able to turn each pile into another bin.  The bin made of pallets on the far right is for storage of fall leaves and other brown ingredients until we have collected enough green material.

We’re lucky to have a plentiful amount of kitchen scraps from the restaurant.  In the fall we horde leaves to have a good supply all summer.  Here’s a green nitrogen rich layer:

A brown carbon layer:

Some finishing compost:

And the paydirt, screened finished compost:

About three weeks ago we planted spinach and some bush peas directly into the ground out at the garden.  They’re coming up well now and I hope to get some pics up of the freshly double-dug and planted beds.  We also installed a 5 ft trellis in the adjacent bed, double-dug it and planted the whole bed in vine peas.  We didn’t add compost to these beds yet because peas are legumes which fix thier own atmospheric nitrogen through a sybiotic relationship with nitrogen-fixing bacteria.  To improve yields the peas were sprinked with an innoculent of nitrogen fixing microbes. 

I also want to share with you all some recent developments at my apartment.

These are the first planted seed flats. 

Flat I has: regular tomatoes: Black Krim, Marmande Super, Big Rainbow, Evergreen, Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Moneymaker and Striped Germans.

cabbage and cauliflower, all on 1” spacings.

Flat II has leaf lettuce mix and buttercrunch head lettuce broadcast planted.

The cups are some veggies I started 3 weeks ago for my very urban container-garden I have in the works for the summer.   The cells are a mix of the lettuces I started 3 weeks ago which I’ll probably harden off and plant this or next week. 

The next planting will be this weekend, hopefully I’ll get some more pics of the garden by then.

An obvious but often overlooked aspect of successful gardening is proper soil fertility.  Plants require a soil that contains sufficient concentrations of three main elements: Nitrogen (N), Phosporous (P), and Potassium (K) as well as a range of micronutrients essential in smaller quantities like Magnesium (Mg), Calcium (Ca), and Sulfer (S).  As we have learned more about plant physiology a longer list of 13 mineral nutrients have become understood as being necessary to plants including Boron (B), Copper (Cu, Iron (Fe), Chloride (Cl), Manganese (Mn), Molybdenum (Mo), and Zinc (Zn).  As research continues this list will surely grow longer.  Don’t be overwhelmed by all the chemistry!  Your understanding of them will grow with time.

You need all these nutrients in your soil in appropriate concentrations.  Most likely some are already there so: why guess, soil test.  

In the old days gardeners would have to plant certain varieties in a trial and error approach to learn what was deficient in thier soil.  These days we have laboratories that will perform detailed soil analyses for a marginal cost.  To understand soil sampling procedure the Virginia Cooperative Extension has created an informative soil sampling website tutorial which will teach you all you need to know.  You can obtain a soil sample box and simplified instructions for the sampling procedure from any local public library. 

When you get your soil analysis back it will provide you with information on the availability of the four major nutrients P, K, Ca, Mg, five micronutrients, soil pH and organic matter content.  The analysis will also give suggestions on ways to improve your soil.

The soil test we conducted in early January has proved a valuable resource.  Our soil analysis came back with good levels of all nutrients except Potassium (K).  Last season many of our crops demonstrated a lack of vigor which was likely caused by this deficiency.  To improve our soil we have been incorperating 10 lbs of Espoma Greensand (0-0-0.1) into the topsoil of each 100 sq ft bed, a ‘light’ application by the instructions on the bag.

More to post later, I’ve got a midterm tomorrow.

The blog is just getting on the web but so much work has already been done.   Will post more when I can.