| At
Large Business Briefs Cartoons District Court Report Editorial Gone Fishin' Letters to the Editor Real Estate Transactions Sports Sports Highlights |
| Art Bestsellers Dance Edibles Film In Print Music Theater |
| This
Week's Happenings Save
That Date Ongoing Events Groups Libraries Museums and Tours Children's Resources Hotlines 12-Step Programs Religious Services Volunteer Opportunities |
| Achievements Astrology Birds Births Community Shorts Dean's List Engagements Garden Notes Honor Roll Obituaries Off North Road Short Subjects Town Meetings Visiting Vet Weddings |
| Aquinnah Chilmark Edgartown Oak Bluffs Tisbury West Tisbury |
The
Martha's Vineyard Times is a weekly publication.
March 10 - March 16, 2005 Edition
Web
Comments
- Email Submissions
|
GARDEN
NOTES
As is often the case in February, it had been very nice weather. I had started in on yard cleanup with the pleasure that comes from having been housebound more than usual this winter. For the second time since November I had raked very large volumes of leaves and litter into the poultry yard for the chickens to subdue into the rough compost their incessant scratching and turning produces. (Readers of this column are probably familiar with my quest-like search for ever-better and more compost.) But when the level of leaves and litter was about to engulf the chicken-sized exit door I knew I had to quit and find an alternative. The year before last I had had the privilege of visiting the garden of Charles Cresson, a friend of a friend, in Swarthmore, Pa. The garden is on the back of a suburban lot on a quiet street. Apart from the superb, giant shade trees out front, there aren't many clues to what lies behind. It is a micro universe of beautifully maintained specialist collections: antique terracotta, alpines, water gardens (a diverted arm of Crum Creek runs through the back of the lot), bulbs, hostas, wild flowers, rose and peony collections, vegetable potagers, and choice trees and shrubs. Towering proudly alongside heaps of wonderful looking compost in the behind-the-scenes industrial parts of the gardens stood two tall, over-sized compost tumblers. They were clearly well used and there was no discernable brand name to make note of, but I think that I must have mentally noted something like “that's for me!” When the results of my raking threatened to make prisoners of my chickens, the light bulb went on in my head. And there, suddenly noticed in the pages of the Old Farmers Almanac, was an ad for the equipment I had seen in the Cresson garden. (ComposTumbler, 30 Wright Avenue, Lititz, PA 17543, 1-888-820-5114.) Now I too have tall, over-sized compost tumblers and high hopes for heaps of wonderful-looking, 14-day compost made from the large amounts of garden waste that our clients' gardens generate. A yearly ritual Gardens and compost are intricately connected in a number of ways; at the risk of being repetitious, I shall reiterate a few. Adding compost to vegetable and ornamental beds is a yearly ritual: what is taken out must be replaced. Our soils paradoxically need organic matter to drain and to hold water. The previously mentioned large amounts of organic debris, that yardwork and gardening (not to mention kitchen waste) generate, end up in the landfill or are incinerated by SEMASS if not disposed of where they originate. When the wind blows right, everything SEMASS incinerates comes back, airborne, to insult us, our vegetation, and our surrounding waters with particulate matter and air pollution. Ornamental vegetation and woodlands alike suffer continuous stress from recent changes to the gaseous components and make-up of our atmosphere and rainfall. They evolved under quite different conditions for a very long time. Is it any wonder that microbial, fungal, and insect opportunists find ways to feed off these struggling host plants, one species after another? The above deplorable circumstances mean that we shall need more and more - yes, you guessed it - compost to assist our struggling plants to pull through whatever crisis it is they are faced with, whether is it a fall cankerworm or winter moth infestation, or a droughty growing season. At the recent New England Grows educational conference I took in the talk of Ohio State University professor Harry Hoitink Ph.D., “Adding Compost, Mulch and Beneficial Microbes to Your Disease Suppression Arsenal.” His work has shown how biocontrol agents suppress plant pathogens and induce systemic resistance to disease in plants. He is currently looking at how organic matter transforms in composts to sustain biocontrol agents and on composting procedures that enhance activity of these microflora. I hope to be able to write about that work in somewhat greater depth in a future column, but we don't always need to know how it works, only that it does. The short-term conclusion is that trying times for plants = more compost. Heating things up The compost tumblers I have bought are an additional component part of my “system,” which will enable me to previously been able to do. I have always had to make many heaps, or piles, due to the sheer volume of what I take in. The piles, because they eventually rot but are not “hot,” have cycle through more material into usable compost than I have introduced pest material from client gardens, like land snails and the weed henbit, to our premises. Furthermore, they encourage rodents and take up space. I also utilize a Green Cone solar digester that takes care of food waste that cannot be given to poultry or that attracts rats. But the Green Cone only enriches the ground where it is installed. It does not yield up usable compost and is easily over-burdened by the volume of our waste stream. The poultry do their thing, and it is quite satisfying to see the volume of material in their yard shrinking and transforming. With the compost tumblers it is still necessary to add green matter (nitrogen) to the drum at a ratio of about four parts to one of brown matter (carbon) in order to make fourteen-day compost. Then the drum is cranked over every day until the compost is mixed, heated, and cooked. But the drums are well off the ground and rat-tight, and once the compost is finished it is possible to drive the wheelbarrow or cart directly beneath the door and dump it in. While one unit is cooking the other can be loading. I can hardly wait! |
|||
| Send this page to a friend: | |||
|
©The
Martha's Vineyard Times 2004 - www.mvtimes.com
|
|||
