Next Year's Garden Starts Today

When someone asks me for my pesto recipe, I always say, well, on September 1 you plant garlic... and so it goes.

Next year's garden is always in progress this year. This morning I double dug a long, 4 foot wide raised bed and turned in two wheelbarrows-full of compost. The pile of weeds I pulled out of that same bed before digging it over went right into the wheelbarrow and back to the compost pile (with a few choice tidbits thrown to the chickens and bunny along the way). Next year's garden will grow on this spring's decomposted weeds. The compost I was spreading still had some 'clinkers' in it -- chunks of coal from the woodstove that hadn't completely burnt to ash -- and I threw those back into the compost pile for next year too. Winter's wood ash joins spring weeds in the compost pile, along with all those eggshells, veggie scraps, hay and manure from the rabbit and chickens, brush, and whatever else we've got.

I love compost. And I'll admit -- I am not very good at making it. I'm not methodical, I don't save up things in neat piles in order to layer them in carefully measured layers. I just throw stuff on there and turn it from time to time. It all works out.

A bunch of my veggie scraps get saved in the freezer for soup stock, and cooked down until they are nothing but an unidentifyable brown mass before I add them to the compost pile. Other bits get fed to the chickies or rabbit first and then get to the compost pile as manure. When time is short or I have a big pile of compost spilling over whatever container happens to be catching it on the kitchen counter, it will just go straight to the compost pile.

Shoveling up the compost pile I see remaining little bits of corncob or eggshell here and there, and every shovelful disturbs a bevy of earthworms and earwigs as well as the evidence of millions of other agents of decomposition too small for the eye to see. A toad has taken up residence in a broken piece of sunflower stalk and hops away in panic as I shovel the compost out around him.

Few things illustrate the spiral journey of growing food more than composting, and saving seeds. Sometimes the compost even saves seeds for you--and up pop the volunteer squash and tomato plants, all on their own.  Sheesh, sometimes you might even think the natural world could go on without us... 

E.Coli Outbreaks: One More Reason to Grow Your Own

Make a free compost bins from pallets and baling twine.

A deadly E. Coli outbreak in Germany has just been announced in the news, with scientists across Europe racing to find the source. E. coli exists naturally in the intestines of all animals, including human animals, but several strains of it can cause iarrhea and kidney damage severe enough to lead to death, especially for infants and toddlers, the elderly, and others with compromise health.

In years past, we heard about E.coli outbreaks primarily associated with contaminated meat, and the cause was usually poor factor slaughtering techniques and butchering hygiene. More frequently, however, we are hearing of E.Coli outbreaks from fresh, raw fruits and vegetables.

Since E.Coli is a bacteria that resides inside humans and other animals, how does it get into your cucumbers and strawberries? The answer is usually water--water infested with unprocessed manure, or simply unprocessed manure from livestock or sewage from humans that has been spread on fields or even sprayed on crops as fertilizer. Improper handling and packaging, with transmission from contaminated hands to the produce, can also cause E.coli to be present in fruits and vegetables, but it's highly unlikely that the unwashed hands of one fruit processing factory would cause a widespread outbreak of fatal strains of E.Coli.

Regulation of manure handling is quite strict for farmers who qualify for the National "Organic" program label of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. According to the Organic Trade Association, raw animal manure must be properly composted before use in a certified Organic farm, or applied raw to land at least 120 days prior to harvest to ensure that E.coli and other potential contaminants die out and decompose. Non-organic American farms, and certainly farms outside of the United States which are the origin of an increasing quantity of our supermarket produce, do not have to comply with this precaution.

Home composting of animal manure for your garden will kill off E.coli bacteria, according to a publication of the Colorado State University Extension, Preventing E.Coli from Garden to Plate. Just watch your compost pile temperature and be sure it reaches an inner core temp of 130 to 140 degrees for five days or more. For added protection, turn manure into your garden beds in the fall and let it decompose through the winter. 

Knowing how your food was grown and being able to exercise a high level of control over its safety is just one more excellent reason to grow your own. For more about composting and to learn how to ensure your compost pile temperature stays high, check out Stu Campbell's classic volume Let It Rot, or Nicky Scott's book Composting: An Easy Household Guide, published by Vermont's own eco-minded publishing house, Chelsea Green.

Just skip buying the expensive garden-catalog compost bins -- some free pallets from your local transfer station and some leftover baling twine will do the job just fine.