Compost How and Why

I just found this very informative link that tells you the hows and whys of composting:

http://www.rivenrock.com/compost.htm

HoneybeeNC, I read this article and would like to make comment on the benifical use of compost. My garden soil strated out as basically rock dust or clay and over a period of several years of adding composed horse manure has evolved into a pretty decent soil. My new neighbor put in a garden next to mine last year and I gave him some of my seed potatoes. His potato plants grew about a foot tall and mine were about three feet tall. As usual we had a bumper crop of potatoes. The neighbor's however were not. He also had potato beetles which looked a bit like lady bugs, and I only found one on my plants which were located adjacent to his. I found that very curious.

mraider3 - The power of compost has never ceased to amaze me. Growing up in England, my parents and I managed a large garden. Chemical fertilizers were never added, just compost and seaweed. This garden produced enough, not only for ourselves, but the summer guests that rented rooms in our home.

My hubby and I are now in NC. Last fall we started putting leaves and compost around the large oak tree off our back porch because the ground beneath it was hard clay. Yesterday, I poked through the wonderful soil that has now built-up and put in a few dozen daffodil bulbs. Now I can't wait for spring to see all those wonder flowers.

As to why your neighbor's potatoes were attacked by potatoe beetles and not yours -- from what I have read -- healthy plants put out chemicals that deter attacks by bugs. I'm not sure if this is just a theory, but it certainly appears to be a fact.

Well Honeybee, I am a believer, since he had dozens of these bugs on his few plants and I found only the one. No evidence of them chewing the leaves either. His were riddled with holes. My garden is large enough now that I can use a five year rotational plan and I don't return any of the vegitation to the garden. I simply layer this material along with yard and garden weeds on a 200'l x 10'w rock pile which this year will be used to plant asparagus seed.

mraider3 - I think your rock pile must be a bigger challenge than my clay soil and Burmuda grass :)

A five year ratational plan sounds perfect. I haven't got there yet. My veggie beds are 25' x 4' - but I'm planning to remove the beds now that I have plenty of good organic soil, and going to a row system. I should be able to grow more veggies that way. My garden area is approximately six thousand square feet.

Actually Honeybee the rock pile is pretty much under control. Half of the six foot deep pile was from a rented rock picker machine and the other half was hand dug. I have been layering the top and north side of the pile with garden refuse, horse manure and hand pulled yard weeds for several years. It is now ready to plant with asparagus seed and dill on the horizontal and wild flowers on the vertical next to the highway culvert.

I have roughly half the garden area you do. Not counting the raised beds, berry rows and fruit trees, I have 3,500 square feet. More than enough for the two of us. We try to get some of our surplus to food family, but unfortunately most of them live too far away, and don't like to cook. My kids are in their 30's now with kids of their own. Life styles today place dilvery pizza on the menu two or three times a week. Their restaurant tips alone can cover my grocery bills!

mraider3 - my 6,000 sq. ft. also takes in two pear, one persimmon, a fig tree and four blueberry bushes - they are all young, so we have yet to get fruit from any of them. It also includes the strawberry bed, from which many "daughters" have escaped. Your area and mine are probably the same size taking all this into account. There is just hubby and myself, plus I share with the neighbors and people in the office where I work part time.

It's such a shame that today's youth don't share the same joy of "eating fresh" as we do. To me, there is nothing better than to walk out the back door, pick whatever is "ready", and having it for dinner.

For some reason my replies are being dumped before I can finish them. Anyway, my four year old granddaughter loved the veggies I took to Colorado last month. It was like nothing she had ever tasted. She could eat four ears of sweet corn by herself. It was fun talking with her about the garden. I call her millenium's child. I want to teach her and our other granddaughters as much about gardening as possible. I believe that generation will be growing their own food. I also took her on her first fishing trip to the North Pole (Woodland Park, Colorado). She caught three really nice trout and netted six more. A record for the first time out. I think she liked the netting part best. I have heard there are a number of schools opening up to teach young kids about gardening. I have six young kids on either side of us and they are absolutely fastinated by the garden. Luke also four, is my tomato connoisseur. If Luke doesn't like it we won't grow it next year. They can come feely and pick tomatoes, strawberrys, rasberrys, corn or whatever they want. I think every gardenrer should addopt at least one kid. What do you think of that?

morgan

Morgan, I just realized that I don't have one single child living in my immediate neighborhood.

Well HoneyBee, "If you build it they will come!". Fate has a funny way of doing things some times. If every gardener that read this thread made an attempt to teach at least one young kid how to garden, then I believe they would be doing something every gardener should. Young kids are like sponges and it;s never too early to begin teaching them skills which will ultimately be a way of life for them. My granddaughters already have computer shills that exceed mine and none over the age of 7. I don't dissagree with that because that is how I raised my kids to think computer. They have all excecelled at it and now that is what they think their kids should do. But something tells me that gardening which I am becomming better at, and fishing which I am also good at, are two things my grandkids will learn from me. And that goes for any other kid as well. Soon someone will write a special book on teaching children how to garden. Maybe that is something we should do...what do you think? I wouldn't mind throwing in a chapter on teaching kids how to fish. We have developed a method that is surprisingly good.

mraider3 - My daughter used to help out in the garden when we lived in Tennessee. Then we moved to Florida, where my son helped to garden when he was young, he even had his own set of gardening tools.

Now they are grown. He is a cook in an italian restaurant, and she has a computer science degree. Neither of them show any interest in raising their own food :(

I fear that if a castastrophic event ever happens and we humans are forced to raise our own food - many will not know how (sigh) So, yes, I think it behooves us gardeners to teach our children, so they will have the coping skills if they are ever needed.

Well Honeybee, disaster or not, I have a very strong feeling that back to basics for our children is in order. I have not been able to get the idea out of my head about preparing some kind of instuctional manual for children to learn how to garden and much more. A survival book if you will, but there is a growing need today in my openion to teach young children the things that my parents and their parents before them did as a way of life. Gardening for me as a child was picking green beans after school and stealing corn from the experimenatal farm adjacent to our home in Joliet. I obviously didn't learn much since the planting was left to mom and she did not share much information about the process, probably since I showed little interest, and hated picking green beans. Stealing corn was fun! I would collect old news papers and start a fire in the back yard fire basket, then toss in the corn unschucked. Although it was field corn, when picked young and tender, it was excellent.

I guess the responsibility to do this book is up to me. Why me? Don't know. I write technical reports and have written a number of training manuals thoughout my career, as well as a book for my granddaughter called Rue, which is sort of along these lines. I have been giving thoiught to asking for help from DGers, but I am not sure how to go about that. My son is a designer of web sites and I will talk with him today about my ideas. I want this to be a book which will continually grow with input from anyone willing to provide information and a story. The book should be freely available to anyone via computer access at no cost. I want to call it "Millium's Child".

mraider3 - My son loved gardening, but hated books. My daughter loved books and hated gardening. I'm thinking the "hands on" approach might be better. Over all, I think getting schools involved would be the best approach.

Here's are links to Kids Gardening, and The National Gardening Association:

http://www.kidsgardening.com/

http://www.garden.org/home

The former encourages schools to get involved and offers much literature for teachers on the subject.

Good point Honeybee, and thanks for the links. I will be checking this out. It is interesting how gardening has been picking up in this country. Last year I read that a number of the major seed companies had run out of seed. I experienced this as well with a late corn seed order from Johnnies, and had to go with a slightly different seed to fill the 'holes', so to speak. I plant my corn seed 14-inches apart in each row, and due to some seriously late cold weather in the spring I had to go back and do some reseeding. I came up short on the plugged seed, and the replacement seed although intended for cool, short season areas was about 10 to 15 days longer to harvest. Consequently I am sitting here with a garage full of dried corn picked late in the season. We had eight 60 foot rows planted in corn which was more than enough for our use as well as friends and family. However, now I am trying to figure out what to do with all this dried corn. Since I only plant hybrid corn it is of no value as seed corn.

mraider- sorry, I don't have any suggestions regarding your dried corn, other than to grind it into corn meal, or feed it to the squirrels/birds. Other than an occasional bag of popcorn, it's not something we eat at our house.

Been looking for a grinder for corn. DigMontana once mentioned a golden grinder she used, but I can locate a source. I would prefer a hand grinder for under $100. The reviews on several suggested models aren't that favorable.

I wonder if a food processor would grind small amounts of corn, maybe make a grits like product to cook? I'm guessing in MT you'll have some snowcovered days for kitchen experiments.

My college age daughter was telling me about the Edible Schoolyard. It sounds like a great program.
http://www.edibleschoolyard.org/about-us