| Welcome to our dirty, rotten neighborhood! |
Just like a nice compost pile, this site is forever in the process of becoming.
Please check back for photos, news, and a stream of nifty new ways to compost in your garden! Not just ways to use compost in your garden (we have those, too), but new ways to compost and grow veggies, herbs and flowers, all at the same time.
Do you have cool composting methods to share? Please tell us about them! We'll do our best to spread the word. Thanks for stopping by!
Barbara Pleasant and Deb Martin
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| This Year's Garden Biochar Projects |
By Barbara, May 29, 2010
What kills me about biochar is this: we understand very little about how it works and its true benefit to soil and plants, but it sounds so interesting that some people are using it as an excuse to burn stuff that doesn’t really need to be burned.
Glad I got that off my chest.
As I reported last fall, I mixed wood charcoal gathered from campground fire pits with finished compost and bagged it up to cure along with bags of the same compost without charcoal. This spring, I used the two batches of compost in several very small pot experiments. The rest went to in-garden observations.
This year, I want to observe the effects of cured biochar compost on several garden plants. Last year I saw productivity gains in winter squash. This year I wanted to look for effects in other species, because in my experience winter squash are very adaptive to weird soil conditions (they grow happily IN compost). What would happen if biochar became part of the rhizosphere (the soil biota in the root zone) of more sensitive plants like broccoli or tomatoes?
At this point I can report these observations, with more to come as the plants mature:
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Cured biochar compost does not bother broccoli, cabbage, tomatoes, or peppers when mixed with potting soil at a ratio of 50:50 and introduced when seedlings have 3 true leaves.
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Cured biochar compost mixed into the planting holes of broccoli and cabbage does not appear to affect growth one way or another. All of the plants are doing great, which is encouraging. The question now becomes one of residual nitrogen availability. In other words, does biochar compost in soil reduce N depletion from heavy feeders like broccoli? If I provide the soil samples, I’m hoping to get some help from Virginia Tech on that question.
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Biochar compost may slightly enhance growth of tomatoes, but it’s too early to say. Again my observation is very small in scale, and to be honest I resisted using tomatoes as a test crop because I didn’t want to have to weigh every last fruit. But the truth is that I work for you, and you want to know about biochar’s effect on tomatoes. So, if the blight doesn’t get them, I’ll be weighing every fruit from side-by-side pairs of ‘Black Krim’ and ‘Constoluto Genovese’ grown with and without biochar in their seedling containers and planting holes.
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There is a cucumber observation in progress, too, but it involves pickling cucumbers, and I'm not ready to commit to counting or weighing every one of those guys. Getting them into a pickle jar is much more important.
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| Barbara Pleasant and Deb Martin |
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| By Barbara and Deb
September 28, 2009
It took us more than a year to write The Complete Compost Gardening Guide. We had many new methods to try, and what seemed like endless experiments with leaves. When we finally finished, an incredible creative team assembled by the pros at Storey Publishing turned our manuscript into the most comprehensive yet readable book on home composting ever written. Our peers agree! Last weekend we attended the 61st Annual Garden Writers Association Symposium in Raleigh, NC, and accepted our Silver Award of Achievement in Book Writing. We feel honored to have received this vote of confidence from others who work hard to help more people have fun in their gardens!
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| Plant-killing Herbicide Persists in Manure |
By Barbara
Updated July 16, 2009
We had our fingers crossed that it wouldn’t happen, but it has. Gardeners across the US and Canada are seeing failed tomato and bean crops due to manure, mulch and/or compost contaminated with the herbicide aminopyralid. Manufactured by Dow and sold under numerous trade names, including Milestone, this herbicide can persist in hay, manure, compost or garden soil for up to 3 years, or more! Before using manure or hay, be sure to ask about herbicides that may have been used in the pasture or hayfield. Do not take chances. Once contaminated with this herbicide, otherwise fit soil becomes useless for numerous garden crops.
Further reading:
Dr. Jeanine Davis, NCSU, Herbicide Carryover in Hay, Manure, Compost and Grass Clippings
Rachel Carson Council
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Original Post
July 2, 2008
Composters, beware! A herbicide sold under the trade names of Forefront® and Milestone® has ruined hundreds of gardens in Great Britain, and it can happen here, too. Used mostly to control perennial weeds in pastures, the herbicide can survive being digested by horses – and then being piled up for months as compost. Especially sensitive plants such as lettuce, beans and tomatoes refuse to grow and wither when planted in soil that contains very small amounts of residue. These herbicides do not injure grasses, so they are often used in fields where manure-producing animals graze.
Registered with the EPA in 2005, Forefront® and Milestone® are chemically similar to Confront®, the herbicide that survived commercial composting and went on to contaminate gardens in Washington eight years ago. These products are widely available at farm supply stores across the country. Anyone can buy them.
Be selective if you decided to import manure for composting projects. Manure from animals that have fed in pastures that have been treated with these pesticides should be considered unsuitable for garden use.
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