September 10, 2015

Good morning, Since my friend retired that provided me with delivered to my doorstep organics, I have been looking for a new source of even sized easily compost-able material.

Recently I picked up some of the grains left over after the first stage of beer making over at the brewery in town. This stuff does heat up nicely. It does need to be turned frequently, because it very easily compacts on itself and then goes into an anaerobic condition because it does not have enough air to continue breaking down. This stuff does get quite aromatic.

A friend of mine gave me some wood shavings from furniture manufacturing. I plan to mix some of these shavings with the brewery leavings. On paper this looks to be quite favorable. The stuff appears to generate enough heat and it will be interesting to find the right carbon to nitrogen level to compost down. The leavings being so wet is why they compact down and stop air flow.

I am not opposed to the aroma (it is the smell of fertility). I like a bit of a warm to hot compost pile, because it has a sterilization affect and it becomes usable a little faster too.

I have access to horse manure and this stuff makes wonderful compost, but has irregular sizes. The uneven sizes (straw and road apples) makes it difficult to keep the moisture consistent for a hasty break down. A mulching machine would be very advantageous. Even sizes is best!!

Save for when I clean out the chicken coops to make compost, the use of manure has one draw back and that is the addition of rocks to the garden (not so with my chicken poop). This would not be a problem if I had a way of screening the compost before adding it to the garden.

Here lies the real biggy as to why I really want to get the compost recipe right with the brewery leavings. No additional rocks to the garden. Even if you screen the larger ones out there will always be the pea gravel and smaller that gets through. When I have it I can go through many many hundreds of pounds (if not tons) of compost each year. This would leave the soil surface in the beds with a “mulch” that at some point would need to be removed.

Being a one man show it just makes it a lot easier if MY compost-able material is all even sized, easy to build piles with, and rock free. It just makes gardening a lot easier. Compost is my gardens back bone.

The fewer steps that I need to take to get the compost-able material composted and into the garden would just make things a lot easier.

I like a 14 day compost and this is only achievable with even sized material.

Looking at the weather forecast on this Tuesday morning and it looks like we will be getting a bit of a cool down ( I so very hope so). The temperatures have consistently had temps above 90. Test germination’s have been very poor, so I decided to hold off on sowing until the weather cools. It looks like my window of opportunity has a arrived. It is predicted to be a cooler wet fall. The weather this year has been so bizarre and I hope this fall has it's own garden challenging surprises. Time will tell.

I find it so amazing with my most recent squash bed It looks like anything that can, has cross hairs on it. The list of villains is impressive. Cucumber beetles, squash bugs, melon worms, spider mites, and powdery mildew. My last bed had a premature death from mosaic virus due to the cucumber beetles. So far I am able to keep the squash bed bugs populations down to tolerable levels. It has been one of those years and I really would not expect the fall to be any different.

My last crop of toms is coming along. I did notice that the tomato pin worms arrived and weekly sprays of Bt and cold pressed neem are keeping them at bay.

This is the first year where I have gotten a third growth cycle with the butternut squash. I wish I had room for this third crop but I don't so I am letting what are on the vines mature while hold back water. It will be nice to have 2 less beds to contend with.

It has been a good year for growing although I sure could have used a few more clouds in the sky. Cloudless skies have paid their toll on the chiles. I need to figure how to cover them to cut the sun. The chiles have cavities that heat up and burn. Immature and mature alike.

Due to all the August heat the garden did have a bit of a slow down. I have been able to get a new chard /kale bed transplanted and a beet bed to take so there should be an up tick in veggie harvest soon. I am seeing an uptick in harvest with most of my summer veggies. They just didn't like the heat. Come to think of it, I didn't either!!

Oh yes gotta love a challenge!!