Jute Erosion Mesh: Lawn Upholstery Part 2

It Finally Begins to Biodegrade

Almost 2 years ago, I covered the front yard with jute mesh to keep the grass seeds from blowing away or drying out. It worked as intended, but it's taking longer than I expected to degrade.

The mesh in the dryer areas of the yard (where the grass is thinnest) is still quite strong. The mesh where the grass was thickest has almost completely vanished. In a wetter climate, or if I had watered the grass more, it would have all vanished by now.

Raking the leaves this spring was tricky because the mesh was still strong enough to snag the rake tines. This winter the mesh is there, but although it looks intact it has most of its strength. I raked up small shreds and an occasional tangle of strings as I raked the dead grass and leaves.

The last of the erosion control cloth

 I'm tossing leaves, mesh and dead grass into the compost bins. By this time next year they will be ready for adding to the vegetable garden’s raised beds.



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Frost Cover Support: Rev 3.0 "Ladder Mesh"

The best version yet!

My first version of a frost cover support for winter vegetables was cobbled together in a hurry from available material with a cold front roaring down from Canada.  It was fast and effective but not convenient. The so-called "improved version" was not much better. This winter I took the time to think through the requirements for the supports before the freezes get here. Planning!  It works!

Improved Frost Cloth Support

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Composting rules I break, and why I break them

There are lists of what could/should and should not be tossed into a compost pile. I disregard most of them, because they make no biological sense. However, local conditions and ingredients affect my decisions.

What I don't compost, and why:

• Eggshells
  Our soil has plenty of calcium, and the grackles or ravens rummage through the compost for shells, then carry the shells a short distance and drop them. It's not worth the mess they cause.
• Cactus pads
  The fleshy part decays quickly, but the spines last forever in the compost. It hurts.
  
• Palm fronds
  They are too fibrous to run through a chipper shredder, and the fibers last a long time, making the compost hard to turn or sift. 
  If you want to prune your palm trees, do it in time for Palm Sunday in the spring or Sukkot in the fall.  People will love you for donating fronds to their ceremonies.

What I compost that I'm "not supposed" to:

• Kitty litter
  We use locally produced pellet fuel - compressed sawdust - as litter. After removing the feces because ewww! the urine-soaked sawdust composts easily.  I'm not worried about pathogens because they are my cats. They live with me, sleep on my bed and wander through my house.
• Meat and leftovers containing meat or grease
  If you can compost an entire dead elk by piling sawdust over it, a few scraps of stew meat aren't going to make your compost pile die. 
  If I lived where the meat could attract scavengers such as bears or raccoons, I would keep most food scraps out of the compost.

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Using Compost Bins As Raised Beds

My composting method consists of tossing stuff into a wire bin and letting it decompose on its own schedule.  Because of the dry climate, things in a bin can sit there for years without decomposing much, so I ran a drip line onto the top to keep the ingredients moist and ensure compost within my lifetime.

Then we had the brainstorm!  Why not try growing stuff in the bin while it was decomposing? It has water and nutrients aplenty. It should be like a planter or extra-high raised bed.

The Construction:

Here's a new bin, made after yard cleanup, with layers of shredded branches, grass clippings,  and oleander leaves and blossoms.  The green thing is a bean plant that grew up the side between filling the bin and making the planter.

New Compost Bin

We made a depression in the middle of the material, lined it with newspaper and filled it with some garden dirt.

Layer of newspaper and dirt

Then we spiraled the drip line on the dirt and planted vegetables along the perimeter.

Drip line

Results

We had success with summer squash and tomatoes.  It's convenient to have tomatoes at a pickable height.

Matt's Wild Cherry Tomato, running wild

Problems

• As the material decomposed, the plants needed to be adjusted for the lower height if they were draped over the edge.
• The compost from the tomatoes was infested with tomato seeds from the fruits we didn't see that fell into the bin.
• Tearing down the heap was a bit more difficult because of the massive root systems the plants developed, but not enough to make me stop using the heaps.

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Raised Bed: REV 2.0 Bigger and Better

The first raised bed was done in a hurry because it was already October and I needed to get something finished for winter vegetables.  It was about 6x9 feet, occupying the available space between a fence, shed, and compost bins.
Six feet is as deep as it can be without getting in the way of traffic through the side yard. However, six feet is too big to weed in the middle without crawling into the growing area. Four feet wide would have been much better, because a comfortable reach for me is 2 feet.

Geometry to the rescue! The new bed is a fat E-shape, 6x16 feet, with two indented areas to keep the entire growing area in my reach distance. It is, however, no longer "tool-free".

Old (top) and new (lower) bed outline

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Four Cheap, Effective Fertilizers

For Occasional Use by a Lazy Gardener

I seldom use fertilizers, but if I have to, I use the simplest ones that will do the job.  I am reluctant to use combination fertilizer and weed killer or pest killer. If landscaping has weeds or pests, I'll buy the right single-purpose product. I am also reluctant to apply "time-release" products because in my experience, they are timed for the typical Eastern lawn and garden with more rainfall.

1914 Fertilizer Brochure Cover

If a landscape that I'm responsible for needs fertilizer, one of these four fertilizers will be applied: ammonium nitrate, ammonium sulfate, ammonium phosphate, or soil sulfur. In keeping with my gardening philosophy, they are the simplest, cheapest fertilizers you can buy.
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Dealing with Weed Seeds in Compost

This accidentally turned into a nice demonstration because the various leafy greens germinated in their soil blocks at different times and were planted out at intervals of a few days.

My compost method is known as "slow" or "cold" composting.  This pile it and forget it method doesn't produce enough heat to reliably kill weed seeds.  Some will die of old age before the compost is used, but others will survive.

That means my just-filled raised beds were filled with unsprouted weed seeds. They sprouted as soon as they got  light and moisture, leaving me with a weedy mess of a vegetable bed like this. 

 

Weedy mess and transplanted chard seedlings

It will get worse every day unless ...
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No-Tools Needed Tall Raised Beds

This has been entered in an Instructables.com contest!

The garden used to be the bottom of an arroyo, so it's mostly sand, some silt and some big rocks.  Instead of a short barrier to keep mulch contained, I need serious soil amendments and a deeper vegetable bed to hold it all.

Two slats high, with ends butted together

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DIY Trommel Sifter for Compost

My composting method makes compost with very little effort, but it needs sifting to separate the undecomposed material from the compost.

The first sifting method relied on rubbing the compost through a wire mesh placed over a wheelbarrow - that was way too much work. 

Then I found this instructable on making a rotating sifter, called a "trommel". The one I built from this idea used a wooden frame that could rest on my garden cart.  It was OK, but having to lift the trommel and frame off the cart to move the compost to the garden and then set it up again to continue sifting was a nuisance.

First trommel with supporting frame

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Tilling and Plowing Tips for Gardeners

Everything I know about tilling and plowing gardens I learned from a horse. He was a darned smart horse.  I learned to use a garden tiller in my uncle's 1-acre garden plot, walking behind a small, horse-drawn cultivator. It was not easy, but the horse was twice my age, knew 10 times more about cultivating than I did, and he plowed the way he knew it should be done.

Farmer plowing in Germany. Photo: Ralf Roletschek

Unfortunately for suburban gardeners, their garden tillers don't have the brains of a plow horse guiding them through the process. Let me pass on what I learned from that old horse (and my uncle).

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DIY Cheap Compost Bin

Twenty dollars in materials and a handful of paperclips is all you need to make a sturdy, functional compost bin that holds almost a cubic yard of material.  This will make one wire bin, about 3 feet in diameter and 4 feet high. Wire compost bins will not produce compost as quickly as solid-sided bins that allow frequent turning and they can be untidy looking. However, "cheap and easy" is my gardening motto.

You will need about 8x4 feet of space for the assembled bin to allow room to rake around it and room to remove the compost later.

Compost bin, almost full

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