Managing My Organic Matter

[jerryinfla]

If I've learned nothing else about growing vegetables in a backyard Florida garden it's that our sandy soil needs huge quantities of organic matter. I've been composting kitchen waste and small amounts of leaves since we moved to Florida several years ago but I never could accumulate enough to make much difference. Beginning a couple years ago my goal has been to collect as much organic matter as I can without spending a fortune doing so. I learned that there is a mushroom farm about 30 miles from our house that sells their spent mushroom substrate for $2.50 per cubic yard cash and carry but I had nothing suitable to carry it in. Then I found a guy with an 18 cubic yard capacity tri-axel dump truck who delivers it to me. I'm working on my third load now.

01-tri axle.jpg 02-dumping.jpg 03-spent mushroom substrate.jpg

One fall day in 2010 I passed a huge stack of leaves in bags on the curbside and hauled them to the backyard in my SUV -- it took several trips. I purchased a chipper/shredder and spent the next several days shredding them then used the stuff for mulch around my plants. When I saw the difference just one season of leaf mulch made, I collected hundreds of bags of leaves this past fall/winter and shredded all of them. I figure I have around 10 cubic yards of shredded leaves in the bin now and I've used quite a bit of the stuff for mulch already.

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My compost bin is adjacent to the shredded leaf bin and I build the compost pile alternating layers of shredded leaves, kitchen waste, garden debris, seaweeds, and spent mushroom substrate. This bin would hold approximately 4 cubic yards if full but I doubt that it ever will be. When I'm turning the compost and see areas that look finished or nearly so, I sift that part through a 1" x 1/2" mesh sieve I made then store the sifted compost in trash barrels.

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I put a couple inches in each 4' X 8' bed prior to planting. Here's what the finished compost looks like.

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Last winter we had a couple of oak trees in our front yard cut down and they shredded the small limbs, twigs and leaves on site. I asked them to dump those chips in my backyard and I use them in the paths between beds. All paths, so far, are finished and I have plenty left over for future expansion until it breaks down into compost.

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This is my first full year adding sizable amounts of organic matter to my sandy Florida soil so only time will tell how much difference it makes. However, I had no success growing veggies here until last fall when I had limited success so I'm anxious to see what the long term effects are in a few more years. We'll see.

[cornbreadlouie]

Beautiful dirt you have made.

[halleone]

Wow. Very impressive; I wish I had similar access to some of your ingredients, but I make do with leaves I rake up from one of our city parks. The park department thinks I'm maybe missing a few marbles, but they leave me alone; one year an employee carried the leaf bags to my truck in his drive-around cart.
Yeah, I am probably missing a few marbles..........

[ddsack]

I am also impressed! You are a serious composteur and your bins and piles are just lovely! How great to have access to the mushroom substrate. I am trying to shred and compost leaves from the surrounding woods in the fall, but also have to order a dump truck load of rotted manure every three year or so, to have enough fertile organic matter. Hard to get ahold of my supplier sometimes, since he's a farmer and a trucker, and also travels out of the area for temporary construction jobs.

[peppero]

thanks for sharing this. i have been using leaves for years and they sure build up the soil and the worms just love them. it is hard to get too many leaves. it is so good that i have so many trees. jon

[Masbustelo]

Very nice set up. very organized.

[Cole_Robbie]

Very neat!

I have seen machines that pack compost into a long sock to use as a growing medium. That might be something fun to try with a little of that compost.

Here is a pic:
http://www.plantmanagementnetwork.or...trawberry3.jpg

[jerryinfla]

Thanks for the feedback and kind words folks. Several of you mentioned the use of leaves. From things I've read and what I see in my own garden, they might be the best mulch and compost ingredient of all. Not only do they add excellent tilth, they also attract worms and are high in trace elements the soil needs. Besides that they are free and abundant in my neighborhood. I'm amazed that folks go to the trouble to rake them up, bag them, throw them away and then go spend money for mulch. Go figure !

[kamatis]

Hmmm.... here in the Philippines one of my favorite compost ingredient is banana peel. One of the standard snacks of folks here is banana cue or fried bananas coated with brown sugar and cued on sticks. I could just ask the vendors for the banana peel which just goes to the garbage can anyway.

Sometimes i would just dump the peels under the soil and let it rot away. in turn they even attract worms which help enrich the soil further.

[Redbaron]

Originally Posted by kamatis

Sometimes i would just dump the peels under the soil and let it rot away. in turn they even attract worms which help enrich the soil further.

That's a technique I haven't used in a while, but did have good luck with years ago.

I would dig a trench the length of the garden at an end we wanted to expand. Every day we would collect the kitchen scraps and drop them in one end of the trench, and always every day cover that. After several days we would get all the way to the other end of the trench and start a new one parallel to the old one. Each trench would expand the garden about a foot or two, so by the next planting season we would have a little bit bigger garden by several feet that was already very fertile.

The system works fantastic, but I don't use it any more because I am too lazy to dig those trenches.

[kilroyscarnival]

Wow, that is some operation, Jerry! I have just begun to compost. Do you bag your grass clippings and use those? I watched this YT video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s405uNCNn98, and this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-JqA...feature=relmfu. So I put the bagger on my little cordless electric mower (very small lot, works great), and started a small compost pile with a mixture of the old brown grass clippings and the new green ones, plus a few sprinkles of my purchased manure compost, then tried the beer/cola/ammonia cocktail applied with the hose-end sprayer. Sounds very much like a Jerry Baker tip for breaking down the thatch underneath the grass, so I'm trying that too, sprayed the rest of the backyard with the recipe.

I've been adding food scraps (apple cores, banana peel, coffee grounds, a mushy zucchini) and will add more grass clippings and leaves as I go. I felt some warmth in the center the other evening, so something's happening I think. So far it's just a pile on the ground out of sight. Your setup is amazing, though.

[jerryinfla]

Originally Posted by kilroyscarnival

Wow, that is some operation, Jerry! I have just begun to compost. Do you bag your grass clippings and use those? I watched this YT video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s405uNCNn98, and this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-JqA...feature=relmfu. So I put the bagger on my little cordless electric mower (very small lot, works great), and started a small compost pile with a mixture of the old brown grass clippings and the new green ones, plus a few sprinkles of my purchased manure compost, then tried the beer/cola/ammonia cocktail applied with the hose-end sprayer. Sounds very much like a Jerry Baker tip for breaking down the thatch underneath the grass, so I'm trying that too, sprayed the rest of the backyard with the recipe.

I've been adding food scraps (apple cores, banana peel, coffee grounds, a mushy zucchini) and will add more grass clippings and leaves as I go. I felt some warmth in the center the other evening, so something's happening I think. So far it's just a pile on the ground out of sight. Your setup is amazing, though.

No, I don't bag and use grass clippings because I'd rather just let them fall on the lawn as I mow -- my lawn needs huge quantities of compost too. Your composting operation sounds great to me though . I think you'll find that any compost you make from stuff you generate or haul back to your pile is far better than anything you can buy in bags at the big box stores. So keep it up -- the more you compost the more stuff you'll find to add to the mix and your soil will just get better and better.

[bwaynef]

Count me among those jealous! Your operation looks fantastic.

I started composting a few months ago. I've had my pile as high as ~130°F ...but its not that big and didn't maintain that level for more than a week or so.

You've inspired me to expand my operation (with the wife's blessing of course).

[greentiger87]

I need leaves. Our parks department is really possessive about their leaves though, they get sent off to composting facilities to be resold as "leafmould compost".

I'm so incredibly jealous Jerry!