Composting and Humus
Forum Archives
Daniel
Location: British Columbia, Southwestern
Posted: Feb-08-2005 at 5:57pm
Apparenty Steve Solomon's 'Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades is considered something of a holy grail of edible gardening on this forum. I'd like to contrast some of what it says to another book I have, 'The Whole Organic Food Book' by Dan Jason, a Saltspring Island gardener.
Jason says, about compost, 'It is almost impossible to overuse compost: the more you dig into your soil the better.' Alright. Seemed logical enough when I first read it. Then Solomon tells me that too much organic matter in the form of compost, will, West of the Cascades, supply an overdose of potassium and an underdose of just about everything else. He also says, 'When maintaining an ongoing garden site, make no more than an annual additon of 1/4 inch of finished compost.'
So who's right? I'm leaning toward Solomon, but both are experienced gardeners who should know their stuff. Solomon just does that much of a better job of explaining his reasoning.
And a last point - is compost in the Pacific Northwest really that nutrient deficient? Jason doesn't seem to think so - I can't find any direct quotes right now, but the impression I get is the he sees no need for even organic fertilizers, and that for him compost and green manure does the trick.
One thing to keep in mind, as Solomon mentions, that the Gulf Islands where Jason gardens have different soil structure than in the vast majority of Cascadia (Pacific Northwest). I belive their soils have more lime or something like that. This would reduce his need for either calcium or magnesium or both.
Wanda
Location: Puget Sound corridor
Posted: Feb-08-2005 at 8:18pm
Good question! I hope we get some responses so we can all learn. Another difference between the Gulf Islands (San Juan Islands) and the rest of Cascadia is rainfall. Maybe they have less problems with amendments leaching out of the soil. Anyway, I'm looking forward to the discussion.
-Wanda
tommyb
Location: Oregon, Willamette Valley
Posted: Feb-09-2005 at 6:02am
Due to impending electrical work
My rant must be short
As regards compost
And manure
Mr. Solomon's Grail
Makes me snort!!!
Edit, after the home breaker panel replaced (yahoo!!):
With the assumption that the bulk of your compost or manure is organically based---your cow isn't really on heavy steroids--- my results from abundant use of compost/manure have been plants with excellant fruiting and tremendous flower production with a noticable increase in size. My conclusion has been, and will remain until they pry my potato hook from my stiff cold hands, that plants will take what they need and not more. If chemicals are used, or hot animal manure as in chicken supplied, burning and/or excessive leafy growth is possible: as in the American lawn. I trust my plants to not be greedy American fast food freaks and overeat just because they can.
Having released my rant, I wonder if Solomon's text was corrupted at the printers. Maybe he meant 4 inches per year?? A quarter inch of compost per year is like wispering 'vermooth' over a martini to avoid just gulping vodka. Or raising hens without a rooster, they lay eggs but they sure don't sing.
Tom
CaraD
Location: Oregon, Western
Posted: Feb-09-2005 at 10:32am
I am a newbie to this forum...read a few times, but never contributed. That said (so you know to take my words with a large grain of salt)...
I wondered about Mr Solomon's advice on compost too. Being a goat lover, I have loads of manure and compost that I would love to use more of, but wondered if it was wise after reading his books. This year I am just putting it on anyway, but with what result?
JeanneK
Location: Oregon, Greater Portland Metro
Posted: Feb-09-2005 at 1:02pm
Welcome to Rainyside, Cara!
I am sure the veggie garden gurus can give you more detailed reasons why not to use too much manure but basically some plants need a leaner soil to produce fruit. Too much nitrogen produces beautiful, green leafy plants but no fruit. That's why it is recommended to use well-composted manure in the spring but not use it later in the summer. It's good to give the plants a healthy start but then you have to put them on a bit of a diet to get them to set fruit.
Good luck!
Jeanne
gary
Location: Washington, Puget Sound Corridor
Posted: Feb-09-2005 at 5:29pm
Tommy,
Having read/worn out all of Steve's editions, my age allows me to see his 'learning over time'. I believe that more important to amounts of compost is 'into what soil types'. I did a Goggle search on 'Saltspring Island soils' and got a study on the water table that said 'in low places', soil depth is only 40'.
As I said above, Steve's major point is about the pest attraction of organic matter. But he only spent 1-2 years in Yelm's sand/gravel soil as opposed to Willamette Valley 'Muck'.
I do believe that you must add some minerals to 'raw compost'. And with really raw 'post' you most add nitrogen to break in down so it doesn't steal N from the plants/seeds you are growing.
Gary
Daniel
Location: British Columbia, Southwestern
Posted: Feb-09-2005 at 6:07pm
phew... I've been going over some of the archives on this site, and there's an incredible hodge-podge of little tidbits of composting and fertilizer info...rather overwhelming.
Tom, based on what I've read, the fact that your plants attain excellent size and flower abundantly does not necessarily mean that their nutritional value is high. In fact, according to Solomon, potassium, which Cascadian soils and Cascadian compost seems to contain a lot of, stimulates plant growth at the expense of nutritional value. So the message I get out of his book is that adding too much compost is undesirable only because it will result in very unbalanced vegetables, veggies that are high in potassium, and low in calcium, magnesium, nitrogen, etc.
Keep in mind that Solomon is not recommending chemical fertilizers, but rather a fertilizer mix consisting primarily of seed meal, along with calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate, phosphate rock or bone meal, and kelp meal. This mixture, he says, will keep the trace minerals up, the calcium and magnesium up, and the potassium down. It all sounds well and good, but I want more feedback from fellow gardeners first. So, fellow Cascadians, based on your experience, is Solomon right?
Cara, welcome to Rainyside from me as well. I'm a relatively new member as well, and one thing I've noticed, new members usually get a warm welcome on this site. Anyway, about your goat manure, depending on what type of food your goats have access too, I have a hunch that goat manure will have better balance in terms of minerals. I'm no expert on goats, but don't goats eat just about anything that grows? I've heard they'll even eat Himalayan blackberries.
There's an organic goat farm near my house and they make compost as well, so I think I'll ask them the next time I'm down there.
tommyb
Location: Oregon, Willamette Valley
Posted: Feb-09-2005 at 7:46pm
Hi Gary,
Your reference:
'As I said above, Steve's major point is about the pest attraction of organic matter', has lost me. Unless our worthy Moderators have edited something out, I don't see what thread you are referring to. Not that it's critical to Daniel's question. Could you enlighten me please?
I'm commenting, in a very focused manner, on Mr. Solomon's directive of adding only 1/4 of an inch of compost on a garden per year(and I'm commenting in a rather spirited way). As I read his book I hit that point and reject his position as absurd. If that is the acceptable additive of humus to a growing environment then I guess I'll convert to hydroponics.
Balancing elemental additives, as in fertilizers, as is done in standard American chemical farming, i.e. triple sixteen, 23-4-13, and so on, may meet the emperical nutitional needs of the organisms. But the microbiological needs of the plants can, in my biased view, only be met through the availability of 'living' matter, as in compost or manure or the natural accumulation of plant material from the rotting parts of plants.
And I assert that this situation is true in any sort of soil, in any location, for any plant. And I also reserve the privilege to be incorrect yet continue to apply compost and manure until my plants stop growing so well.
I would be very curious to hear from someone who has followed the Solomon Method precisely, and duplicated his findings.
Now I do revel in the compost and manure available to the rest of us because Solomonites don't want it...and I'm probably having too much fun in this discussion.
Tom
JeanneK
Location: Oregon, Greater Portland Metro
Posted: Feb-10-2005 at 9:15am
I agree, Tommy. I have read several authorities, Ann Lovejoy being one, who thought that 'availability of 'living' matter, as in compost or manure or the natural accumulation of plant material from the rotting parts of plants' was very important to soil and plant health. So I am confused too, that Steve Solomon would think that more than 1/4 inch compost would be detrimental to plant and soil health.
Jeanne
gary
Location: Washington, Puget Sound Corridor
Posted: Feb-10-2005 at 10:20am
Tommy,
I guess I thought that I had posted already on the symphylans damage that Solomon fought in his early days. They become a plague on the roots of many vegetables in high organic matter soils in parts of Oregon apparently.
As to the ¼” of finished compost, that is recommendation for application just before sowing or transplanting. He also only wants it in the top inch or so. He is also starting with soil that is near 5% organic matter to begin with. In many cases ¼” is applied after he has green manured the bed over winter.
Besides the pests (slugs, sow bugs, earwigs) attracted by raw composts, I don’t want to have the soil microorganisms tie up the nitrogen breaking down the excess material. I want that for my plants. In earlier editions, Solomon used to clearly list applying an inch of raw compost/manure in the fall with the green manure seed.
Gary Kline, the owner of Black Lake Organic, gave a talk a few weeks ago titled “Why Organics Is Not Enough.” He discusses organic matter levels for vegetables as follows:
“Only about 8% of the earth surface is suitable for agriculture and less than half of that for growing crops. A good agricultural soil consists of four things: air, water, minerals, and organic matter. An ideal soil will be half air and water in equal proportions by volume, and half solids, consisting of minerals and humus or decomposed organic matter. However, in the case of the solids, the proportions need to be 9 to 1, minerals to organic matter. In terms of the four parts of ideal soil, the minerals need to be 45% and the organic matter 5% by volume. By weight the organic matter should be only about 2% of soil!”
I believe that you misinterpreted my mineral reference. I was talking about natural rock fertilizers. Remember all those elements (minerals) listed in our soil tests? Gary talks of them and then adds why they are important in vegetable growth for our health.
'Let me ask, how many known plant nutrient elements are there? The answer is 18, but probably that number will grow and it may be that plants really need 40 or 50 or more of the 92 natural elements. Who can name the 18 nutrient elements? I’ll list them for you in roughly the order of abundance required to grow a crop plant. Carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, which are the main components of all organic compounds; nitrogen, which is required to make proteins; phosphorus; sulfur; potassium; calcium; magnesium. The rest are called trace or micronutrients that now include sodium, plus iron, copper, zinc, manganese, boron, cobalt, chlorine, and molybdenum. Humans need 27 or more nutrient elements and these come ultimately through plants.
Here is the important point: organic matter (or humus) is critical for growing crops. It should never be below 3%, but it also should not be above 6%. Above the ideal of 5%, more is not better; generally; it is harmful to the crop and harmful to your health because it will be minerally or nutrient deficient… especially if you don’t add any mineral fertilizers. Also it will give the microbes too much carbon to process and they won’t leave any food for your plants until they are done. Microbes eat first.
That is a hard pill for dyed-in-the-wool organic gardeners and farmers to swallow. There is such a thing as too much organic matter and beyond a certain point of plowing in manure, compost, or other organic matter, you are not building up the soil. Instead, you are degrading it. When I say this, Conventional Organic Wisdom (abbreviated C.O.W) worshippers go into convulsions. This is sacrilege to followers of the sacred COW. However, what they need to realize is that I am only trying to wake up people and help everyone be healthier. I am also offering correct fertilizing materials for people who see the wisdom in buying and applying them. Black Lake Organic carries over 100 kinds of natural and organic fertilizers, including many that are not minerals as such.
Lest you think I am a total heretic, I want to quote a paragraph from page 193 in the 1955 book titled Organic Gardening by J. I. Rodale, who is the acknowledged father of organic gardening and farming in America. “Plants strongly attacked by insects are often nutritionally unbalanced. Be sure that you give them a completely fertile soil, rich in organic matter and all the minerals. Using a good-sized mulch and making compost will help, as well as adding minerals in the form of natural rock fertilizers.” The underlining emphasis is mine, but it also needs to be yours.
If you open any textbook on soils you will find that the ideal soil for growing crops is a loam with 5% organic matter. Somehow, Sacred COW growers are blind to that simple fact. They seem to think (and they’ve been told over and over) that you can’t get too much organic matter in your soil. And worse than that, many of them think organic matter and ordinary compost is the best fertilizer there is and nothing more is ever needed. In most cases, especially here in the Maritime Pacific Northwest, this is totally untrue. Let me quote again from Rodale’s 1995 book on page 33: “I wish to stress here that too many organic gardeners have been working to their own disadvantage and have produced an unbalanced soil. They have piled prodigious amounts of organic matter into it, and have neglected the mineral side.”
Adding compost to sandy or clay soils can improve the soil structure (but that is another subject). If you already have loamy soil, keep your soil test organic matter about 5% and pay attention to the minerals, erh, natural rock fertilizers.
Gary
Screaming Eagle
Location: Puget Sound corridor
Posted: Feb-10-2005 at 2:00pm
I'm in the more is better camp, although I do highly respect Steve Solomon's knowledge and take most of his advice. I've even made his organic fert recipie. Since my beds were quite lean, I've been piling on at least 4'/2x year, as I move to more maintenince of the beds that could decrease to 2'/2x year. I do mostly non-veggie gardening so I may not be seeking the same results as you folks. However, the few veggies and herbs I tuck in amongst the flowers do well, taste good and I would bet are nutritionally superior to the stuff at the grocery store .
tommyb
Location: Oregon, Willamette Valley
Posted: Feb-10-2005 at 3:12pm
Good stuff Gary, and the reference to the sacred COW got me big time. Quotations from J.I. Rodale are indeed about as close to doctrine as I can imagine.
I surrender on the point of mineral to humus balance at 5 per cent, your scholarship has proven the point. In my fervent loyalty to things manure and compost I certainly qualify as a COW, I must re-evaluate my methodology, if not my theology. If the clay I'm beating into soil had any organic matter at all my results would probably be less amazing to me. And the nutritional levels of what few vegetables I have cultivated in my current location are beyond my means to measure, so perhaps Mr. Solomon has something to say. I wish he had remained in the area to continue his studies. Thank you Gary for your gentle education.
So, Daniel, you have indeed raised the temperature of the compost pile with your question, and maybe have an answer that might help you. Keep up your research and please share how your garden grows.
Humbly placing my manure fork back on the rack,
Tom
gary
Location: Washington, Puget Sound Corridor
Posted: Feb-10-2005 at 6:12pm
Tommy et al,
I do not know that we are that far apart. Solomon's latest edition (including the 1/4' rec.) starts with 'pasture land' and after three years in vegetables, he tells us to fallow/mow for the next three years. That is how he starts/gets 5% organic loam which he also tells you to buy for your 'homestead'. [Had we all started and sold a seed company, we might be able to buy a multi-acre sandy loam site to begin with.]
I also choose to not follow his front/back yard rotation so I work hard at green manure and also grow them on the 1,500 sq. ft. fringe areas outside my raised bed garden. They are mulched/composted back into the 700 sq. ft. of raised beds. [Eliot Coleman's 3-1 home-grown fertility rotation ratio led me to this.)
This spring I am experimenting with mowing my clover/annual rye cover crop to kill it and will then leave it as mulch and transplant my fall/winter cole plants into the beds. If we lived in the 0 degrees areas back east, we could do the same with oats, barley, and other crops and the weather would kill them for us. The major point is to leave the organic matter on the surface to suppress weeds and gradually decay without tying up root area nutrients (mostly N).
Tommy is also right on the N levels for many flowers. They are not like my mummer lettuce/cole family vegetables. Too much N and you get leaves rather than flowers (tomatoes).
As I did last fall in my 'Soil Prep' TOTW, I highly recommend Lee Reich's 'Weedless Gardening' for a short course (and a low cost garden book)in all this for whatever you are growing. He has different rec's on compost/mulch for all and stresses strongly the importance of leaving 'whatever' on the surface to suppress the weed seed germination and not tie up nutrients.
Gary
Daniel
Location: British Columbia, Southwestern
Posted: Feb-10-2005 at 6:36pm
A couple of things I'd like to comment on.
One, Jeanne, where did Ann Lovejoy garden? I feel like I have become a regurgitator of Solomon's work, but unless she gardened West of the Cascades, her assessment of the how much of organic matter is needed probably doesn't apply to us.
Two, Gary, does what you said about symphylans indicate that I, in British Columbia, do not have to worry about the little buggers? I must say, Solomon had me all ready to meticulously measure my compost additons, plant buckwheat and favas, and religiously do whatever else he recommended. I would be ecstatic if I didn't have to worry about the symphylan....
Three, I am grudgingly accepting Solomon, Kline, and Rodale's advice. It is beginning to seem that there is no way around using goodly amounts of fertilizer if one is to eat nutritionally balanced veggies. Unless, of course, you are able to make compost that does have the correct mineral balance, and seeing as 100% of the nutrients we ingest are subsequently flushed down the toilet, that's a lot of nutrients we are losing. Composting toilets anyone.....? yes the concept is revolting, but think about this way. If all your food comes straight from the garden to your plate, and all the nutrients you ingest go back into your garden, then you will have created a continuous cycle of the things you need to be healthy. And what is revolting about that? I've never tried it myself, but one day.....
In the meantime, why not eat plants that don't have such stringent soil requirements? I'm talking about wild and weedy plants that grow without any encouragement and which certainly don't need fertilizer. Think edible, wild greens such as dandelion and stinging nettle, salmonberry and thimbleberry, lamb's quarters, pigweed, cattails, etc. All are very common in these parts, and all could, I believe, play a significant role in our diets.
So, I believe the consensus is that Dan Jason is wrong? He may well be, if you are focussed on growing heavy duty, demanding vegetables. Jason, however, places a good deal of emphasis on the growing of beans and grains - foods which he says many people consider little better than subsistence fare, and yet, foods which he says would do a better job of feeding the world than all the meat and potato diets which currently predominate North American society. And for beans and grains, copious amounts of compost alone may well do the trick.
keep it coming guys...
Daniel
JeanneK
Location: Oregon, Greater Portland Metro
Posted: Feb-10-2005 at 7:05pm
Wow, great info, everyone!
Daniel, Ann Lovejoy gardens in the Seattle area. She has an article in Seattle's Post Intelligencer today about this very topic. She does recommend adding natural minerals as Gary mentioned above. And growing plants that need less care.
Gary, I am interested to hear how your mowing of your cover crop goes. If you get good results, I might have to try that. Even with your recommendations on easier to till cover crops, it's still a bit of work getting them all tilled in! Jeanne
tommyb
Location: Oregon, Willamette Valley
Posted: Feb-10-2005 at 9:14pm
I'm stuck on the sacred COW thing. Maybe our dissussion is stirring old moldy methods up from deep in the recesses of my memory, but didn't Ruth Stout support a rather large application of humus??
And doesn't 'no till' agricultcure bank the plant residue to add organic matter without the two percent of this and seven per cent of that?
Oh dear, my base assumptions are shaking now, I didn't even know symphylans were invading my soil. I thought the night crawlers and sow bugs and earwigs kept the nasties in line. Chicken Little was right, the sky is falling.
A balance of organic and mineral\elemental additives to maintain a developed soil I can understand, but at what point has the common contractor subsoil muck reached this maintainable state?? As a large part of our community might be dealing with el clay supremo, should we not be including the remedial aspect of soil developement in our discussion? Perhaps a wee bit extra compost might be applied in 'growing' our soil, like maybe eight inches a year?
Let me cease my ranting briefly, to advise Daniel in a more functional reality: you might consider using the materials available to you in a gentler, less scientific approach. Rather than measuring how much of this or that that Guru A or Guru B specify, perhaps a more spiritual communing with your garden at daybreak, a 'what do you want little garden o'mine?' You might be surprised at how well just messing around, trying this or that, might work, rather than attempting to duplicate what someone else has done somewhere else.
Tom
mdvaden
Location: Oregon, Western
Posted: Feb-12-2005 at 9:22am
I think that too much compost provides a mushy kind of garden.
One nice thing about an improved CLAY soil, is that it aggregates allowing decent movement of air and moisture through the capillaries between soil particles.
I constantly add organic matter to my soil, but it is at least 60% clay. I'd dread the day it might become 90% compost.
Clay does not really disintegrate. Compost does. So 1 cubic foot of compost probably gets reduced to 1 cubic inch of material after about 5 to 10 years.
Look at a tree - what it's made of. My junior high school experiment was to distill wood. I weighed a piece of wood, then burned it in an enclosed glass tube, which release gas. The water vapor was routed through coiled tube in cold water to condense the vapor into water.
What I discovered is that a tree is about 3% of substance from the ground and about 97% from atmosphere and water.
So 1000 lbs. of wood or leaves eventually will only yield about 30 lbs. or permanent remnant material.
Compost is quite a bit like that. It is composted and 'broken down', but not really. It still has a long road of deterioration ahead.
M.D. Vaden
gary
Location: Washington, Puget Sound Corridor
Posted: Feb-12-2005 at 5:46pm
In same paper the I quoted from above, Gary Kline tells MD's story from the other 'side'-- growing instead of burning:
'Around the 1600’s, different authorities and investigators said there was a life force or principle that passed from dead organisms to new life. Some said plant roots ate tiny particles of humus or particles of mud or the salts in manure. Others believed in spontaneous generation. In the 1600’s, a Flemish chemist named van Helmont said that if you stick a dirty shirt in the hole of a barrel of grain and wait 21 days, mice will appear out of nowhere in the shirt. But in 1630 [or 1635], he asked himself: how does a tree grow? Where does the stuff come from that turns a sapling into a big tree? He decided to do an experiment which was actually fairly brilliant and scientific.
Van Helmont got a big tub and filled it with exactly 200 pounds of oven-dried soil. Then he planted a 5 pound willow in the soil and covered the soil with heavy fabric leaving only a small hole in which to pour water. Apparently, no rain or dust got in. He waited five years, and then carefully removed the willow and all of its roots. The tree had gained 165 pounds. He then dried the soil and weighed it. The soil had lost 2 ounces. Obviously, the bulk of the tree’s tissue did not come from the soil, and he reasoned that the two ounces was probably an error in weighing. He was stumped, but eventually he decided that the increase in tissue mass of the tree came from the water which he had applied. But he was wrong.
Who would have guessed that the vast solid bulk of the tree came from the air! It came via photosynthesis of carbon dioxide and water. That tiny 0.03% of the air is essentially the origin of the entire supply of carbon and the source of all life on earth. The earth’s original primeval rock contained almost no carbon and the same was true for nitrogen. And still today there is very little elemental carbon and nitrogen in the ground and most of it is contained in dead or live organic matter. Plants make their own food, it is said. But it is equally true and significant that the willow tree did “eat” those two ounces of minerals that were missing from the soil and it would have died without them.'
Gary
gary
Location: Washington, Puget Sound Corridor
Posted: Feb-12-2005 at 7:25pm
While posting above on 17th Century plant research, I was reminded of another bit of growing and decay that occurred in the 1630’s just a little northeast of Flanders. It was the first 'internet/dot.com' investment scam. I bring it up here because this investment bubble is called “Tulipmania”. You can read a short piece on it at:
Tulipmania
I first learned details of this bubble in a classic investment text, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Charles Mackay first published this book in 1841. (Yes, Lisa, I read the first edition.)
Gary
gary
Location: Washington, Puget Sound Corridor
Posted: Feb-21-2005 at 5:49am
I found Mackay's full Tulipmania chapter which has stories about a bulb sold for the equivalent of 2.5 tons of butter. You can read it at:
'Mackay's Tulipmania'
Gary
Lisa A
Location: Oregon, Greater Portland Metro
Posted: Feb-21-2005 at 1:46pm
I'm following this thread with great interest. Thanks to all for the great information and discussion.
The only thing I have to add is to answer more precisely Daniel's question regarding the location of Ann Lovejoy's garden - Bainbridge Island. She has recently moved from that garden and is starting a new one but I missed hearing where it is located. In the Seattle area, I'm sure, but that's all I know.
(Gary, I'd never make any comments regarding your age! Far be it for me to do anything but respect my elders. )
gary
Location: Washington, Puget Sound Corridor
Posted: Feb-24-2005 at 3:31am
From today's Sea PI:
Ann Lovejoy discusses her favorite manure (& compost mulch blend). You can read it at:
Washed Dairy Manure
And Chris Smith discusses compost at:
The many layers of compost fallacies
Gary
Daniel
Location: British Columbia, Southwestern
Posted: May-08-2005 at 10:27pm
I'd like to rekindle this thread as I think I've got something interesting to add.
I've been thinking, I add a good deal of eggshells, ash from my woodstove, and coffee grounds to my compost pile, and since eggshells contain high levels of calcium (and maybe magnesium?) not to mention a host of other nutrients, as do coffee grounds and ash, might this combination not create compost that is actually quite well balanced....? Balanced enough to elminate the need to lime? Below is an excerpt from an article I Googled.
Don’t discard those egg shells...
If you’re in the habit of buying all sorts of liquid fertilizers and other commercial treatments for your garden, you may be happy to learn that at least two commonly discarded kitchen scraps are ideal for many of your garden plants.
You’ve heard of “liming” the garden and lawn, right? Most people buy a bag of lime (calcium carbonate) every few years and sprinkle it throughout the garden. Were you aware that eggshells are 93% calcium carbonate?
Otis the pot-bellied pig lives in the authors’ yard. A pig in the yard is a great source of fertilizer.
In addition to the calcium, the eggshells contain about 1% nitrogen, about a half-percent phosphoric acid, and other trace elements that make them a practical fertilizer. Calcium is an essential plant nutrient which plays a fundamental part in cell manufacture and growth. Most roots must have some calcium at the growing tips. Plant growth removes large quantities of calcium from the soil, and calcium must be replenished, so this is an ideal way to recycle your eggshells.
We save our eggshells in a pan in our oven. The pilot light temperature slowly dries them out. Then we crush them by hand and powder them in the blender. The powdered eggshells are then placed around fruit trees, in potted plants and roses, and broadcast throughout the vegetable garden.
You can also solve your snail problems with the help of recycled eggshells. Instead of powdering the shells, use them at the hand-crushed stage, with plenty of rough, sharp edges. Scatter the crushed shells in circles around those plants that the snails are eating. Since the shells cause discomfort to the snails, they nearly always retreat and do not cross the shell barriers.
(Did you know that our California brown snails are actually escaped escargot? One method of “control” is simply to eat them—but that’s another story.)
...or those coffee grounds
Another commonly discarded kitchen item is coffee grounds. Coffee grounds can be particularly useful in the garden, or, at the very least, added to your compost pile.
Used coffee grounds contain about two percent nitrogen, about a third of a percent of phosphoric acid, and varying amounts of potash (generally less than one percent). Analysis of coffee grounds shows that they contain many minerals, including trace minerals, carbohydrates, sugars, some vitamins, and some caffeine. They are particularly useful on those plants for which you would purchase and apply an “acid food,” such as blueberries, evergreens, azaleas, roses, camellias, avocados, and certain fruit trees.
We dry our coffee grounds in the oven, too. Then we scatter them lightly, as a mulch, around those plants which we feel would benefit from them. We don’t scatter them thickly when they are wet, because the coffee grounds have a tendency to get moldy.
The growth of plants that like or need lime (which we can provide with eggshells) can be stimulated by adding a mixture of ground-up eggshells and dried coffee grounds.
Smile the next time you drink your morning cup of coffee and eat your breakfast of eggs, since the by-products of your meal are ideal for your urban garden, and need no longer be “kitchen waste products.”
(Dolores and Christopher Nyerges teach classes in organic gardening and have authored several books. A newsletter featuring their activities is available from School of Self-Reliance, Box 41834, Eagle Rock, CA 90041. The newsletter can also be viewed on-line at http://www.self-reliance.net.)
To date I have refrained from making any sort of additions whatsoever to my soil. I am in my second year of growing for food, and as my land had lain fallow for 5-6 years, maybe more, I believe that the level of organic matter would have been high to begin with. Even though I have a nice big heap of finished compost, eggshells and all, just begging to be used, I am expecting to move within the next year or two, and so would rather store it in a barrel and haul it with me.
gary
Location: Washington, Puget Sound Corridor
Posted: May-09-2005 at 8:08am
Daniel,
I'd be very careful about the ashes. Until a got a gas bbq 4 years ago, I was a charcoal bbqer 52 weeks a year. When it came time to dump the ashes, it was real easy to just walk a few feet and toss them on one of my new raised beds. After 3-4 years (10/99), I did a soil test and discovered that the PH was 7.3. I quit the ash routine but two years later it was still 7.1 despite adding no lime either.
The ash from 30-50 chunks of charcoal per week is small compared to a wood stove's ashes.
Coffee grounds and egg shells go into my compost pile every day.
Gary
Gardening for the Homebrewer: Grow and Process Plants for Making Beer, Wine, Gruit, Cider, Perry, and More
By co-authors Debbie Teashon (Rainy Side Gardeners) and Wendy Tweton