Get Started: Core Gardening

It's time to get your garden beds ready for next year! I want to jump right into one of the easiest ways to prep your garden while giving it a jumpstart in replenishing nutrients organically. This is an introduction to "Core Gardening."

The concept of core gardening has been around for ages. The idea is to build a core of organic material down the center of your garden bed that will decompose to feed your plants and will hold moisture to reduce strain from drought. The beauty is that you can take your depleted crops that are currently in your garden beds and bury them right where they are! The benefit is two-fold. You don't have to haul your plants away somewhere else like a compost pile, you can just bury them where they are; you are also putting the exact nutrients that were removed from the soil back into it. Let me explain.

The garden looks so beautiful in October!

When you grow a crop, it has certain requirements for minerals and nutrients. One crop may draw a lot of nitrogen from the ground and not touch the phosphorus as much. Another bed may be full of crops that hardly need any nitrogen, but they absolutely decimate the potassium. Well, much of those nutrients that the plants took was used to build the plant and is therefore still present within the leftover material. Rather than taking those plants away to a compost pile, you can replenish a lot of the needed nutrients quickly by direct-composting it into a core.

So what do you do? It's easy!  First, pull all your plants out of the bed and just pile them up nearby. If the plants have seeds present, try to remove those portions. As we are going to bury these plants, we want to avoid volunteers coming up next year as weeds. These portions would be good to use for biochar. 

Now that all the organic material is removed, you're going to dig a trench down the center of the bed. About 6-7 inches deep is good. As you dig it out, just push all the soil you removed up to one side. It's going to be used in a moment and there's no point in hauling it away.

I'm almost disappointed by the lack of hands...

Next, you're going to take your pile of garden brush and start laying it down in your trench. This is your core. This material is going to decompose just as it would in your compost pile. Only we're doing it right below where your plants will be planted. They get to feed from the source! If you need more material to fill the trench, go ahead and use what else you'd otherwise add to your compost. Grass clippings are great, grab a strawbale from a harvest party and use that (I've seen some folks bury the full bales as the cores!), you could even use kitchen scraps and autumn leaves you raked up. Just get that good organic material directly into the ground.

Work your core!

Now take that soil you removed and bury your core. The core will start slowly breaking down during the upcoming months in prep for spring planting. By April, your garden will have a thick layer of rich humus that will hold onto moisture and release food for your plants! Easy and beneficial, exactly how we like it at Third-Acre!

Get Started: Cover Crops

 

What if I told you that you might still have time to plant a beneficial crop this year? It sounds crazy with the leaves falling as fast as the temperature. It seems like there's not enough time to get anything going other than spring blooming flowers or garlic for next summer. 

Well, I present to you today a crop that only needs 15-30 days to germinate and grow before the snow comes and can be "harvested" as soon as the ground thaws! We're talking about "Cover Crops." 

By this point in the year, you are probably in the process of tearing out your spent garden annuals. Tomatoes are pretty much shot, summer squash is done-for, and you better believe your sweetcorn has been harvested, unless you're doing a corn maze for Halloween! So now you leave your garden bed empty and bare until spring, right? I suppose you could, and I know I have, but why not fill it with 'green manure' instead? Cover crops are an off-season crop that have tons of benefits, including fertilizing your bed for next year! 

Cover crops are not meant to be harvested for food, but rather, their purpose is to be tilled under to make room for your cash crops. By planting a cover crop between harvest and planting, you can reduce erosion, choke out weeds, limit soil compaction, and most importantly, return nitrogen to the soil. This last bit is the main focus today, and it depends on what you actually plant.

Legumes!!!!

There is a magical family of plants called "legumes." You know legumes, right? The first thing I think of is beans. Kidney beans, string beans, black beans, fava beans. Peas are also in this group. There are some others too that may surprise you. Alfalfa, which I know primarily as a crop that is made into hay, is a legume. Similarly, soy is as well. I know, it's a bean and should be obvious, but when I think of soy, I think of endless fields of green just like the alfalfa plots around us.

Here's another surprise: clover is a legume. This one I learned today honestly. I knew it had the same properties as beans when it came to cover crops, so it makes a lot of sense now as it is related.

What makes these plants so special though? It can't be the fruit of the plant that makes the ground better, can it? Clover doesn't produce a pod like beans and peas, and 15 days surely isn't enough time to even get them to produce. You see, legumes have a special interaction with a group of bacteria called rhizobia. Let me take you underground for a moment:

The roots of leguminous plants form these nodules as they enter a symbiosis with rhizobia bacteria. The plant pulls nitrogen out of the air during photosynthesis and the bacteria convert it into useful compounds in the soil. Because of this, we can replace much-needed nutrients in the ground after other crops had just removed them. This is why soy is often used in crop rotation with corn. Corn takes a heavy toll on the soil and by planting soy for a season, farmers can drastically improve crop quality the next year.

What cover crops do is a miniature form of crop rotation. Rather than planting a whole season, we allow the crop to become established just as winter hits. By tilling it under in the spring, we prevent the crop from expending any energy toward growing fruit, and its entire life is utilized to push nitrogen into its roots. 

What should we plant? Well here at Third-Acre, we have a special relationship with clover. It's what really got us started with our anti-grass mindset, so we always have clover seed available. It germinates quickly, takes very little care, and does a lot of work fixing the soil. We also will add beans and peas too. Any are really fine. Sometimes we use culinary beans from the store, or peas left on the vine from summer. Other good options are alfalfa, hairy vetch, and soy. 

You can plant other cultivars in your cover crop too. Deep-rooted vegetables are good for soil compaction and pulling nutrients up. A long variety of radish is great as they germinate incredibly quickly. Winter wheat is good as well. Now for those of you who are into deer hunting, this shopping list may sound familiar. Most of these plants are included in food plot mixes! In fact, buying a five-pound bag of food plot mix may be more economical than piece-mealing this together.

Now given, it is better to get this started as early as possible. September is good, but for clover and radish, you don't need 4 weeks to grow it up. As long as it is germinating, it is beneficial. 

Once the ground thaws and you are ready to start planting, just go ahead and till the bed as you normally would. Although the main draw of the cover crop is the nitrogen-fixing roots, direct-composting the plants into the ground will give nitrogen back as well!

Have fun with this! I love seeing the green beds in October and November. It helps ease me into the dreary season that is Michigan winter,

Get started: compost

I have an aunt who always says she's "old as dirt." When I was a child, I thought "wow, that's got to be really old!" Now I realize she could be as young as a couple of months (she's not.) And guess what! With these simple steps, you could be the proud owner of your very own dirt! Let's dive in!

In this post, I want to walk through starting a composting routine. We'll be discussing specifically "hot composting" which is done on top of the ground, or in one of those manufactured compost tumblers. You don't need any skill for this! Your compost pile can be as complex as a gravity-feed hopper that spits out black dirt from the bottom as you fill the top with veggies, or as basic as a pile of stuff in the corner of your yard. What I do want you to take away is this: compost is easy if you follow a few rules, it is beneficial to your home in many ways, and it is free.

Part One: What is compost?

I know you know what compost is. It's dirt. More specifically, it is decomposed organic materials used as a soil amendment due to its high nutritional value and beneficial organisms. But did you know there are two types of compost? In the dirt industry, we recognize "Brown Compost" and "Green Compost." 

uh, thank you for the dirt?

Brown compost is inert organic material that offers carbon to the mixture. It is called brown because these items are usually colored brown. This will make up the majority of the "dirt." 

Examples of brown compost are:

- Dry leaves

- twigs and woodchips

- plant stalks

- shredded paper

- carboard

- dryer lint

- animal hair

- coffee filters

Green compost is organic material that provides nitrogen to the mix. This is fresher material that is, you guessed it, often green. The green waste provides food to the organisms that are breaking down the compost.

Hmm, hands again...
Starting to see a pattern.

Examples of green compost are:

- Grass clippings

- fruit and vegetable scraps

- eggshells*

- coffee grounds

- green leaves

- horse, pig, chicken, sheep, goat manure

- other green yard waste (weeds, dying plants, sod)

*animal products such as eggs tend to attract pests. Use sparingly, if at all

So, can I put anything in there? Well, not really. Some things that you can't add would surprise you. Some items will attract pests, some won't break down, some can even kill off the beneficial organisms. I'll try to make this list as intuitive as possible.

Compost no-nos:

- Rice. Molds quickly, which can out-compete good fungi.

- Bread, crackers, other carbs. Attract pests and molds quickly.

- Meat/bones/fish. Attracts pests. Slow to break down

- oils/fats/grease. Do not break down. will cause anaerobic areas.

- dairy products (cheese, butter, etc) pests, and heavy in fats

- dog and cat feces. waste from protien rich diets does not break down properly.

- anything containing chemicals such as pesticides, treated lumber, cleaning chemicals.

Ok look up compost photos and tell me
why there are so many hand pictures!

Part Two: How does it work?

When you build a compost pile, you are essentially building a habitat for waste-eating organisms. All the little invertebrates, fungi, and bacteria need a cozy home to live in, and it's your job to build it. It takes 4 ingredients: Carbon (brown waste), Nitrogen (green waste), water, and oxygen. 

It is important to keep the compost aerated, usually by turning it or mixing it thoroughly several times per season. This will allow the microorganisms to breathe. The good bacteria, which do most of the work by eating the carbon and nitrogen, and turning them into nutrients, are all aerobic meaning they require oxygen to breathe. 

If the pile compacts or becomes water-logged, anaerobic bacteria take over and can make the pile very stinky by producing methane.

Fungi will do a lot of work too. They break down the parts that bacteria can't like the fibrous plant structures such as cellulose. Worms and isopods eat partially decomposed plant matter and excrete very fertile waste, i.e, worm castings. 

You may find other "bugs" in your pile as well. Ants help aerate the soil by digging burrows, flies and larvae eat all organic material, as do beetles, slugs, and other insects. This is why it is important to avoid pesticides and other chemicals. You don't want to kill off your cleaning crew!

well, that's kind of cute.

Part Three: Let's get building!

Step one, pick a location. You have to answer this one yourself. You may not want to walk very far to dump your scraps after dinner. You also don't want it against your house as it will attract insects and be relatively moist, which are both bad for homes. A shady space off in a corner is a safe bet. The shade will help prevent it from drying out. 

Step two, build your space. I find a good starter compost bin is 3 (untreated) wood pallets stood on end making 3 adjacent walls. The materials are easy to find for free, can easily be assembled with minimal tools, and honestly looks halfway nice. You could get fancy and build it out of cedar boards which will last longer. If you want, go ahead and buy a kit or a tumbler! Also, you can just build a pile with no structure whatsoever. It's all up to your taste, budget, and skill. I encourage you to look up designs online. 

Here little plant,
have some hand-dirt!

Step three, assemble the pile. I like to start with a layer of twigs and small diameter branches on the ground, only an inch or two thick. This will give the stack an air space that will allow insects to enter the bottom of the pile. Now you can start adding the browns and greens. The amounts of each are important. If you are a chemist or an industrial composter, your ratio of carbon to nitrogen needs to be between 30:1 and 15:1. If you are reading my blog, you are probably neither of those. My rule of thumb is that I shoot for 2-3 parts brown to 1 part green. If it's not breaking down fast enough, I add more green; if it's starting to smell like trash or rotting fruit, I add more brown. Take note, a properly maintained compost pile should not stink. the balance of nitrogen and carbon allows the bacteria to utilize as much as possible without waste and gasses.

What are you doing? Don't plant that in the
compost bin! That's vegicide!

Step four, water and mix it. Every time I add to the pile, I also add water. A quick spray with the hose or a small bucket poured over the pile will help keep it moist. Many of our friends in the pile need moist conditions to survive. The moisture will also help keep the temperature up as well, which is important to quick decomposition. 

You also need to stir it up. This is where the tumblers really shine. Save yourself some cash though and just grab a $20 spading/digging fork from the garden center. It looks like a stubby pitchfork and works wonders on the fibrous pile of rotting stuff! Every few weeks spend a few minutes trying to turn the whole pile upside down. This should be plenty, though more often won't hurt.

"What do now?" - Charlie Kelly

Well, use it! Compost is the 'industry standard' in organic soil amendments; the first line in growing healthy and fruitful plants. You can use it in containers for patio or indoor plants. Mix it with topsoil and other materials to fill new garden beds. Till it into existing beds to refresh the soil for the next season. 

A few other notes before wrapping up. 

There are a few fringe benefits of composting. My favorite being that my trash doesn't stink. Between composting, garbage disposal, and recycling, very little actually goes into my trash bin. As long as the trash stays dry, the only food going in (bread, snacks, etc) won't really rot. As for meat products (bones, chicken 'diapers', wet packaging), I keep a zip-top bag in my freezer and store this stuff until trash day so it doesn't have a chance to spoil.

You also have a great spot to grab worms for fishing! No more spending $5 for a dozen crawlers at the gas station, just step out back with a hand shovel and a container. When you're back from the trip, drop those worms back into the pile to keep working!

In the winter, it can be hard to find brown compost if you plan to add to it all season. You could freeze your green waste until spring if you have the freezer space. Or you could build a pile of leaves next to the compost in the fall for easy addition all winter. I like to save my dryer lint and shredded junk mail all year until the winter when I need a boost in brown waste.

I think that's a good start! Now go out there and get dirty! 

Ahh, much better!

Mushrooms are blooming

With all the rain we've had in West Michigan over the past few weeks, combined with a very warm October, there have been mushrooms popping up all over. Before this year, I hadn't given them much thought. I've had the excitement of finding a bunch of morels on rare occasions. I've tried the "stumpies" that grow around a dead tree back home when my parents would cook them. Other than that, I've only really experienced store-bought mushrooms. But something amazing happened this year that has opened my eyes to mycology!

Looks appetizing!

Earlier this summer I realized I was going to need a significant amount of compost to fill 4 new garden beds. I found a listing on Marketplace for free mushroom mulch. Me thinking it was mushroom compost, immediately jumped on it. What I found was a six-foot-tall pile of plastic bags filled with foul-smelling brown water and slimy blocks of, uh, something? This was the extent of my mycological knowledge (I didn't even know the word 'mycological' yet!)

I get my trailer-load of mushroom spawn bags home and start researching how to use it in compost. Essentially it works as a super-powered brown compost. As brown compost, it provides carbon to the mix, retains water in the garden, and helps aerate the pile to allow the greens to break down. The superpower comes from the fungus mycelium that will grow through the compost helping break it down with the worms, insects, and bacteria. I tore open the bags, broke apart the mulch, and mixed it into a giant pile of yard clippings I picked up from my wife's mom's house. On a whim, I set one bag off to the side to see if I can maybe try to grow a mushroom from it.

Since then, my life has been inundated with everything mushroom! I've started a bucket mushroom garden from that one bag and gotten 5 flushes (crops) of white elm oyster mushrooms. I've inoculated several garden beds and mulched walkways with various types of gourmet mushroom species from the compost pile. I've gone on several wild mushroom foraging excursions with experts to learn how to identify edible varieties. I've read books, watched documentaries, and downloaded multiple apps on my phone to learn everything I can.

One of my favorite things about fungi is the possible health benefits. I am constantly searching for certain varieties to try drying and encapsulating for an immune boost, such as Turkey Tail and Hen of the woods (these things seem to have a lot of bird-related names.) 

Disclaimer: before running off into the woods and trying something you read on a blog, please ensure you do plenty of research!

There are plenty of benefits of incorporating mushrooms into the garden too. Aside from simply growing them to eat, fungi are an important part of permaculture and food forest setup. The mycelium spread through the entire ground layer and help break down organic materials. 

This helps the perennials collect the nutrients from old plant material. They also allow root systems of trees and shrubs to communicate! There has been research that suggests trees can communicate with each other via mycelial connections, or "mycorrhizal networks" and share carbon with each other. These networks also take up sugars that the plants have created and exchange them for phosphorus and nitrogen, which the plant needs to grow. 

I'm excited to have introduced fungi into my gardening and will be updating on the progress. It's fun to learn a whole new field of cultivation, as well as grow and eat varieties that you don't often find in the store.

What is going on this month: October

Updated October, 2022

One of my favorite types of videos on the gardening pages I follow is when they show what they are currently working on. This could be the month or week I watch it. I find a lot of inspiration for what I could be doing during this time of year, and it has really helped! For example, in early August I watched a video about starting seeds for a fall crop. Now I have four garden beds that are absolutely flourishing with Radishes, Kale, Cucumber, Kohlrabi, and Cilantro. I would have assumed I couldn't plant these so late, but here we are with fresh salads at the end of October!

I would like to pass that service along and just make a monthly list of what I'm working on so that perhaps I can inspire someone else, or at the very least, keep a record for myself for next year. My list will be specific to my garden for now but will grow to encompass general strategies for my region and FDA zone, which is 5(b).

- Clearing out depleted Garden beds.

- Building cores for next year.

- Making Biochar. 

- Planting Cover Crops.

- Planting Garlic, Onions, and other Alliums.

- Burying potted herbs for winter.

- Winterizing compost piles.

- Building raised beds

- Drying tomatoes

- Bringing pepper plants inside

- Harvesting sunflowers

- Planting spring-blooming florals

- Mulching perennials.

- Splitting perennials 

Harvest and Forage Schedule:

- Tomatoes (final)

- Winecap Mushrooms 

- Honey Mushrooms 

- Maitake Mushrooms

- Enoki Mushrooms

- Ink cap Mushrooms

- Wood Blewit Mushrooms 

- Kale

- Cucumbers (final)

- Sunflower (final)

- Peppers (final)

- winter squash (final)

- Herbs

- Leafy Greens

- Brussel Sprouts

- Cabbage

- Daylily Blossoms (final)

- Hosta (final)

- Bunching onion tops

- strawberries (final)

Biochar - an answer to late-season weeding

This year, my compost pile grew exponentially, as did my composting skill. Do you know what else grew exponentially this year? Volunteer tomatoes, in every one of my garden beds and containers! Why? Because last year's compost pile never got hot enough to sterilize the plethora of rotten tomatoes that went into it as I cleaned up last year's depleted garden beds.

Look at all those baby tomatoes...

This year, aside from tomatoes that I'll have to compost, I also have a ton of weeds that I allowed to go to seed. My squash went wild into my grass, which prevented me from mowing everywhere I wanted. It did not prevent me from using the string trimmer, that was just my general inattentiveness! Regardless, I have massive amounts of unwanted cultivars seeding in my garden that I do not want to risk putting into my compost. It is getting colder out and I can't guarantee a sterilizing amount of heat anymore this year. So what options do I have? 

Two options are to just toss all those seeding plants into a brush pile or yard waste container. Either way,  you miss out on all the benefits of organic fertilizer. Notice I didn't say compost, because there are many other options for turning your unwanted organic materials into a useful soil amendment!

When is a tomato a weed?
When it grows in your kale.

Before I get into the main topic,  I want to briefly touch on a few of the other options we have when it comes to utilizing yard and kitchen waste.

Hot composting: this can either be open-air compost piles or in a compost tumbler. Both are above-ground options that utilize bacteria and organisms to break down organic materials into nutrient-rich soil. 

Direct composting: this form of composting takes place in the existing soil. You can bury or till your plants right where they grew to return those much-needed nutrients back to the ground where they came from. You could also consider Core Gardening as a form of direct composting. 

Vermicomposting: this is composting with a twist. A creepy-crawly, wiggly twist. You build a home for worms and allow them to turn your stinky food scraps into that sweet, sweet (please don't eat it) 'Black Gold' worm castings. A very rich soil additive!

Compost tea: it is what it sounds like; tea made from steeping compost in water. The organic matter goes into a bucket of water and rots. The water is used to fertilize plants. It stinks. Do this away from the house and patio.

Some of these radishes look bizarre...

And now on to our main event: biochar!

I will admit, this is the first year I've made biochar on purpose. I had a problem with seeding weeds everywhere,  and this seemed like a multi-tiered solution. 

Biochar uses essentially the same process as making charcoal, but rather than creating a cooking fuel, you are using your weeds and spent veggies, along with some hardwood, to make a carbon-rich soil amendment. 

Biochar is organic material that is burnt slowly at a (relatively) cool temperature in a low oxygen environment. To better know what it is, it seems appropriate to discuss how it's made. 

- A simple setup is to dig a pit a few feet across and about 1 and a half feet deep. Reserve the soil close by. 

- Build a good hardwood fire in the pit. It doesn't have to be big; this is gardening, not a bonfire! 

*Make sure the wood you use is cured, dry hardwood for a good hot base fire. Don't use construction cause these often contain harmful chemicals and metal hardware that is unwanted in the garden, and is usually softwoods that burn away too quickly.

- When the topmost logs begin to turn white along the top edges of the wood, start stacking your green cuttings on top. This will smoke a lot, so please check all local rules before burning! 

- Ensure the fire is still going as you cover it with the garden scraps. This has to stay hot for the next step.

-Once everything is piled on, take that soil you dug out of the hole and bury it all. The dirt will choke out all the oxygen, but the coals will continue to stay hot for many hours!

-Come back the next day and dig it all up. You now have a pile of biochar!

Sorry little tomato plants,
you are destined to be fertilizer!

This process is called Pyrolysis, in which the slow and cool nature of the burn turns the carbon into a solid state that is stable and won't decompose. When plants grow, they pull carbon from the air (CO2). They release oxygen and use the carbon as building materials so they can grow. When that plant rots the carbon is re-released into the air. During pyrolysis,  we can trap that carbon and use it to our benefit. 

Biochar can be added to garden beds in a mix of 1 part biochar, one part compost, 2 parts soil. The biochar has the great ability to absorb water and slowly redistribute it to plant roots. This will help keep your garden green in the hot summer. 

It also helps prevent soil compaction and therefore is wonderful in hard clay soils.

It will also slowly feed your plant roots the carbon and will last much longer than compost.

But the main benefit for me, the whole reason we're here today? When you burn weed seeds, they can't germinate! Take that, tomatoes! You aren't volunteering in this garden anymore!🔥🍅🔥