Be Your Own Garden Center

Once again, it's been awhile since I've posted. But today, while we were visiting my mother (it's Mother's Day), my brother, Jim, inspired me to start up again--by mentioning his upcoming kitchen and bath renovation (lots of luck, pal! :-) and suggesting I do a video tour of my garden. Well, the garden tour might come a bit later but, when thinking about what I do have to contribute, at the moment, this topic turned up.

There are so many ways you can create your own personal garden center. Not that you won't continue to haunt the commercial ones! But it's amazing how much of your own compost, mulch and stock of new plants and seedlings you can produce from your own plot of land. Not only is this environmentally friendly and money saving too, but there's a special kind of satisfaction that comes from making your own compost and also by adding to your existing plantings by digging up little seedlings or thinning over-crowded plants and distributing these elsewhere throughout the garden or sharing them with others. And the funny thing about it is that these options take so little effort! If you've done any gardening at all, you know some of it can be a lot of work! But starting a compost pile and also letting your plants self sow is pretty painless.

Because there are so many great resources (online and in print) for starting and maintaining a compost pile (I list some below), I'm not going to pretend to be the best source or any kind of expert. But I will share some of my experiences and an indoor option you might not otherwise hear about.

The Outdoor Compost Heap

I use the three bin method (although you can use just one pile). Very inexpensively, you can purchase (or if you're handy, make) three separate bins, each about three feet square, to contain your compost in various stages of decomposition. Here's a photo of Bins Two and Three from my set up, constructed to meet the advantages and limitations of my small city lot (surrounded by neighbors!). Since we just harvested the current supply of compost and spread it on the garden, we have one bin that's sort of empty and is not shown. Since Bin Three is the most advanced (closest in photo), it is starting to "shrink," as the contents break down and become more concentrate. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Here's how it works:

You fill up Bin Number One with leaves and kitchen veg scraps and whatever else you feel OK about adding (keeping in mind what is suitable by checking out the resources below). I limit mine to veggie scraps and shredded unbleached paper towels because I don't want to be run out of my city neighborhood due to creating a stink at close quarters with other people and I don't want to make it invitational to city rats. Have I put your off yet?! :-) Seriously, if you do it right, you'll keep the smell managed, but these are practical considerations.

The "Green" and "Brown" of it:

You want both "green" contents and "brown" contents in your pile. By "green," whoever named it this meant fresh stuff, like veggie scraps and grass clippings (the latter of which I don't add because I keep them on the lawn as fertilizer). By "brown," those who refer to this mean stuff like dried leaves and those shredded paper towels. In terms of ratio, I have read numerous different recommendations about how much "green" (nitrogen) content and how much "brown" (carbon) content to add to keep your pile in optimal condition.

I'd say, I keep my ratio at about 1 part green to 2 parts brown at the moment. Some people use more green, others more brown. I've yet to decide what I think is optimal but, in any case, this year, we harvested over 30 gallons of compost and the garden loves the results.

By the way, if you just dump compostable stuff into one pile and do nothing else, compost will still happen! It will just take longer.

Moisture and Turning:

Another thing you want to keep on top of is moisture (the organisms that are breaking down your pile need water). You pile needs to be kept moist but not soggy. If it gets too dry, just add some water from your hose but don't go too wild with the water. And turn your pile now and then (it gives the pile air, also needed by those same little guy organisms working on making your pile into compost). Using a pitch fork works the best, as far as I can tell--unless you want to dive in there and start mixing it by hand, which is a method of last resort when you can't get the pitch fork to behave.

Back to the Three Bin System:

So, by adding suitable things to your pile, you've gotten to the point where Bin Number One is full. Next step is to dump everything in Bin Number One into Bin Number Two and leave that to rot (turning it occasionally but not adding any more stuff to it) and you begin to fill Bin Number One again. Next time Bin Number One is full, you move all the stuff in Bin Number Two into Bin Number Three and then move the stuff from Bin Number One to Bin Number Two and start filling Bin Number One all over again. What don't you just start with Bin Number Three and work the other way? Obviously, you could, I guess, but I like the extra deep turning the pile gets when you actually change bins (and maybe that's why I've heard to do it this way).

What you ultimately have is three bins in different states of decomposition. And depending on how fast your pile rots (amount of nitrogen, etc.), you'll soon (in a few months, usually) have compost ready to use in Bin Number Three. Obviously, when you empty that, you move Bin Two's contents into Bin Three, etc. You get the drill, right?

The Indoor Option

A few months ago or so I heard about this compact indoor compost bin, called Nature Milll Indoor Composter, that composts kitchen scraps (see reference below). It uses very little electricity and keeps the process going all year round (if you live in a cold climate that make trips to the outdoor compost pile unattractive or inaccessible). I'm seriously thinking about getting one as an addition to the outdoor pile. You can read all about it on the manufacturer's site and see what you think.

This also might be a good option for folks who don't have the yard space for a compost pile (or a place they can set it up out of view, if that's an issue for your neighborhood or personal aesthetic sensibility). I further like the idea because it not only offers the opportunity to recycle waste year round, but also makes it possible to recycle compostable food items I might not otherwise add to the compost pile for fear of attracting unwanted critters or stinking up the neighborhood.

Mulch

So, what about making your own mulch? Well, for one thing, compost can be used as mulch and it's a good choice because a lot of commercial mulches (for example, the wood chips kind) actually leech nutrients from the soil, which is rather counter-productive. Compost, on the other hand, builds nutrient value and also soil texture (which is important for drainage).

Also, you might have other stuff at hand that makes good mulch. Pine needles for example. And here's a great thing about pine needles:

If your soil is too alkaline for what you are trying to grow (which you can find out from a pH test of your soil), you can help add to the soil's acidity by using pine needle mulch.

Shredded leaves can make great mulch too. And guess what Mother Nature uses for mulch anyway? OK, Mother Nature does not shred her leaves but for those of us keeping "domesticated" gardens, especially in the city where we're combatting other obstacles, shredding the leaves (e.g., by running over them with a mower--please use a hand or electric since gas mowers and leaf blowers are mind bogglingly polluting) makes the mulch more "digestible" and keeps the soil balance more readily than if you use the whole leaves, which, similar to bark mulch (although not as extreme), leeches nitrogen from the soil as it breaks the leaves down. So, anyway, you may want to give the whole process a little help by shredding the leaves.

Free Seedlings and Other Plants

Once you've had your plants in your garden for a year or two, you might start to notice, in the spring, little copies of your plants sprouting up around the place. Little heucheras and geraniums (not the annual kind, the perennials) or you might notice that some of your ground covers or other plants are taking over places you didn't expect or want (see photos). All of these are opportunities to populate other parts of your garden with these plants without having to buy new ones. And if you have too many, you can share the seedlings or thinned plants with neighbors and friends!

So, once your garden starts taking on a life of its own, you'll find you have a whole wonderful ecology blooming that not only helps sustain itself (with a little cooperation from its human steward) but also starts to attract wildlife that has been displaced by the developments we've come to call "home."

Resources

There are many good books and web articles on composting how tos and supplies. Here are some to get you started.

How to Compost

How to Build Different Kinds of Compost Bins

Manufactured Wire Compost Bins (I use something like this.)

Nature Mill Indoor Composter