Composting

First poppy to bloom in my garden - a Shirley poppy:

I finally put together a long-overdue compost heap for kitchen scraps, dry brush and the like. Here is how a biointensive compost pile works:

First, you loosen the soil below it a foot deep. This allows for proper drainage. Then, cover the soil with a 3"-thick layer of very fibrous carbonaceous materials, like small branches, corn and sunflower stalks, to ensure airflow below the pile. Then start building up your pile in layers, repeated as follows:

1. 1-2" layer of dry vegetation
   
2. 1-2" layer of green vegetation
3. ¼-½" layer of soil

Each layer is thoroughly watered after it is added to the pile. After about three weeks, the pile is turned to make the mixture more homogeneous for a complete breakdown. By following this procedure, the final product should have a carbon-nitrogen ratio of about 30 to 1, which is the ideal ratio.

I learned a bit about composting last year and heard about the 30 to 1 ratio, but misunderstood that the "carbon" in that ratio was equivalent to "dry vegetation", and "nitrogen" was equivalent to "green vegetation" - meaning I should be making a pile with 30 times more dry vegetation than green vegetation. This is not so, and I'm glad HtGMV makes it all very clear.

My next-door neighbour kindly donated his black "earth machine" composter to my garden, so I'm using it to keep things tidy. HtGMV, however, says it's not necessary to contain the compost at all, and a free-standing pile is perfectly fine.

Bed #3: Transplants galore

I double-dug a third raised bed in the back. I'm having to make the best use of space back there while making do with a gigantic cold frame dead in the middle of it. So far I'm doing pretty well, but something will have to be done with the cold frame sooner or later. I probably won't need it for that much longer anyway.

This bed is my biggest one yet. Into it I transplanted hulless Arabian blue barley, Indian blue corn, the rest of my rainbow chard, the rest of my Bloomsdale spinach, Simpson leaf lettuce, and Scarlet Nantes carrots. The bed is bordered on one side by a fence, which I lined with corn, but there are still pockets left between the corn for morning glories, which are almost ready to be transplanted. I also left room at the end of the bed for something that will sprawl or climb, like beans, cucumbers or winter squash. (I may settle for beans, as it will be a while before any squash seedlings exist.)

I also had several healthy-looking Shirley poppies ready to be transplanted. After my first failed attempt to raise poppy seedlings, I ended up sowing another set of poppy seeds in a flat full of soil the same way I sowed all my other seeds (the biointensive way), rather than into biodegradable cups as suggested by Elizabeth. They were quite delicate and a little hard to handle when transplanting, but not as hard as my carrot transplants, and I can see why people don't recommend transplanting carrots – long roots! I found a bit of extra space in my second bed behind the chard and spinach for the poppies.

HtGMV argues for doing as many transplants as possible, rather than seed things directly. Among the few vegetables they recommend seeding directly into the ground are garlic, horseradish, radish, and shallots. Everything else, however, they say to start in flats full of soil. Even most grains they recommend transplanting (but the amount of time required to accomplish this on a large scale scares me). They offer some compelling reasons for transplanting seedlings:

• It makes better use of bed space: During the time that a seed takes to reach seedling stage, something else can be grown in the bed in the meantime.
• You end up with few to no gaps between mature plants, thus again making optimal use of bed space as well as keeping the bare soil protected from evaporation and weed growth.
• Plants grow better if they are evenly spaced. Even the most carefully broadcasted seeds will form a random pattern, resulting in plants that are too close together competing for light, water and nutrients.
• Transplanting stimulates growth: The loose, nutrient-rich soil of a freshly prepared raised bed acts as a second "meal" for seedlings.
• Seedlings in a flat require much less water than seedlings in a bed.

I'm trying to picture transplanting a field of wheat or spelt by hand, in a hexagonal pattern, each seedling spaced 5" apart. And then oats, rye, and barley. Seems rather daunting. Once each spring to grow enough grain to last me the whole year. Hmm. I guess I'm up for the challenge...