Compost: A Second Attempt, Never Water a Compost Pile, Success with Compost and with Ruth Stout Straw Mulching

I had not given up on the idea of succeeding at composting.  I saw another neighbor's compost bins the next block over and decided to try again.  With the manager's blessing I collected discarded wood shipping pallets from a grocery store and set them up so that there was one on the ground to allow air into the pile, and an upright pallet on each of the 3 sides; I left the front side open in order to access and turn the material.  I collected leaves and lawn clippings from our yard and from everyone else's.  This allowed neighbors to put out other 'collectibles' for the weekly trash pickup.  Since not much was happening, I watered the compost and ...

Bizarre looking creatures started crawling about.  They looked like invaders from an outer space flick.  Not to mention the odor that blanketed the yard.  Before I began this experiment I had informed the lady next door that I was trying this again and asked her to let me know if she noticed anything at all.  It helps to open communication beforehand.  When I knocked on her door she confirmed that they were experiencing odors and the same tiny flies that we were.  Back to the drawing board.  My other neighbor suggested I pull everything out and let it dry.  Instead of nice sweet fluffy compost like his, I had dark, putrefying, wet matter that smelled terrible.  Eventually it all worked into the soil and no one knew the difference.   I succeeded when I heaped everything into a pile behind a chicken wire fabric structure and let it work for a year without watering it, or only rarely in summer to keep it going.  Success at last.  In spring I filled a wheelbarrow with compost for each tomato plant and for all the others.  Not one plant was bothered by insects.  We had lush, healthy plants with bountiful yields.  

I gathered the pallets and set them up as a platform for bales of straw.  I started hauling bales home from the Alamo Hay and Grain store and eventually ordered a delivery.  Mom and I would sit on them and muse about the garden, what to plant where next.  We had transitioned to the Ruth Stout Method of Straw Mulching.  Mom loved to walk on the soft straw; it cushioned her feet.  It was a bit slick if it was too deep; about 3 inches was adequate for our paths and to cover bare dirt.  

Ruth Stout, Flower Gardens, Removal of Eucalyptus

The learning was not lost during those teen years.  I read articles by Ruth Stout in Rodale's OGF Magazine.  She wrote several books about The Ruth Stout Method of Straw Mulching in which she described her experiences using her own approach:  leveraging Nature's processes so that she expended little energy but harvested a high yield of organic fruits and vegetables each season.  She had to adapt to the harsh winters of the East Coast.  After our bout with the weeds, Dad preferred professional amendments, so we continued to use them. 

We planted vegetable gardens until one year when Dad decided he wanted a huge flower garden.  He made an immense circle in the back yard and proceeded to plant cosmos in the center and surrounded those with various kinds of plants, from asters to zinnias.  It was so spectacular that we invited people to come see it.  

A few years later the eucalyptus trees were removed.  They were more than 100 years old and had posed a danger over the years.  When it is hot a tree attempts to perspire just as we do.  It sends its sap up into the leaves in hope that a breeze will cool it and help evaporate the heat.  

Unfortunately eucalyptus trees are so huge and heavy that they often break due to the pressure of the sap inside.  During our first summer in Danville we heard a sound one day like gravel being poured from a dump truck.  Then the ground shook.  A limb had broken from a eucalyptus tree several houses down the street.  About a ton of wood lay in the people's back yard.  Only 5 minutes earlier their son had been standing there watering.  Removing the trees was a safety issue and it helped the soil by stopping the constant replenishment of oil.  Removing the trees also brightened up the yard.  More things could be planted successfully.  Eucalyptus are from Australia and take immense quantities of water from the water table.  That fact should be considered before they are planted anywhere, in addition to their other characteristics.  Fortunately the water table is high and easy to reach in that location.  

Compost: A First Attempt, and The Apple Tree

Our neighbors across the street practiced organic gardening.  I had never heard of it.  I was about 15 and eager to learn.  I quickly subscribed to Robert Rodale's Organic Gardening and Farming Magazine, OGF, a digest-size publication that arrived bi-monthly.  

The neighbors took me to some stables where I took a generous quantity of the horse's offerings.  Big mistake:  I imported some very hardy weeds that took a lot of work and time to remove.  The neighbors also decided to change their garden and offered me their compost pile.  I dutifully trundled it home in a wheelbarrow, only to find that it did not work.  The odor was so noticeable that my father suggested I should stop.  We planted an apple tree where the compost was.  The tree lasted 31 years until the home was sold.  It is unusual for a tree to live that long in heavy clay.  I am sure that  the sand and nutrition contained in the compost were the primary reasons it thrived.  It would be many years before I would attempt a compost effort again. 

To Plant a Lawn: Gardening Under Eucalyptus 101

After we moved to Danville my father planted a lawn in the back yard.  The front yard was mostly dichondra, planted by the developer.  It is a beautiful groundcover plant that I see rarely today.  Dad expressed great enthusiasm for a hardy variety of lawn grass called Saint Augustine's.  It grew into a thick, luxurious carpet that prevented weeds, notably at The City of Oakland's Children's Fairyland.  So, he had the back yard graded and tilled, and planted Saint Augustine's in rows a foot apart and then broadcast grass seed between them.  

Nothing grew well, the Saint Augustine's all died, and the seed grass survived in some spots.  Saint Augustine's is a rhizomatous grass; it spreads by sending out runners and rooting along the runners, the same way as crabgrass does.  By summer he saw that he had impossible dirt.  In some places it was silt; fine silky dust that repelled water!  Most of the yard was clay that packed down in spite of the generous amendments he had incorporated.  

The eucalyptus trees had been planted in the latter part of the 1800s in the hope that they would make good timber for home construction and boat masts.  Little did the people who promoted them know that these were blue gums.  They should have planted red gums; their grain is straighter and has been used in building.  

Eucalyptus oil had built up in the dirt to such an extent that as summer approached it repelled water where it was silty, especially near the embankment where the trees grew.  In the rest of the yard where the dirt was clay, it had the same effect.  The clay would begin to harden and crack about 3 days after the last spring rain.  

Plants also produce chemicals around them to discourage or prevent other plants from growing too close and taking their food supply.  Watch tiny seedlings in springtime; you may see a perfect circle of earth around each plant where nothing will grow.  This is one of nature's ways of ensuring space and food for each plant while it is at its most fragile stage:  sprouting.  As I understand it, there was something in the eucalyptus that did this; however, plenty of weeds and feral grasses grew under the trees.  For many years all he could do was to have the yard rototilled and plant vegetables, fruits, and flowers.  It was a long time before a second lawn was even attempted. 

Beginning at the beginning again

I love gardens.  I love gardening.  I love wildlife, flowers, critters 'n things and have had some curious, if not funny, experiences with wildlife, but looking at it from their side, I wonder how they would think of their experiences in my garden?  More than 6 kinds of bees and wasps visited the yard with a collection of others. 

I gardened organically.  I was not perfect.  I used chemicals sometimes because I did not know any other way to solve a problem, but the chemicals did affect me--and not in a good way.  I was able to reduce and eliminate chemicals by using homemade compost.  I tried composting several times, made every mistake imaginable, and still succeeded.  

I will share what worked, and what didn't work when gardening in impossible soil.  The tract where my parents moved had been alternately a horse race track, a man-made lake, and a landfill.  In the early 1960s Diablo Hacienda was built and we moved to the suburbs.  Danville was a sleepy little town with more horses than houses and where people knew each other.  

What a surprise! Where's the draft?

I thought I had saved my first blogging post only to discover that it seems to have disappeared.  Such an irony.  Welcome to blogging.  I am probably not alone, not the first, and won't be the last person to experience this.  So if it happened to you, I extend understanding.