Tag: Making compost beds from scratch

How did the compost bed, we partially rotary tilled and planted potatoes in, do?

Why are there runner ducks between the potatoes and what else was planted and was there anything at all to harvest?

This is about the compost bed in garden 3. If you would like to know how we made the compost bed, you can check following links.

Turning hey and straw into compost garden beds for our self sufficient living

Why are my compost beds not breaking down?

Tilling my experimental compost bed with a rotary tiller to plant potatoes

Well, after a while the first potato plants stuck up there heads (potatoes usually always grow). On some parts of the compost bed the potatoes grew better on some parts they did not thrive very well, but this was on both the rotary tilled and not rotary tilled part of the compost bed the same.

Potato plants in a tilled compost bed where not all potato plants are thriving
Potato plants in tilled compost bed
Potato plants in a no-tilled compost bed where not all potato plants are thriving
Potato plants in no-tilled compost bed

As spring progressed I planted some corn (a popcorn variety), 2 pumpkins and some amaranth in between the 2 rows of potatoes. In the spring, when all the plants are still so small, I always think “o, there is enough space. I can plant some more”. Well the potatoes hat been more then enough, but it was interested to see how the other crops did.

The pumpkins for instance, I planted one in the tilled part and one in the not tilled part. At least these plants gave me a good noticeable difference. The pumpkin in the not tilled bed did not thrive and eventually died. The pumpkin in the tilled bed did not thrive very well, but somehow lived and grew a little.

Pumpkin planted in between potato plants not thriving in a no-tilled compost bed
Pumpkin planted in between potato plants not thriving in a no-tilled compost bed
Pumpkin plant flowering in a tilled compost bed
Pumpkin plant flowering in a tilled compost bed

It was at this point we started to realize that we made a big mistake while building this compost bed. The compost bed is made out of straw, hay and sawdust. Straw and hay are “empty”. There is not much energy in this material, since the plant directed all of the energy into the seeds. So the soil developing from these components can never have much nitrogen. We need to at manure. The component we simply did not have until this spring when we got ourselves some chickens. After cleaning the chicken coop I simply divide the manure around the pumpkin plant, the one in the tilled part that still lived. Well, it helped, but the pumpkin still did not really thrive. I imagine, the soil just wasn’t really ready to use quite yet.

4 dwarf chickens on a pasture in front of a fence

As the season progressed the potato plants mostly did well and grew nice and big as did the weeds. I found an occasional cornflower.

Cornflowers in the potato bed
Cornflowers

The thistles are well spread out, luckily mostly around the edges of the compost bed and the bindweed is just taking over the complete compost bed. It literally is everywhere. The flowers are beautiful and the insects love them. I simply let go of the thought of weeding. I would not know where to start and I just do not have the time.

Bindweed all over the potato bed
Bindweed all over the potato bed

Then we got some runner ducks and put them on the pasture which includes this compost bed. The runner ducks are small enough, eat slugs and find hiding underneath the potato plants and the thistles (we have the type of thistle with big broad leaves). They where no problem at all, but then came the geese and destroyed the potato plants. I am glad the potatoes where already blooming at this point, so there would not be much growth anymore anyway. We started to harvest some potatoes here and there, because I wanted to compare both sides of the compost bed. At the tilled side we got a lot of smaller potatoes from one plant and on the not tilled side we got a few big potatoes from one plant.

Cleared potatoes in a tilled compost bed
Cleared potatoes in a tilled compost bed
Cleared potatoes in a no-tilled compost bed
Cleared potatoes in a no-tilled compost bed
Red & yellow potatoes each colour on a plate sitting on grass
Red potatoes from tilled compost bed, yellow potatoes from no-tilled compost bed

Obviously the potatoes are different varieties, so I do not think we can really conclude anything out of this experiment. What I noticed is that the soil in the tilled part was much more broken down, darker, nicer and looser than the soil in the not tilled part, which was to be expected. The potatoes in the tilled part grew in and underneath the compost layer we had build up. The potatoes in the not tilled part grew underneath the compost layer we had build up. So this was like growing potatoes under mulch, but that I had a hard time digging the potatoes up from underneath the compacted compost layer.

All in all I had a nice potato harvest with nice big potatoes and a lot of small potatoes that will be saved as seed potatoes for next year.

As far as the corn went, just a little higher as the potato plants, bearably surviving. The geese then overran them.

A few corn plants in between potato plants
A few corn plants in between potato plants

After I harvested all of the potatoes I dough out the one surviving pumpkin and planted it in another garden bed. The pumpkin liked it much better here. After a short time of setting it was thriving and it even set on some fruit. We will see if it ripens on time before the frost comes.

Pumpkin plant in a set no-dig bed with a pumpkin forming
Pumpkin plant in a set no-dig bed with a pumpkin forming

After the compost bed was cleared of all edibles and plants I wanted to keep my husband brought out a manure spreader full of fresh cow manure from our farming friend. This gave a thick layer of manure over the entire compost bed, which we then tilled in with our rotary tiller. I am not sure yet what I will plant in here next year, but there will be more then enough nitrogen in this compost bed next season.

Compost bed, black in colour from freshly spread cow manure
Compost bed, black in colour from freshly spread cow manure

As a finishing touch I sowed a mix of green manure and covered the entire compost bed with straw. Only I waited to long after tilling the compost bed with doing so. The compost bed was full of weeds again already. O well, we will rotary till this bed in spring before we want to use it again. I will probably never get rid of the weeds here, but that’s fine. Weeds aren’t necessarily bad.

A partially straw covered compost bed with weeds in the uncovered part
A partially straw covered compost bed with weeds

And we accidently grew a meal of peas in the tilled part. Peas from the chickenfeed we threw out. The pea plants partially did well and partially turned yellow. Some of the peas had worms in them, but the good once tasted well and the kid’s had a lot of fun peeling the peas.

Children picking pea pods
Children picking pea pods
Worm coming from a pea
Worm coming from a pea

Fixing the compost beds with a manure spreader

The compost beds in Garden 4 are needed this spring, so we need to do something for them to decompose better

As announced in my previous post about making compost beds, our manure spreader has arrived and we made us up to work on the compost beds that where only air raided.

We want to lay the beds new with the manure spreader to get the long material of hay and straw shortened, to get everything well mixed and loosened and to get the whole compost bed well air raided trough and trough. This way the compost bed should decompose better.

We made a mistake while building up the first compost bed new

Well you would think easy said and done. What’s more to that than loading it up and spreading it out?  Well we did make a mistake with the first bed (Garden 4 compost bed II). We loaded the manure spreader until it was full. Than we pushed aside the rest of the compost bed to make room to lay the compost bed new. So far so good. Then we started laying the compost bed new.

Spreading decomposing straw and hay with a manure spreader

Since I find it very hard to estimate the amount of compost that should be laid down, it turned out to be too thin. And here comes the mistake. We had to drive over the freshly laid compost bed again, partially compacting it again, to build up more compost.

Spreading decomposing straw and hay with a manure spreader, while partially driving over the already freshly laid compost bed

This, obviously, was a little disadvantageously. Since we already partially drove over the compost bed, we decided to add some more material (we found the volume of the bed a bit small). We loaded some more straw bales on the manure spreader. On top we added a shovel of horse poop to give the bacteria, that do the decomposing, some nitrogen to feed on.

Loading the manure spreader with a tractor with a front end loader with a grapple with decomposing straw and hay
A tractor shovel with horse poop

We spread a layer of this over the entire compost bed. Afterwards I was not very happy with this last layer, because compared to what was already there, the new added straw was still too gut and was more like a mulch layer over the compost bed. The straw stayed very long, compared to the older material which was nicely shortened by the action of the manure spreader. Therefore we decided to flail mow over the compost beds after we finish setting up the second bed new.

Fixing the other compost bed

With the second bed (Garden 4 compost bed III) we did a much better job. We started with loading the manure spreader and removing all of the material from the compost bed.

Clearing a compost bed with a tractor with a front end loader with a grapple, with a tractor with a loaded manure spreader in the back

Then we started to build up the compost bed again, building up more material at once so the compost bed would have a nice thickness and we would not have to come back with more.

Spreading decomposing straw and hay with a manure spreader, while building up a compost bed

In between we left the manure spreader where it was and loaded it again where it stood. This way the compost bed was in a line and the material stayed nice and loose as we like to have it. The compost bed ended up shorter as it was, but that is no problem. We will add more length as material comes available next year. Generally we did not add extra material to this bed (no straw and no horse poop). We are curious to see if this makes a difference in the decomposing process.

The wind gave us some problems and we had to ad a bunch of material from the side back on the compost beds by hand.

A man and a woman raking straw, which was divided by the wind, back onto the compost bed

And this is how the compost beds look after laying them new with the manure spreader.

Compost beds after laying them new with a manure spreader

Flail mowing the compost beds

To make sure the top layer will not form into a roof, leading the rainwater away, we flail mowed both compost beds.

Flail mowing a compost bed with a tractor with a off-set flail mower

I am not sure if this would have been necessary, but this gave a nice evenly result.

Compost beds after flail mowing them

Sowing some green manure

To get some extra nitrogen in the compost beds I decided to sow some green manure. I sowed some mustard and some lupines, since these already sprout at low temperatures and it is still very cold here. These compost beds are for corn, pumpkin and different other things, so there is still some time before I will plant in there. The green manure will be cut of before I start planting and the material will serve as mulch.

A woman sowing green manure in a compost bed
Lupine seedlings in a compost bed

Stay tuned for up-dates as the season will progress.

We also made a video of building these compost beds.

Why are my compost beds not breaking down?

My compost beds are not composting. Why is that?
Here’s what we found & what we did to solve the problem

In the summer we made 3 new garden beds for growing vegetables to increase our self sufficiency. Since we mainly have rubble and concrete the beds need to be made out of enough material for the plant roots to grow in. The compost beds are make out of straw, hay and some sawdust. If you would like to read more about how we made these beds you can find the link here. The idea was that these compost beds would compost over winter and we would be able to plant in them in the spring. At least so we thought….

Checking up on the progress of the compost beds

In February we went to check upon our composting beds and found that they are not composting. As you can see on the pictures the top layer functions as a roof and prevented the rainwater from soaking in the composting bed. (We had more than enough rain in the fall & trough out the winter) The straw and sawdust underneath is completely dry and at the bottom there are some fungi. Only in this bottom layer we found some earthworms, but not many, and in the rest of the composting bed there where no earthworms at all.

What is the problem?

So first things first. We need to do something about this, since we need these beds in spring to grow more vegetables to get closer to our goal of self sufficient living.

The compost beds are made out of long material and the material is to compact. So that is what needs to be changed in order for the rainwater to soak the compost material. Ideal would be to use a rotary tiller to work trough the compost beds, but since we do not have one we decided to flail mow over one bed to see what that brings.

Flail mowing one compost bed

We mowed a few times over the composting bed in garden 3 (this was middle of Feb.). This needed to be done at a very slow pace, since the flail mower got jammed other wise.

At first site we where satisfied with the result. Nice short and dark material where the rainwater would be able to soak trough.

Compost bed after its been mowed with a flail mower with short dark material and a white dog on top

After doing some digging we found that underneath this, very promising looking thick layer, the straw was still untouched. Obviously a flail mower isn’t a rotary tiller and works only on the surface. So we decided to wait and see what this does the coming weeks and treat the other beds differently.

Air raiding the other 2 compost beds

We only loosened and air raided the other 2 compost beds in garden 4. This way at least the rainwater can soak into the material and it is accessible for earthworms and other creatures helping with the decomposing process. We did this with the tractor and grabble.

Air raiding a compost bed with a tractor with grabble

Watch these actions on video here (second half)

By the time we finished air raiding these compost beds, we found a manure spreader within our budget and plan to send the material from these 2 compost beds trough the manure spreader as soon as we have it on our property. So stay tuned for that.