Grandma's Composter

You may have seen this design before, it is a simple quick way to build composting bins with pallets. However, it has had bad reviews in neighborhoods due to the looks and the smell.

To battle the looks, try putting your cedar raised beds, we talked about in earlier post outside the bins, in such a way as to block the view. Cut the pallets in half and place them on the inside row where they are not so noticeable. The four foot height really is not necessary in that you need to turn the compost over continually and no one can lift four feet of compost by hand.

The smell really should not be there. You need to cover the rotting elements with a layer of soil or worm castings to seal it in. Usually the smelly compost is the wet compost. The lack of oxygen is creating anaerobic bacteria which does help break down the elements faster, but at the cost of odor. If you stir the compost up and allow more oxygen in, then put the layer of soil on top, the odor should not reach your neighbors.

Another way to compost quickly and easily is to buy a roll of chicken wire or tight square hog wire. Loop it and tie in in a circle then load it up. Make sure it is large enough to get your pitch fork in there to turn it or you'll get very frustrated. The same principles to reduce smell can be used here too.

I like to keep a couple of big bins of leaves ready. I don't let these leaves get wet so they are easy to move (preferably after running through the mower to mulch them down a bit). This is my cover to add to the top every time I put in garbage elements from the kitchen counter. It creates an earthy smell but not something that smells bad.

Quick Grandma raised bed.

Raised beds are really important if your back is in poor health or your joints just can't do it anymore.

Here is a Grandma answer to the quick raised bed.

 

And it worked great; several things to consider about using old galvanized tanks for raised garden beds, one is that we are now removed from the world of plastics. Two is that it will outlast wood by decades. Three is that you can get it to just the right height for what is comfortable to work at.

 

Galvanized pipe does not heat up like plastic and serves as a better insulator. You can have it enclosed on the bottom or as the picture above, simply a metal ring.

The possibilities of creating a cute form of yard art with it are endless.

 

Keep in mind that raised beds need more care than a garden just planted in open soil. The micronutrients are cut off from the rest of the earth so you will have to add them throughout the year. A good book on container gardening has some tips on this.

 

Replace the soil each year with fresh soil that has been mixed with aged compost as we discussed earlier in building good earth.

 

 Be careful not to overwater and if you have left the bottom in the tub, you need to put in a drain so you don't drown your plants.

 

Remember that the metal still can get heat so plants overlapping may need more water.

 

Old containers will have rusted over the years so don't overfill them with dirt only to have a disaster in your patio. Either put a new wooden plywood bottom in or keep them on the ground.

 

A good back to basics feeling comes from these raised beds that you'll enjoy.

 

 

Building a Green House the old fashion way.

We've talked a lot about getting away from plastics that release chemicals when they are heated which can contaminate our foods with carcinogens.

Unfortunately plastics seem to have take over our green house options. How do we get away from this?

We talked about using Red Wood and posted a link on how to build a raised garden bed from Sunset Magazine.

Now let's look at the cover over our vegetables.

There really is only one option that makes sense and that is glass.

Grandma used old glass windows in wooden frames placed over the beds or running down the side of the house which worked very well to hold in the heat and allow a lot of natural UV rays.

When we do this we need to keep in mind that glass magnifies and plastic does not. So that magnification of the sun can actually be a fire hazard and can burn our plants.

This is all about angle to the sun. And you can study and control that angle somewhat to help with this situation. Sunlight is a very power tool. You can use a light netting to minimize the intensity of the light reflecting on the glass but still get adequate UV to help your plants grow.

Glass also can generate extreme heat. That heat needs to be regulated by having the ability to vent the green house. How much you vent depends on the heat so you need a thermometer system.

Nothing is healthier than glass as a container and a natural element in our environment.

Gardening without plastic contamination

Plastic Beds, Plastic watering systems, Plastic everything. Have you ever considered how much plastic contamination we are being inundated with?

When plastic sits in full sunlight it releases gasses into the soil and into our water that is full of chemicals.

So how did we ever allow this. Simple, it was cheap and easy for the big companies to mass produce so because it was cheap, we bought it without any thought to what plastic does to our health.

If we are going to get away from these plastic chemicals we are going to have to re-introduce how Grandma did her gardening with wood and steel.

To begin with, make sure raised beds are not made with railroad ties contaminated with chemicals or any wood that has been contaminated. Red Wood will resists rot so it is one of your best choices.

Now we have to rethink how we water our plants. One of the best ways is to use the corrugate system with gravity water.

This is simple and affective. But in a raised bed we still need to get the water to a higher point.

Aluminum seems to be less subject to heat and don't forget old fashioned galvanized pipe.

Tile was another common water transfer product but it is harder to find now.

If you are collecting water from your roof top, make sure the roof is not tar or something that will contaminate and then collect in a metal tank which you can still purchase (usually labeled burn barrels) however make certain you know what that tank stored if it is used.

In the end you will be surprised at how wholesome your garden will feel when going back to more natural elements and not man made chemicals.

Organic Pest Control Methods

Grandmother didn't have fancy sprays to protect her fruit.

She had to use natural means around her. One that helps scare away the birds well is simple reflective tape.

This moves with the slightest breeze and flashes and gleams, startling birds and making them uncomfortable in taking the juicy hanging fruit.

The scare crow that we chuckle at now was another means to keep the birds away. The only problem is that birds have all day to sit and watch that human dumby not move. At some point they start to question if anyone is dumb enough to stand there all day so they do a fly by. Nothing happens, they land close to the garden, nothing happens. Now they know, this can't be real, and the jig is up.

So Grandma got smarter and put the scarecrow on a pole that the wind would make it move. This helps a lot and will keep all but the smartest bird away.

One of the few scientific ideas that does work without harming our health is the Coddling Moth Trap. This helps protect our fruit from apple maggots or worms in our apples. The Trap is much like a mouse sticky trap on cardboard. The sticky part has a pheromone that attracts the female moth before she lands on your apple and plants an egg. She gets stuck on that trap and can't move. Simple and effective.

The last thing Grandmother did was simply cut the worm out of her apple. She accepted the fact that other critters needed to live to and sharing a bit of fruit wasn't the end of the world.

Grandmother's Pest Control

Chemical Pest Control started during World War Two with DDT which means most of our Grandmothers did not even have the option to use chemicals.

So how did they manage such beautiful healthy gardens?

They had to work at it using manual methods and being in their gardens every morning. This can be difficult with our schedules but here is a link for some help. Good Natural Slug Control Methods

Grandmother could not afford to be as squeamish as we've become. We walk into a grocery store and think this is where food comes from. But what we don't see is the huge sprayer that dumped chemicals all over our food to stop pests or the scientist genetically altering the plant to where it grows un-naturally speeding up cellular growth abnormally, (Oh! what is a cancer cell anyway? Isn't it a cell growing abnormally?), but the vegetables look so pretty and perfect with no insect chew marks or little bit of blackening around the edges.

The truth is real food doesn't look like that in real nature. And we have to adjust ourselves to real food if we want to get out of the path that is messing up our brains chemical functions or cell growth.

Pests are going to legitimately compete for our food and we need to accept the fact that they are going to get a bite in at times and share that food with us. If there is a apple maggot in our apple we need to cut it out, if a leaf has been chewed on we need to cut that area off. Is that the end of the world for us?

What is the alternative?

Best Water for Gardening

Watering is our next important step. But Grandmother used water coming down from the mountains into a old reservoir and through ditches.

We can find some of that water by using rain water catch systems but it can be a real challenge to not end up with water contaminated from roof tar or heated plastic containers. A automated system like this Orbit Water Drip Irrigation Flower Garden Micro Watering System Drippers 67522 is handy and to be honest I use these, but I know the plastic is heating up and off gassing into my water system.

So I have to make a decision on simple and easy versus running water every day down dirt corrugates (little ditches running next to the plant) from stainless steel pipes.

 

The other factor that has to be considered is using house water with chlorine. Do we filter the water and change the filter every month? Can and all of this is really subject to how down to earth you want to get.

 

A great deal of this will come down to what you have available and can realistically achieve.