Part 4 a: More Dirt On Dirt

My timing is perpetually off on this tomato series, as I should have put up this post back in November or December.  But there is still time if you act quickly and don't plan to put in your vegetable garden until mid-April or early-May.

It's called sheet composting, and it's a great way to add organic material to your garden beds if you don't have a compost pile or bin in your back yard.

Being we're already nearing February, you'll want materials that will decompose quickly, such as soft kitchen scraps and lawn trimmings.  Simply chop them up and take them out to your garden beds and spread them around.

Once spread out, cover the material with a layer of steer or chicken manure (costs about $1 a bag at Lowes or Home Depot).  Mix a bag of worm castings and a good quality compost, such as SuperSoil then spread that on top.  It's important to put a good two inches or more over this to avoid rodents digging up your material for food.  I personally think the steer manure creates a good "scent mask" to keep the rats and mice from smelling something tasty underneath.

Make sure this stays watered through the spring.  Decomposition will halt if this all dries out.  But if you do this over the next few weeks, you'll have a great base of rich soil to plant in come May.

As I mentioned, this is really ideal for Fall.  That's when you'll have a lot of organic material from your spent vegetable plants and fall leaves.  Do this at the end of season, cover it with your manure, castings and soil, and you will be good to go next summer.  You'll also have more options available as to what you can throw in.  This being February, and with only 60-75 days to go before summer plantings, you'll want to be sure whatever you add is chopped well and you leave out heavy materials such as corn cobs, branches, or heavy melon rinds, etc.  But if you're doing this in the fall, all those things can be added.

As to what NOT to add:  This is cold composting which means your compost doesn't heat up enough to kill the bad things you don't want in your garden.  So avoid adding any of the following:

• Seeds, especially weed, tomato and pepper seeds.
• Weeds, especially crabgrass, clover (actually Oxails which looks like clover but is a weed in these parts).
• Plants that show signs of disease, especially rust and fungus.
• Anything processed, such as store-bought bread or plant-based "meat".  You really want to stick to whole, unprocessed materials.  An exception would be coffee grounds, shredded newspaper or cut up, unbleached cardboard.
• Anything animal based, such as meats.  The only exception being crushed egg shells, which are fantastic for your garden and will add calcium to the soil.

Here is a great link on items you should avoid composting, especially if you are using this sheet composting technique:  Things To Avoid Composting (And Why)

You also don't have to do this all at once.  As soon as you are done planting for the season, you can take your kitchen waste out to your empty garden beds and bury it in holes as you collect it.  I've done this successfully over the years and found it's a nice way to add that organic material without needing to maintain a compost bin.

Part 4: The Dirt on Dirt

I can't express how important soil is to a vegetable garden.  I've said before, you can't fertilize bad soil into good soil.  You've got to start out with a healthy base, and now is the time to do it!

Here in the Bay Area valleys, where we rarely get more than a light frost, we can amend our beds just about any time between seasons.  My favorite is January or February, and right before a good rain storm.  Ideally, you want to let your soil "meld" for a month or more before you plant, and I like the help from Mother Nature to get it soaked in and wet.

But what exactly do I mean when I say "soil"?

I'm a big proponent of composting, but I know not everyone has the means to make their own dirt.  In fact, for the first few years I had my current garden, I bought all my soil, and experimented with a lot.  Here's what I learned:

    The worst place to get vegetable garden soil is at the big box stores.  You absolutely will NOT find anything of quality at Home Depot, Lowes, and certainly not Walmart.  The only thing I buy at Lowes is steer and chicken manure, which I mostly use as an additive to my compost pile.

    I'm also not a fan of the MiracleGro brand (and stay miles away from Kellogg.  It's nothing but barely ground-up wood chips, IMO).  I also don't like soil that has added fertilizer in it, like MiracleGro touts.  That may be nice if you've got a large pot and just want to plant one tomato, but for larger-scale gardens, it's my preference to stay as organic as possible.

    Your soil should look like this:  Moist, rich, dark, almost black, with no chunky pieces of wood or bark.  If it's light, dry and woody, you'll only end up trying to throw good money after bad when it's mid-summer and your tomatoes are fighting blight.

   

    The photo above is of my homemade compost, but you can buy an equivalent.  If you need a lot I recommend going to a landscape supply store such as Sonomarin Landscape Supply in Petaluma, or Wheeler Zamaroni in Santa Rosa.  My personal go-to was the Wheeler Zamaroni "Veggie Mix".

    If you don't need that much, you can buy bagged, and the wonderful thing about Sonoma County is there's no shortage of places to buy quality soil.  My favorites here on the southern end are Harmony Farms Supply (now also in Petaluma!), Cottage Gardens, Friedman Brothers, and Wheeler Zamaroni offers their Veggie Mix in bags as well.  All of these stores have quality soil and amendments that range in price from super expensive (over $30 a cu ft!) to reasonable, about $6-7 a cu ft.  Friedman Brothers has a brand called SuperSoil which I've used often.  It's very adequate as the base to my personal recipe for a soil cocktail:

• 2 Parts SuperSoil, WZ Veggie Mix, or other good quality raised bed soil mix.
• 1 Part Steer or Chicken Manure
• 1 Part Worm Castings

    Even if you go with a higher quality soil mix like you'll find at Harmony Farms or Cottage Gardens, I still like to add worm castings and some steer manure, as I think you have a better chance making sure your soil has all the trace minerals vegetables need when you mix a few things together.  

And lastly:  To Dig Or Not To Dig, That Is The Question!

    For the first several years I was gardning, I used to shovel amendments into my beds every spring then go through the arduous and back-breaking task of turning it all in to the existing soil.  I've since learned that not only is it a waste of time, it's actually better if you don't!  

    Here's a good blog post that talks about the 7 reasons why you don't want to turn over your soil:  7 Reasons Not To Till but the short of it is, soil builds its own ecosystem, and digging it all up and turning it over only messes with nature.  It's best to simply top your beds with a good couple inches of your compost cocktail, water it down good, and let mother nature do the rest.