When the Poop Hits the Fan

 Oh boy, here we go...

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We've all seen images of Sri Lanka falling and their leaders being ousted from power.  Irate citizens storming the palace, swimming in the president's pool, and setting things on fire.  Costs are up, food and medical supplies are in short supply, people are hungry (and very angry).  Years of corruption led to a deep distrust in government.  The country is on its way to bankruptcy. 

What happened?  Their leaders bought into green energy.  Everything should be peachy, right?  Sri Lanka has an ESG score of 98 out of 100 - the highest in the world.  In April 2021, their leader, without notice, banned all imports of chemical fertilizers. This caught farmers by surprise and reduced yields of staple rice crops, driving prices higher.  Hunger is a great motivator.  It motivated regime change.

But look to the Netherlands...

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What is going on there?  The government sparked massive protests by proposing to cut the country's livestock in half to limit carbon emissions and agricultural runoff.  Dutch farmers also say that they feel disrespected the Dutch populace, media and politicians.  They are literally biting the hand that feeds them.

I'd like to talk about these two events for a moment.  Notice the similarity?  Poorly thought out government green initiatives caused this.  It is just my opinion and everyone has one.  Contrary to popular opinion, it is healthy and normal to think differently and have thoughts of your own.  We live on a little homestead farm where we grow approximately 90% of everything on our table.  It comes from right here off the land.  We don't use chemical based fertilizers or herbicides or pesticides.  (More on that in a minute.)  We generate very little waste.  We are about as green as it gets, but I abhor the green movement.  I love freedom.  The green movement is anything but.  I also feel that many green movement people don't practice what they preach.  These elites want to impose restrictions on you, while they're still living high on the hog. 

I want to show you how we grow our own fertility, but before I do, I want to tell you that since our country industrialized and most people live in the cities and don't grow their own food, chemical fertilizers are a must.  We won't use it on our little 5 acres, but if all the people in cities want food, and want it at an affordable price, synthetic fertilizers are a necessity to maintain yields and grow the amount of food and fiber needed to sustain life as we know it.

The other alternative is to have everyone do what I'm about to show you and grow your own food.  First, we compost everything.  All scraps go into a compost bucket that we walk out to the compost pile daily.  Egg shells, squash stems, onion skins, coffee grounds.  Everything goes into it.  

It all decomposes and rots down and attracts earthworms who do their thing in the soil and the soil fertility grows.  We also grow peas and beans that set nitrogen in the soil.  We're growing fertility.  We also make biochar and inoculate it with cow poop and bury in the garden.

At absolutely no cost, we have tree trimming companies deliver load after load of wood chips to us.  They dump them right there in the yard.  An eyesore, to be sure.  But it is gold.  For years trees pull fertility from the soil.  Then, when they are cut down and chipped, all that fertility remains.  It is imported to our 5 acres and I let it decompose.

After three years, this is what the wood chips turn into - black, rich, fertile topsoil!  I incorporate this into the garden.

We pick up dried cow patties and pile them in the back of the garden.  After they 'cool down' for a year, the cow manure is ready to be incorporated into the soil for fertilizer.

Here is our hen house.  You can see the roosting bars.  Chickens line the bars at night to roost, and they poop while they roost.  The poop falls beneath them, piles up and composts.  You've got to be careful with this.  It is so potent, if you put it directly in your garden, it will burn up all the plants.  It is wise to wait at least six months and preferably 9-12 months.

Here is some good composted manure that the hens produced.  Homegrown fertility.

This right here will grow some vegetables!

Those are just some of the ways we boost soil fertility and grow our own fertilizer.  We can do it on our 5 acre farm.  We're not trying to feed the world, though.  We're feeding our family.  We've also had years to learn and make mistakes and implement the new concepts.  How do you do this on hundreds of thousands of acres?  I don't know.  They want to drastically reduce the number of cows, so don't look in that direction.  Composting on that scale doesn't work either.  Chicken litter is used wider agriculturally for nitrogen application, but can't be currently broadcast as efficiently and economically as chemical fertilizers.

Before setting restrictions and making proposals about something like farming that most politicians know nothing about, government leaders would do well to have well-thought out alternatives drawn up and allow appropriate time to change.  Something (experience?) tells me government ain't gonna do that.  You can have the highest ESG scores in the world, but if there's no food to eat, your people are all in poverty, and your leaders are driven from power, what did you really accomplish?  When the poop hits the fan, you oughta pick it up and compost it and grow your own food.

Applying Biochar to the Garden

Back in February, we made THIS POST to show how we were making biochar for the garden.  You can click on the link to learn how we do it and why we do it.  It is very beneficial for your soil.  Today I want to tell you how we inoculate the biochar and apply this to the soil.

A quick recap.  We start a big fire going with all the sticks and branches in the yard.  I did this back in February on a very cold day so it was NICE to stand by the fire and warm up.  Except, just when the fire is burning good and there is gray ash on all the sticks, you do the unthinkable on a freezing cold day.  You drag a water hose and completely put the fire out!

This stops the burning process and keeps it from turning to just ash.  When the coals are cool, I shovel them into a big tub.  I'll use a shovel to chop up the coals into 'nickel-sized' cubes.

I regret to inform you that I don't have photos of the next steps in the process.  I think I can describe it, though, but you'll have to use your imagination.  Now that I have a big tub of what is essentially homemade charcoal, it is time to inoculate it.  The microscopic holes in the charcoal needs to be charged with good bacteria to enrich your soil.

In order to do that, I'll grab a five gallon bucket of cow manure and scoop it on top of the biochar.  Then, I'll fill the tub with water and stir.  The biochar and cow manure mixture makes a slurry.  Now, we just let time pass.  I let the mixture sit in the sun and ferment for two weeks.  At the end of two weeks, I'll get my shovel and dig a trench about five inches deep between each garden row.  I scoop up the bacteria charged biochar and shovel it into the trench and then cover it back up.

Then, we plant rows on either side of the inoculated biochar trenches.  The plants will grow and their roots will extend and will feed on the the biochar.  I call it beneficial bacteria 'condominiums.'  We'll do this on alternating rows each year until the entire garden is seeded with it.

It is a long process and, to be honest, I'm not sure how you'd do this on a large scale.  But it works in our garden.  Biochar, amending the soil with tons of organic matter, incorporating compost, and earthworm population growth has definitely made our soil more healthy and rich with each passing year.  It was once compacted and had no earthworms, but has really changed.

Making Biochar for the Garden

It was chilly and building a fire sounded nice.  I also had on my to do list to make some biochar for the garden.  Two birds.  One stone.  We have a BUNCH of tree limbs from all the storms that are piled up in numerous piles.  I gathered some up into a pile away from the hay bales and trees and lit it up.  I kept piling the branches on the fire.  The coals were glowing.  The fire was kicking up some real nice heat.  While the north wind blew, I huddled by the fire,  The hens scratched the ground where the big pile of branches used to be.

I let the branches burn until everything was grey ash with coals underneath.  Then, I got out a water    hose and stopped the burning process quickly.

The coals smoldered and I kicked through them and sprayed them down, saturating them with water until they were cool.

This leaves you with charcoal - just like the hardwood chunk charcoal you can buy at the grocery store for barbecuing.  

Let's look just a little bit closer.  If you could see this under a microscope, you would be able to see that the charcoal is very porous.  There are millions of microscopic holes in the charcoal.

These little holes can be beneficial bacteria condominiums.  Let me explain what must happen to get to that point.  You must inoculate the biochar with bacteria.  Here's how I did it.  I took the charcoal I had just made, poured it into a big blue tub and chopped up the charcoal with a shovel.  Then I went to the barn and got a 5 gallon bucket of cow poop.  I poured the cow poop in with the charcoal and filled the tub with water.  Now I had a biochar - cow poop - water sludge.  I stirred up this concoction like a 5 star chef in a restaurant might do.  What I'll do is allow this 'brew' to ferment for a couple of weeks.  Then I'll dig a trench and bury it in the garden.  The 'charged' biochar will provide tremendous benefits to the soil.

This was first discovered in the Amazon.  The pre-Columbian Amazonians made this.  Its effects are good for the soil and good for vegetative growth.  It can reduce soil acidity and increase soil fertility.  I've got more piles to burn and thus, more biochar to make, inoculate and incorporate into the garden soil.

All in Favor Say "Aye" (Or Eye!)

Well, we finally got the potatoes in the ground this past Saturday!  Almost two full weeks late as we normally shoot for Valentine's Day planting.  Because of the crazy cold snap we had, it put a damper on planting.  The gentleman who brings us round bales of hay had jumped the gun on potato planting and the freeze killed every single one of his plants.  They were four inches tall when the freeze took its toll.  He has a great attitude and says he'll just replant.

After cutting our seed potatoes, we put them in the warmest room of the house - a coat closet, and let the warmth go to work.  The eyes began to grow and by this weekend, they were ready to put into the ground.  We plant red "Irish Potatoes" - actually a variety called Lasoda.  We like 'em.

We purchased 6 pounds of seed potatoes and cut them into chunks for planting several weeks prior to the plant date.  We aim for one eye per chunk, but often miss.  You can see on the potato chunk below there is a nice, healthy eye at the 6 o'clock position and another one popping out at about the 2 o'clock position.  I counted the number of potato pieces and came up with 87 that we'll plant.  They all have good eyes.  

Eighty seven potato plants should yield a nice crop, but we've learned not to count our chickens before they hatch.  I had my eyes on some blue potatoes at Tractor Supply.  I've never grown them.  But after measuring out the amount of potatoes and the space upon which I had to plant, I was out of room.  No blue potatoes this year.  Maybe next year.  I am a patriotic guy.  It would be fun to grow red, white and blue potatoes, wouldn't it?

We have a forty-five foot bed in the side yard.  It started out as a hardpan, clay, mostly unproductive soil, but we've amended it with lots of organic matter - leaves and compost and most recently, wood chips.  Over time the wood chips decompose and make the soil easily workable with a hoe.  The soil that once was a yellowish-white color is now dark brown and rich.  I used a rock rake to rake the wood chips off the row.  Then I hoed up two forty-five foot rows about a foot and a half apart.

I'm adding another amendment to the soil - Bio Char.  I made bio char by burning branches and sticks for a while until they are covered with grey ash.  Then I stop the burning process by spraying them down with a water hose.  I scooped the 'charcoal' up into a big blue tub.  If you would look at the resulting charcoal with a microscope, you would see a multitude of tiny holes.  If you'd amend this into the soil at this point, it would lock in and steal nitrogen from the soil and hurt your plants.  To combat this, we inoculate the charcoal with beneficial bacteria.  We mix in a bunch of cow manure and let it compost for a year.  The bacteria moves into the holes in the biochar like little beneficial bacteria hotels or AirBnB.  Fully inoculated, you can now put into your soil and the plants will thrive from the biochar.  That's the good stuff in the white bucket below.

I try to plant the potatoes about 3 inches deep with a handful of biochar in each hole.  The eyes face upward.  Planting crops and the anticipation of seeing the green shoots pop out of the ground is always an exciting time of year.

Finally, I used my rock rake to cover the potatoes with a smooth layer of soil.  What a nice seed bed it made.

If the Good Lord's willing and the creek don't rise, in a few months we'll have fresh potatoes and will enjoy homemade potato salad, crash hot potatoes, and baby red potatoes cooked with fresh picked green beans laden with butter.  Lookin' forward to all of it!

The Hills Are Alive...

Once I got all the tomatoes, peppers, corn and beans planted, I started phase II.  That consisted of straightneck and crookneck yellow squash and zucchini.  Those seedlings were started in hills in the garden as soon as they put their first true leaves on.  Then I planted some other items that we transplanted.  I'll show you those today.  In the seed trays on the back patio, I started two varieties of cucumbers - Suyo Long Cucumbers and Boston pickling cucumbers.

What we'll focus on today are some of the vegetables in the photo below that we'll be transplanting:

• Butternut Squash
• Spaghetti Squash
• Green-striped Cushaw Squash
• Tahitian Melon Squash
• Georgia Candied Roaster Squash
• Moon and Stars Watermelon  

These plants were all started from seeds and the germination was fantastic - even the Moon & Stars Watermelon seeds which were saved from back in 2012 all popped up.

Spaghetti Squash

To give these seedlings a good head start, I dug holes and lined them with some biochar we made.  The photo below shows a big tub that we made last year.  It consists of homemade charcoal mixed with cow manure, hay and shredded paper.  This was put into a tumbler and tumbled over a year.  The bacteria in the cow manure inoculated all the microscopic holes in the charcoal.  Now all this will go into the soil and will give the soil fertility to assist in growing healthy vegetables.   

Here is a hill of spaghetti squash.  It was time that they get put in the ground.  The leaves were just starting to turn a bit yellow.  It will green up in no time now that the roots are in the soil.

In the very back of the garden I have a huge pile of wood chips that we use in our Back to Eden Gardening method.  We had 24 truck loads in all delivered to the house - for free!  I kept hauling it to the garden by wagon-load and stacking it high.  We compost directly into the wood chips.  There is one downside.  The hill has taken away some space that was formerly planted.

But then again, as I thought about it, I can still grow veggies on the hill.  I planted all of the squash and melons around the perimeter of the hill.  As all of the squash and melons listed in the bullet points in the second paragraph above begin to grow, they'll vine over the hill.  The brown hill of wood chips will be transformed into a productive green hill of squash and melons. That's a good use of square footage in the garden that might otherwise been fallow.

After All the Rain...

We feel very blessed to have not gotten the amount of rain our neighbors to the west experienced that was associated with Hurricane Harvey.  The destruction and flooding in Southeast Texas is overwhelming and our prayers are with the poor people that had their lives turned upside down by this terrible storm.

Over the six day period that bands of storms came through our area, I measured 10.6 inches of rainfall in the rain gauge.  Spread out over that period of time, the water easily drained and did not become a problem.  The real problem for us came 48 hours after the storm blew through.  Then the mosquito eggs laid in the standing water turned to larvae, matured and then flew in clouds to search for blood.

The "maringouin" or mosquitoes in French are terrible around here right now.  Just walking outside and they swarm around your head, light on your neck, arms and legs and have a feast.  Part of our property taxes go toward paying our Parish Mosquito Control to try to keep the mosquito population down.  They do this with a mosquito fogging truck that goes down every driveway spraying pesticide. Mosquito abatement also has a plane that flies overhead spraying to try to kill mosquitoes. We heard it overhead last night and figured we would have relief this morning. Well...

Not so fast!  The mosquitoes coating the walls in the garage by my rubber boots this morning must have been immune to whatever the plane was spraying.  I swatted this monster off of my leg (and you can see the shadow of another on the far left side of the photo.  Two observations:

• #1 I think that this mosquito stole enough of my blood that I won't be able to donate blood for the next 8 weeks until my body can produce enough to replenish it. 
• #2 This mosquito was so large, I think I could have battered it and deep-fried it and had a nice meal. 

It makes it awful hard to get any work done in the yard and garden while slapping mosquitoes, so I built a big fire and began making biochar.  The smoke kept the mosquitoes at bay for a while.  Maybe tomorrow will be a better day for gardening!

Making Biochar

I was reading about something useful to the soil in the garden that I had never heard of and decided to give it a shot.  Biochar.  Have you ever heard of it?  Biochar is simply charcoal that is stored in the soil and used as a soil amendment to benefit your plants.  Sounds interesting.  I'm always looking for ways to make my garden soil better.

We have tons of sticks that fall from our trees so we have the basic raw materials for making biochar readily available.  Biochar added to the soil does several things. The charcoal is full of holes and crevices that serve as a habitat for soil microorganisms.  Think of it like an artificial reef serves as a habitat for fish, biochar serves as an 'artificial reef' for soil microorganisms that benefit your plants. It also helps the soils retain nutrients and water.

Sounds good to me.  Today I'll make some.  It is easy enough to do.  First I built a fire using sticks from our live oak and pecan trees.  I kept feeding the fire with sticks that were all roughly the same size until I had a nice blaze going.

Once the fire had subsided and there was nothing left but coals in the fire pit, I did something that seemed an odd thing to do with a nice coal bed -

I put it out!  I simply sprayed down the hot coals with a water hose to stop the fire from consuming the sticks and turning them to pure ash.

After saturating the coals with water, this is what I have left.  It looks like real wood charcoal.

I loaded up the biochar in a bucket and walked it out to the garden.  I dug a hole between the bean rows and emptied the bucket of biochar into the hole.

Then I covered the biochar in the trench with dirt and that finished the job.

I will continue doing this between all the garden rows, adding biochar from our burn piles and covering with dirt.  Hopefully we'll see a difference in soil fertility. Scientists have found evidence that people living in the Amazon many years ago covered smoldering organic material with dirt and found that this is greatly improves soil productivity.

Biochar isn't new, but it is new to us.  We'll see if we can tell a differennce.