Feeding The Soil

Over the holidays I ate a lot.  The gumbos, rice & gravy, traditional holiday meals, not to mention the sweets and goodies that I always have trouble saying "No" to, have made my pants fit a little tighter than I'd like.  In addition to eating more 'comfort foods' during the winter months, the short days leave me with fewer daylight hours to work those additional calories off.  It is only in the spring with the longer days that I am able to bring some balance back into the "eat less and move around more" axiom of weight loss and health.

While I need to feed myself LESS, I'm always looking to feed my soil more and that opportunity presented itself recently.  A dear friend of ours had raked her yard. She's a big advocate of composting and put many bags of leaves into her flower beds, but had 18 bags of leaves left that were going to go to the dump.  She knew that I would be appreciative of them and called me.  You've never seen anyone more excited about bags of leaves!  Russ drove over in his pickup truck and loaded them in, strapping them down so they wouldn't blow out on Interstate 10.

I had the perfect spot picked out for the leaves.  The land slopes southward and the lower end of the garden stays muddy, despite the raised beds.  I determined that I would dig trenches between the rows of turnips and bury all of the leaves.  I've found that trench composting organic matter attracts earthworms and improves soil fertility.  In the summer, digging these trenches would have been a real chore, but with all of the rainfall, it was easy.

Digging a hole

I know the depth of the hole is hard to see in the photo above but I dug the trench about a foot deep and about two feet long, laying all the dirt on the side.  Then I dumped the contents of the bag into the hole.

Emptying the bag

The leaves billowed out of the hole, but I had a plan to fix that.  I jumped on top of the leaf pile like a kid, stomping the leaves down.  Like a compactor, I mashed the leaves down into the hole until they filled the 1 foot deep by 2 feet wide trench perfectly. 

Making them fit

Then while I was standing on the leaves in the hole, I grabbed my shovel and pulled the dirt over the top of the crushed leaves in the hole, filling it all in.  Then I moved over and began the hole err whole process again.  I repeated that down two 30 foot rows, filling in the space between the raised beds. Over the course of the next year those leaves will decompose and add organic matter to the soil.

Filling in the hole

Here is a photo of the finished process after I had completed the first row.  Then I moved to the row on the right.

One down, one to go!

Although it is a little hard to tell from the photo above, burying the leaves raised the level of the grown between the raised beds almost level with the rows.  In the past, the trenches between the raised rows held water during rains.  Now that water runs off into the pasture, eliminating scald damage by standing water that I had experienced previously.

Each year I rotate the position of my rows.  In year one I grown crops on a row.  In year two, the trench area becomes the row that I plant on.  This allows me to "rest the soil" each year in the same garden plot.  Next year the vegetables will send their roots down into decomposed leaves with a nice population of earthworms.  That will translate into nice vegetables for our table.  The leaves that were heading to the Landfill were used in my land fill.  Nice!

Trench Composting

Each afternoon, I carry a bucket out to the garden and look for my shovel.  We keep the blue plastic bucket under the sink, and the bucket contains many of the same items, shredded paper, egg shells, coffee grounds/filters, vegetable scraps and other items that decompose.  While I do have a compost pile in the corner of the garden that consists of last season's leaves mixed with cow poop, my primarily composting method consists of a practice called Trench Composting.  This Article explains the simplicity of trench composting.

The compost bucket

We do pay a monthly fee for garbage pickup.  Every Friday morning a garbage truck picks up our household waste.  Benjamin wheels the can to the curb on Thursday evening and on most days, the can is only 1/3 full and only contains plastics, glass, or shiny cardboard items or other things that don't easily compost. In the past we shared our excess garbage capacity with our neighbors, it just seems like such a waste of money when we don't fill the can.  In any event, we're not adding much to the Parish Landfill and, in turn, are building our soil instead of exporting soil amendments off site.

In trench composting you don't need to worry about the temperature of the compost pile or ratio of the brown components versus green components or keeping the compost moist.  Trench composting is easy.  Simple.  I like simple. I just dig a trench in the path between the garden rows like shown in the photo below:

Then I deposit the bucketful of household waste into the trench.

Then, I back fill the hole with the dirt from the hole and put my shovel at the end of the hole to mark the location where I'll put tomorrow's waste in the ground.  Eazy-peazy, right?  When I finish trench composting on an  entire row, I'll fill the valley between the rows with leaves and hay.  That fill will also decompose, becoming a barrier for weed growth, a haven for earthworms, a soft walking area, and will ultimately become soil.  The neat thing is, you can see your soil getting better year after year.

When I reach an area where I've previously trench composted (months and months ago), I notice that the ground is not hard and compacted.  It is easier to dig and work the soil.  I also notice an abundance of earthworms.  Earthworms consume the waste and aerate the soil in the trench.  They love trench composting!

My goal is to rotate the row location each year, so that the rows  this year are built up directly over the trench composting from last year.  That enables the roots to easily locate nutrients left by the compost and earthworm activity.  Over the course of a year, we've pretty much trench composted each pathway between every row. When we butcher chickens, we easily trench compost an entire 30 foot pathway between the rows in order to bury chicken heads, guts, and feathers.  Also when an old laying hen dies, we trench compost her and she switches her productivity from producing eggs to producing vegetables.  Heck, when I kick the bucket, I might get Tricia to trench compost me...

Soil Test Results

You might recall from this blog post from back in August Taking Soil Samples, that I took some soil samples from our garden and pasture in order to have them sent to a laboratory for analysis.  I took one sample from the garden and two samples from two separate areas of the pasture and bagged them up in individual sample bags.  You can see them below.

Three bags of soil samples for analysis

Now I would estimate that the entire pasture and garden area encompasses three acres.  The soil on the three acres is similar as the land was planted in rice many years ago and is relatively flat, although sloping ever so gradually to the west.  You can, however, see a marked difference in the visible appearance of the soil samples taken in the pasture versus the garden.  The sample on your left (below) is from the pasture and the sample to the right of it (below) is from the garden.  Can you see the difference?

Comparing the soil

What is the difference?  What causes this?  Both samples were taken from a depth of about six inches.  One is light colored and the garden sample looks dark and rich.  We haven't broadcast any fertilizer on either the pasture or the garden; however, the pasture is fertilized constantly by our cows (Daisy, Rosie, Maggie, Bully, and now Lili), along with our two goats (Nellie and Annie) and sixty-something chickens.  They all constantly patrol the pasture, pooping and peeing.

In contrast, the garden doesn't have animals directly pooping or peeing on it, but we do compost extensively. In winter months, I gather "cow patties" from pasture and deposit in a compost pile in the garden that I mix in hay, grass clippings, and refuse from the vegetable plants once they die.  Once a year I'll broadcast that all throughout the garden.  Additionally, when we butcher chickens, I bury all the feathers and guts in between the rows in the garden.  I also bury coffee grounds, vegetable peelings, and other kitchen waste between the rows and then put a covering of hay between the rows.  Finally, I plant legumes in the garden that fix nitrogen in the soil.  All these composted amendments attracts beneficial microorganisms and earthworms, creating a great symbiotic environment.

So, we see the visible effect that composting has on the soil appearance, but what about the soil analysis? Well, the results are in from the laboratory.  Take a look:

Sample ID all lbs per acre	N lbs per acre	P2O5 lbs per acre	K2O lbs per acre	Nutrient value per acre
Sonnier #1 Garden (middle)	112.03	206.92	48.18	$240.97
Sonnier #2 Pasture (South)	26.53	28.59	18.98	$47.32
Sonnier #3 Pasture (North)	28.21	27.70	41.13	$60.99

I'm only posting part of the analysis and I really need to read up to get a better idea of exactly what each means, but I think the results are mind-blowing.  NPK are chemical elements used in fertilizer.  If you were awake in high school Chemistry class, you'll remember that N is Nitrogen, P is Phosphorus, and K is Potassium.  Just look at the difference between the analysis done on the garden (first line) and the pasture (next two lines).  There's no denying that something remarkable is going on in the garden soil.

• Nitrogen gets leaves and vegetation growing lush and green,
• Phosphorus stimulates the roots and the stems of plants, and finally
• Potassium aids in water and nutrient movement throughout the plant.

No rocks, no weeds, good soil, good seeds...

I like to be able to see when things you do make a difference.  Some call this immediate gratification, although this wasn't immediate.  Bettering the soil takes time and work, but it appears to be a beneficial endeavor.  One thing that I'll have to study up on and talk to my Dad since he studied agronomy and soil science, is the mix or balance of NPK pounds per acre in my analysis and what it means.  There's something new to be learned every day.  Life is a classroom!