About All We Can Handle

At least a couple of mornings each week at 'dark-thirty,' we hear the back-up alarm beeping on the big truck bringing yet another load of wood chips and dumping them on the property.  I've lost count of how many loads, they've delivered, but we're almost at full capacity.  We're out of room, and it is too bad, because like a gardening friend tells me, "That stuff is like gold."  The best part about it is that the wood chips are FREE!  I have looked around and see that they can maybe dump two more loads.  We have a couple of names and addresses of friends who are lined up to take it after we are full.

Composting piles of wood chips are not going to win us any "Beauty Spot of the Month" awards by the Garden Club.  The piles are kind of unsightly, but the benefit provides far outweighs the deviation from aesthetics in the neighborhood.  You can see in the photo below, the piles are heating up and the bacteria is beginning to break down the piles.  They will decompose and then be really useful.

About three years ago we got twenty-something loads of mulch.  We filled the flowerbeds in the landscaping, mulched around the trees to eliminate the need for weed-eating, and we put a four inch layer over the entire garden as we initiated the "Back to Eden" gardening method.  I piled the remainder into a BIG pile at the back of the garden.

We composted kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, and shredded paper into it.  We dumped cow manure into it.  We buried numerous chickens that were killed by predators into it.  A multitude of possums that I trapped were composted into the huge pile.  Three years have past and the pile has shrunk into a big pile of black, fertile compost.

When I plant, I rake back a line of wood chips to expose the soil.  Then I begin hoeing up the soil for my seedbed.  In a testament of healthy soil, a gazillion earthworms wriggle around to greet me.

They are of all sizes and they are enriching the soil and fighting against compaction.

When we first started gardening, I am not exaggerating when I tell you that there were NO earthworms.  Composting is the key to getting them back.

So today one of the things I planted was a row of black beans.  I worked up the seedbed in the row like I detailed above.

I made a 1 inch trench and dropped a bean every four inches.

Then I shoveled some of the rich compost pile into a tub and chop it up real fine with a shovel.  Then I cover the beans in the trench with the compost material.  It is a good medium for the beans to grow in.  As they grow, I'll pull some of the fresh mulch around them to crowd out any weed pressure and also help the soil retain moisture and a cooler temperature.

We're expecting rain tonight, so that will help the beans to sprout in no time!