September Garden Notes
It is mid-September, the weather has changed to cool mornings and warm afternoons. You can feel fall in the air. Pumpkins and pumpkins products are for sale and on display everywhere. You may be seeing the summer veggies changing in your garden. Tomatoes are coming in full steam…If you are starting to remove summer plants from your garden — don’t dig them out completely. Cut plants at the base where it meets the dirt and leave the remainder in the soil to decompose and add organic matter / nutrients to your soil.
Composting is one of the simplest things you can do in your garden and for your garden. Californians throw away nearly 6 tons of food waste each year. YIKES! 18% of material that goes into the landfill is food scraps and it will NEVER decompose because it never touches soil. The food waste off gases methane gas which is bad for the planet.
Many people buy bagged compost and soil booster to add to garden areas when planting. You can make your own compost and fall is a great time to get started as the summer is winding down. Here is how, scope out a small area in your garden about 3-4 feet wide. Decide whether you want it closed or open.
I recommend for the Bay Area and to have it open to allow the heat and fresh air to come in. Dig a whole 3 inches down just to create a pit to allow the worms and soil to mix in.
The compost pile should be touching the dirt, start by adding kitchen scraps (salad fixings, left over pasta, any veggie or fruit waste, rice, peanut shells etc) and add yard clippings. To help compost quicker, make sure any waste or yard clippings are small pieces. This will help it breakdown quicker. Pile everything in a large pile.
Be sure to add paper products too, toilet paper rolls, left over bread paper bags, (ripe them up into smaller pieces) add water, the consistency should be that of a rung out sponge (moist, but not sopping wet).
Aerate and turn over a bit, you want to make sure there is adequate air flow and the materials are not tightly packed together. You can use thick garden glove and use your hand or get an aerator tool to move it around. Keep it in a pile though.
If you have access to chicken manure and bedding, you can add that to your compost as well. Horse manure is a great addition as well to help get things composting quickly. Add it in small amounts to begin with like a no more than 5 cups. Again mixing it in to the pile.
Let it sit and heat up for 3-4 days and come back and check on it. Decomposition will have already started and you can keep adding small amounts of kitchen scraps and yard clippings. Again you want these additions in smaller chunks or clippings or it will take longer to breakdown. Turning each time you add more items to your pile and adding water so it remains the same consistency as a rung out sponge. After about a month you should have some usable compost underneath. It should smell like fresh soil.
In the event you don’t see a lot of worms coming to your pile. You may need to purchase red worms from a bait shop or online and add them to your pile.
This fresh compost can be mixed into soil at the base of plants, added to garden beds before you plant, added anytime during the growing season to give your plants a boost. Happy composting!
