Compost; A Love Story..

So by now you've probably worked out that I really like compost. I know it's a weird thing to say, it's a bit like admitting that you're a fan of collecting toe nails, but if you've never dug your bare hands down into a pile of thick, dark, well decomposed, sweet smelling compost, well, you simply haven't lived!

Below is a fairly recent pic I took of the 2 compost bins we've been using here on the property for a number of years. We have a solid supply of good quality ingredients to add to the piles but as I've spoken about before in my post about experimenting with the Berkley Method Of Hot Composting, they just weren't making the grade. The stone slabs look beautiful but they don't allow for air to enter via the sides and air is crucial for the decomposing process. If oxygen cannot penetrate the pile then it becomes anaerobic (meaning that the microorganisms responsible for decomposition process can't survive and thus decomposition grinds to a halt) and unless you want to engage in anaerobic composting (which is possible but not desirable given our circumstances) then the stone slabs simply weren't the ideal way to go.

Last year we left the bays filled with a variety of good things for almost 6 months and came to the end of that period only to discover that they had become so compacted that the majority of the ingredients simply failed to decompose at all. Now one incredibly simple way to counteract this is simply to get in there with a pitch fork and turn the pile a couple of times a week so as to allows air to reenter in amongst all the ingredients, however we have the problem of being a rather small and therefore time-poor community; meaning that we have plenty of responsibilities and not much spare time, let alone enough to dedicate to turning a compost pile every other day. So I began to dream of different ways that we could improve our set up that would give us better results without having to invest more time into it on a regular basis and ended up stumbling into an incredibly simple, extremely cheap and super effective method that could be reproduced anywhere by anyone.

The above photo is the area we're dealing with. The existing stone Compost bays are straight a head, there are piles of broken bricks and stone slabs everywhere, and even though it's all but invisable in the picture, much of the ground is actually paved with smaller stone pieces which have become buried under years of dirt and leaves. We spent a couple of hours clearing the space (which required some serious heavy lifting) and then drove four metal poles into the ground, roughly 1.5m wide and 1.8m long, which would act as the front corners of the new Compost bays. 

I chose to use a reasonably thick gauge wire for the frame as this would have the strength to support the weight of everything we would want to throw into it whilst still having plenty of space to allow as much air as possible to penetrate in from the sides. We drilled this into the brick wall at the rear and linked it with strips of wire to the post at the front and at that point had a very simple compost bay setup.

One thing to consider is that I could have chosen to use only 3 posts for the front so that the middle wire would have acted as a central dividing wall for both bays, but getting air into the pile was the main objective and so using 4 post means that there is a 30cm gap between both piles and thus plenty of room for air to have access.

Next up my dear Aussie brother Nelson and I spent a long and hot summer afternoon drilling hundreds of holes in lengths of PVC pipe. I had given lots of thought about how to try and increase air flow to the center of the pile (the most likely place to become starved of oxygen) and had decided that one option would be to run a couple of lengths of pipe from the outside, straight through the center of the pile. This way oxygen can always be moving through those hard to reach places and keep those microorganisms partying. We lined the pipes up and attached them in a roughly even fashion so as to get air flow through the four quarters of the piles, but my advice today would be to scrap having any pipes up high and instead have them all in the lower half of the pile as that's where it will become the most compacted and the natural airflow will be the most restricted.

I had intended to attach another wire section to the front of each bay, but the guy at the store who sold me the wire did the dirty and charged me for 10m but only gave me 8m, so I didn't have enough wire to complete it on that day and figured I would get back into it soon. However, as time got further and further away from me, I found that it hasn't really been necessary to have a front as we haven't had enough going into the piles for them to spill out onto the path in front but instead they've easily grown higher and higher without having any problems.

We initially set up these new Compost Bays in late August 2013, it's now 3 months later and as you can see the new bays are doing pretty darn well. Some of the pipes broke during this time due to a problem which I doubt many of you will experience (ie; Monkeys jumping up and down on them!), but it is worth trying to make sure that the pipes are resting on the compost in the center without significant gaps beneath them so that they're not trying to support the weight of all that is above it as I suspect this would also cause them to break.

 

To the best of my knowledge, not once during these past three months have either of the piles been turned or aerated by any other means than that which we initially designed. Just this week I finished building my final Vegie Plot in the Resurrection Garden and was keen to pump it full of compost so I pulled out the pipes through the sides of the 2nd bay, racked back the top layer of leaves and other recently added ingredients and was blown away with what lay beneath.

Only 3 months after first building these new bays, the rear one gave out 10+ wheelbarrow loads of gorgeous, gregarious, glorious Compost! All of which went straight into our organic Vegetable Gardens and means that the leaves, grass clippings, food scraps, garden waste, etc. etc. etc. which would otherwise go onto the side of the road, the incinerator or the Ganges, is now enriching the earth, helping feed humanity with nutritious and healthy food and investing back into nature. I really couldn't be happier with how it's turned out.

So if you have a compost pile somewhere out back and the thought of turning it every other day doesn't seem to appeal to you, would it be worth revamping your existing Composting system with any of these brainlessly simple ideas? When compared with last year's stretch of 6 months composting with virtually nothing to show for it, well, it's as my sweet Winnie Wild Flower likes to say, "The pudding is in the cake!"

Afternoon On The Gunga..

Last week we were blessed enough to have a few friends from Australia breeze into town and spend sometime with us here in Varanasi. This just so happened to coincide with my entire family coming down sick with various illnesses which, of course, made for an extremely long and difficult week and meant that we spent most of our time running off to see Doctors and staying awake throughout the nights tending to our sick little ones.

Thankfully the day before they left my tribe was all feeling much better and so we were able to join them on one of the staples of visiting Varanasi; a boat ride on the Gunga.

The city is such a memorizing place from the water and there is something so special about the feeling of stepping outside of it and peering back upon it as you float down the river. We've been on the water at sunrise, sunset and night, in the hot season and the cold, and each time I find that it's such a different experience than the last with differing colours, water levels, Pujas and atmospheres along the shore line which means that even though it's hugely touristy, it's also amazing.

I won't say too much more, instead I'll post a few of my favourite photos from this most recent trip down the Gunga and let the images do the talking for me.

Building Eden..

  

Towards the end of February 2013 Wild Flower, Little Feather and I packed our bags to leave Varanasi and make our way south. My boy was due to be born in mid March in Kerala (the most southern State of India) and because you shouldn't fly during your last trimester and the thought of spending 4 days on an Indian train with a 2 year old and a heavily pregnant wife didn't appeal to any of us, we decided to split the trip up into a few different stretches and spend some time with our sister community in Goa (around half way). 

Obviously this meant that between February and April nothing much happened in the Gardens except for our friends harvesting and enjoying the last of the produce that was still growing. When we returned home in April with our newest and cutest little guy in tow, the temperature during the days was already beginning to claw its way above 40 degree Celcuis (that's 105F) so as you can imagine, this sort of temperature (coupled with a brand new baby boy) meant that there was no way I was going to get anything done in the gardens for quite some time.

The Resurrection Garden; August, 2013

Now fast forward to August, it's still unbearably hot (still in the high 30's and 40's) but now the first monsoon rains have started to fall which means the humidity is skyrocketing and thus much of the time feels even hotter than before. The previous months had seen small clumps of weeds sprouting all over the Resurrection Garden but because the soil had dried out so thoroughly in the heat they weren't doing a great deal. But after the first rains, all the weed seeds that had been laying dormant for all those months in amongst the soil that I'd been working so hard to enrich, seized upon the opportunity to germinate..   And. Went. Ballistic.

As you can see in the above pic, the weeds took over in a matter of weeks and rendered the garden completely inaccessible. The front wall disappeared under a halo of green, parts of it had weeds as high as my shoulders and everywhere you looked you could see weeds bolting to seed ensuring that I was going to have an ongoing battle of epic proportions.

Initial Resurrection Garden Design Plans

During the hot season you spend A LOT of time indoors and so in amongst adjusting to being a family of 4, I began planning what I wanted to do with the Garden and how to go about sourcing materials to get it up and running once the temperatures came down. I was keen to radically redesign the layout based on a little side project I've been working on that's experimenting with applying principals of farming and agriculture from our Sacred Scriptures (more details about that at a later date) and so I wanted a minimum of 7 separate beds to be working with. Because of the overall size of the space I'm working with and the fact that the average person can't reach more than 75cm, I designed each bed to be 1.50m wide so that I would be able to reach the center of each plot without having to step into it, and thus the space allowed for 8 new beds as well as one long but narrow bed running against the wall which I will use as a trellis for various climbing vegetables.

My default was to think in terms of wood for constructing the raised edges of the Garden beds but a little investigating uncovered that wood here is crazy expensive, that because termites are everywhere (including inside the basketball sized termite mound in the top cupboard in my bedroom.. seriously) so the wood would need to be treated (with all sorts of charming chemicals that would joyfully leech out into my soil) and so I began looking into other options. I spent a bit of time thinking about it and decided that in keeping with the aesthetic of the space, buying a load of bricks would be the best option as they are cheap, easy to use and won't get chewed through by Demuk (termites). I had all the dimensions of the garden and the plans for what sizes I wanted to make the beds and so one day, after crunching the numbers, I went out and bought 350 bricks (with free delivery via Bicycle Trolly Rickshaw) at the outrageous price of AU$0.11 per brick!

 

End Of First Day of Clearing

Last year I really learned a valuable lesson by not trying to do all the work myself. I love being in the Garden and originally wanted to do all the work myself, but I've had to come face to face with the reality that it's a big space, it requires an insane amount of work just to maintain it and keep it clear of weeds and debris, I have a tonne of other responsibilities and don't get to spend anywhere as much time in the Garden as what I would like too. So hiring day labourers to do parts of the initial work means that they get an above average wage for a days work and I get done in one day what would literally take me weeks to do by myself. I brought in 3 guys who worked 7 hours a day, for 2 full days, just clearing out weeds!! I can't imagine how long it would have taken me alone to do it, hiring these cats was definitely the right way to go!
 

Nearing The End Of Day 2 Of Weed Removal

Once the space had been cleared, I went to work laying bricks. I started by measuring out all the paths and the individual plots and sculpted their outlines by connecting string between corner markers. This was a great moment as for the first time I caught a real glimpse of what had been in my minds eye for so many months and finally seeing it come together was filling me with excitement. I then got to work laying bricks along the string lines. Long term I hope to get some mortar between the brings so that it will be a permanent setup, but this time round I decided instead to bury each brick a third of it's height in the ground so it would be held in place and will hopefully get to it next year. It would have been a substantially bigger job if I'd cemented them all this time round and I figured if unforeseeable things came up or I change my mind on how I want things laid out I would still have the freedom to change the setup which I wouldn't have if I cement them now. 

One of the things I spent a lot of time thinking about as I was laying the bricks was how the space would function as a whole. Sure I want it to produce a harvest of rich organic crops, and sure I want it to look beautiful, but I also want it to feel beautiful! I began noticing that when I was kneeling on the back path that runs parallel to the back wall, the angle between my neighbours and I was so steep that they couldn't see me from their windows and roofs; the feeling of not having the entire neighbourhood's eyes on you is bliss! This got me thinking about creating somewhere where you could just sit and enjoy this sensation of being in the garden without being the center of everyone's attention. I also wasn't enjoying all the right angles that I was making on each Vegie plot. I made the front wall of my garden form a curving design because it fit better with the overall vibe of the area and I really didn't want to have a boring ole flat fronted garden, yet here I was making something completely practical, yet completely lacking in love. I want to draw people into the space, for their eyes to enjoy it, and so I began mucking around with different design ideas and finally settled on a rejig of what I'd initially planned.

Revamped Garden Designs

I love the idea that by making the paths that divide the plots only come two thirds of the way to the front you have to enter right into the garden space to move about between the individual beds. This draws you in and helps you discover the secret places against the wall where I'll build some benches so you can sit and enjoy it all. Also, having less points of entrance and exit means that once you're in, you're naturally more inclined to walk about and explore each little area.

Laying Out The Initial Plots Design

Once I'd laid most of the brick work and had half of the plots completed, I got to work tilling the soil and bring in some wheelbarrows full of compost that Shoonksworth and I had been cooking up over the previous months. I also bought 80kgs of straw for mulch, had it delivered, and solidified in my neighbour's minds that I'm insane because I put what their cow's eat for dinner on my vegetable garden!

Little Feather Helping Till The Freshly Laid Compost

Those months proved to be difficult for my little family. My little man is gorgeous and smiley, but he's not been fond of sleeping and so I'm sure it's not hard to imagine what unrelenting heat coupled with sleep deprivation was doing to us. Because the days are so hot it was really only possible to do work in the cool before sundown (between 3:30-5:30pm) and so if I got out there twice a week, it was a good week! But I kept on going as much as I was able and by early October I had 5 out of the 7 beds completely set up and ready for sowing.

Resurrection Garden; October, 2013

There is still plenty of work to be done; rubbish to be extracted, stones to be cleared, weeds to be pulled, soil to be tilled, but the bulk of the shape is largely finished and the seedlings are already putting on leaves and climbing their way towards the sun. So my question to you then, is when are you going to join me for a late afternoon Chai in the Resurrection garden?

I've Got Worms..

For many, admitting to the world that they have worms is a nightmare on par with loosing your pants on stage at your school assembly. But for me, it's reason so celebrate!

As you can see above, the path outside my house morphs into a decent flowing stream during the monsoon rains and manages to channel the bulk of the downpour that lands on the property past my front door, out the main gates, down our neighbour's gulley, and out into the main street. One of the sad things I've come to notice is that once the soil becomes waterlogged, the earthworms are forced to the surface (which depending on who you read means that they're either in search of oxygen or alternatively are using the opportunity afforded them of a slippery wet ground to travel greater distances overland), and then decide to travel with the current of water in which ever direction it may take them.

If you're familiar with some of my earlier posts, you'll know that in amongst the countless hours I've spent sifting through the soil in the Resurrection Garden I'd never once come across even a single Earthworm and so to finally see worms (and worms in abundance) on the property was a tremendously exciting event! (Yes, I recognise how that sounds! But don't pretend all you gardeners don't know what I'm talking about!) So I'm sure you can all feel my pain when I came to discover the worms actively moving with the current down the path, past my front door, out the main gates, down our neighbour's gulley, and to their deaths out in the street.

Seeing this tragedy unfold forced my heart and hands into action and out into the rains I went to save these little guys from the cruel streets Banaras and whisk them away to the safety and comfort of a cut up old coke bottle. My neighbour's sons (you may remember them from When a violent riot explodes outside your house) were intrigued by my growing collection of worms so I enlisted their help by offering them 10rupees per small container of worms that they collected. Their eyes went wide with excitement at the prospect of making 10 rupees (roughly AU$0.17) per container, however they are Brahmin kids (the top Hindu Caste) and when their Father caught them picking up worms he swiftly put an end to it.

I remained undeterred in my rescue efforts and before long Little Feather came out to see what I was up to and soon joined in the fun. It was interesting watching my neighbour's sons being extremely timid in their approach to picking up worms; only using sticks and other implements to lift them and squealing if they squirmed onto their hands or feet, contrasted with Little Feather who just charges in and grabs hand fulls of them and now affectionately refers to them as "Mr Wormy-Worms" who are "our Friends." I've got to say, I'm pretty fond of this kid of mine!

In just over an hour we collected goodness knows how many hundred worms (and some pretty decent sized ones too) who were destined for relocation to their new home in the Resurrection Garden. The same surfacing of worms happened again and again throughout Monsoon (essentially anytime it rained heavily) and so I was able to curtail the mass exodus of worms from the property whilst substantially growing the population of worms in my veggie plots. 

I'd like to say that it was all a roaring success but in the spirit of full disclosure, I did, on one occasion, leave a collection of worms in a 10L bucket that had some soil and leaves in it in my spare room for a couple of days. When I finally had the time to move them to the garden, I went in to the spare room and was shocked to find not one single worm still alive. In fact, I didn't find even one single worm. So either there is a collection of Worms currently hiding under the bed (I did actually look there) or the entire group of worms completely disintegrated into a liquid in the space of 50hours. Remarkable creatures! That experience was certainly enough to teach me not to keep them longer than I had too.

Now, to leave you on a slightly more informed note so you won't feel like you've totally wasted your time, here are some facts about Mr Wormy-Worms that may or may not just blow your mind;
* Earth worms do not have eyes (but they can still see, kinda)
* Earth worms do not have hearts (but they still have blood pumping throughout their bodies)
* Earth worms do not have brains (thus will survive the Zombie apocalypse)
* Earth worms are hermaphrodites (possessing both the male and female reproductive organs)
* Earth worms can, on average, live for 6.5 years (older than both my kids combined)