A Compost Tale: Interning in the Garden with the Hub

I began working as a garden intern with MHC this past January when I was assigned command of the Hub’s compost bins at the Crestmont garden. Its been a crazy, smelly, and magical journey since then and I want to tell you all about it!!

Since January Haley (a Hub volunteer) and I have been taking turns riding in the idiosyncratic trucks of compost volunteers Jay and Tom, picking up food waste from Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard’s pantry and two local businesses, the Village Deli and Soma/Laughing Planet.

When our journey began we were in the depths of a fairly mild winter, so most of the food we were dumping and digging into was in varying states of frozen. It seemed as if the layers of coffee grounds, stale bread, rotting greens, and overripe berries were determined to maintain their state of being, never surrendering to the natural process of decomposition that makes compost magic.However, once spring came and the ground began to thaw the compost bins finally began to awaken. What was once dead became alive as the microorganisms, worms, and other critters began to break down the food waste with the help of the oxygen introduced to the process through the turning done by interns and volunteers. As excited as we were that our compost was maturing, we were very disturbed by the putrid stench it released when turned. IT WAS RANK. One of our interns actually started dry-heaving while turning the compost; others chose to wear bandanas over their faces to mask the stench. There was no love to be found for our beloved infant compost.

As the intern in charge of compost, I felt responsible for the misery and was frankly embarrassed that I raised such smelly compost! I immediately began doing research and developed a trifecta approach to solving the stench. A) Before adding things to the compost pile, I would, with the help of Jay, Tom, and other volunteers, chop all of the food waste into smaller pieces with a shovel to encourage quicker decomposition. B) Intersperse the bread waste among the layers of compost so it was better mixed with the other food waste (because it is so highly processed, bread is particularly difficult to compost). C) Make sure the compost is turned at least once a week.

The test came when we had to remove the compost from the old bins so that the city could tear them down and replace them with fresh wood (the wood in the old bins was rotting). Several layers of unfinished and semi-finished compost were spread on the garden beds as sheet mulch as well as in piles for the new bins. Miraculously, it DIDN'T SMELL AWFUL!! It actually smelled pretty good (as good as rotting food can, anyway). The real treat came when we got to the bottom of one of the first compost bins I ever added to. Sitting among all the spiders, worms, and rollypoly bugs, there was a mound of matter that was a deeper brown than the rest. After a moment of breathless awe, I picked it up, felt it in my hands, smelled it, and danced around like a new parent. It was finished compost, some of the healthiest soil on the planet. It had the texture of clay mixed with fine sand and smelled just like freshly tilled dirt. The compost had reached the end of its journey and it was BEAUTIFUL. I kept a bit of it in a tiny mason jar that I keep in my room to remind me of the journey and humanity’s ability to responsibly deal with our waste, giving it back to the earth like an offering of gratitude for providing life.

~Jessica Sobocinski

Building Soil for a Healthy Harvest

This week MHC garden volunteers pulled together gorgeous harvests for the food pantry and bike cart.  We collected ripe, nearly bursting cherry, Roma, and Green Zebra tomatoes, large red and orange bell peppers, red and green velvety okra, Swiss chard, basil, thyme, and tarragon, cucumbers, and handfuls of banana peppers.

It takes an incredible team of knowledgeable garden volunteers, newbie garden volunteers bursting with energy, youth gardeners full of curiosity, and a community of supporters to make that harvest possible.  It also takes the use of many trusty sustainable gardening techniques to build healthy soil and grow such robust plants.  Over the years, many gardeners have shaped the methods used to make the community gardens so successful.  In today’s blog we’ll talk about the central sustainable gardening technique we use to keep our soil healthy and our harvests bountiful, recycling organic matter from the garden and food pantry to build the soil in the community gardens.

Growing food truly does start with the soil, and the Hub builds garden soil through packing it full of organic matter.  MHC’s most plentiful input of organic matter is hauled by trusty compost volunteers, who mix rotting fruits and veggies from the food pantry with leaves or straw in compost bins and turn it into a rich, organic soil amendment you may know as compost.  Winter and spring compost intern, Jessica Sobocinski, goes into more detail about this process in an earlier bog post.  Check it out for more information.

We also add organic matter directly onto open beds in the form of sheet mulching, also called lasagna gardening.  When sheet mulching we begin with a layer of cardboard or newspaper laid directly on top of the soil.  We then continue layering whatever organic matter we have on hand. Here are some examples of what we might add into a sheet mulched bed in the garden:

• Leaves
• Manure donated from a local farmer
• Compost from our pile
• Comfrey leaves
• Rotting fruits and veggies from the food pantry
• Straw
• Chopped up plant matter from plants that are finished producing in the garden (ex. old corn stalks)
• Chopped up garden waste (ex. weeds that aren’t seeding and won’t propagate from their roots)

We let the sheet mulched bed break down until we have a bed full of dark soil ready for planting.

MHC community gardeners recycle all the organic matter we can get our hands on, from the pantry and gardens, whether it be cardboard, paper, vegetable matter, or plant matter, and turn it into healthy and fruitful soil!  We encourage all in the Hub community to do the same, save your vegetable scraps in order to make broth, feed your chickens, sheet mulch your garden or add to your compost.  Recycling organic matter builds soil and is good for the environment and your budget.  Keep up with the MHC blog to learn about more techniques we use to keep our community gardens thriving!

–Stephanie

Building Soil with Leaves: The Free Garden Builder

We are having lots of fun with leaf piles in the MHC gardens at this time of year!  We are gathering these leaves to use throughout the coming years as mulch, in our compost piles and as a rich soil amendment.

This free amendment has many benefits for the garden.  We collect large leaf piles at each of our gardens each fall. The leaf piles start to break down over the winter and by spring they are ready to use as mulch in our garden beds.  This nice dark mulch helps to warm the soil as it collects the heat of the sunshine. As this mulch breaks down further in the garden beds, it conditions the soil in many ways. The leaf particles improve soil structure and can increase the water holding capacity of soil by up to 50%.  This organic material attracts earthworms and much of the microbiota that make up healthy soil.  Leaf matter also adds twice the mineral content to the soil that manure would provide.

You can also gain these benefits by top-dressing your garden soil with leaf mold.  Leaf mold is the product of a leaf pile that has been sitting and breaking down for a year or two.  We are fortunate enough this year to have piles of leaf mold to top dress our garden beds over the winter, and to use in  potting mixes for our container plants and raised beds.

At home you can use this years' leaves to tuck your garden beds in for the winter. However it is recomended to shred the leaves first, as whole leaves can form a mat over your beds that keeps water and air from your living soil.  You can simply run your lawn mower over your leaves a few times to shred them before adding to your beds.

Another way that leaves add big value to our garden is as a compost ingredient.  We add leaves to our compost piles all year round as our main carbon source, and we end up with gloriously dark and loamy compost.  Leaves are a carbon rich material, and a good recipe for compost is 2/3rds kitchen scraps to 1/3rd leaves.

So don't put those leaves on the curb to be taken away!  Keep them, use them, and your garden will repay you with healthy plants, produce and flowers!

Newspaper Seed Starters

Hey Hubsters, it’s the post you’ve all be waiting for from MHC’s celebrity volunteer, Holiday Mike.  Read on for laughs and to learn to make your own seed recycled seed starters.

Well golly be darned, you guys, it’s time to start your sweet little seeds! Smile, whisper something sweet to someone, and go here to find out what to start based on your geographic location: http://sproutrobot.com/.

Okay, so now that you know which seeds to start, go to your local Wal­Mart and senselessly spend money on seed starters you can easily make for free at home. May as well pick up some seeds for those super firm, brilliantly red, uniformly shaped, blemish­free, polygalacturonase lacking “Flavr Savr” tomatoes you will almost certainly over­fertilize this summer!

Well I’ll be golly gosh­darned if a wonderful person like you is going to do a silly little thing like that! So read this post instead: Seed Exchange, Farmers’ Market, and Other Cute Stuff (http://www.raginggardeners.com/seed­exchange­farmers­market/), then follow the below directions, which walk your cute little mind through the entire process of making your own sweet little newspaper seed starters.

Why to make your own Seed Starters out of newspaper:

1. Because you’re cute and wonderful, of course!

2. It’s free. Wonderful!

3. It’s easy, you little cutie!

4. You don’t need tape. Newspaper sticks together when it’s wet, and stays that way even when it dries.

5. Once your plants are established, you can plant them directly into the ground. The newspaper will encourage downward root growth in the initial stage of growing, then decompose, thereby providing your soil with much needed brown material.

Brown material is important for a spring garden. Here’s why: you’ve been composting all winter. When you add your compost to your spring garden, it’s wet, hot, full of nitrogen, and probably not completely done decomposing, since it was frozen for so long. Spring “compost” that isn’t quite yet compost and is actually still in the form of what’s left of that sensible whole wheat turkey wrap you had that night you drank a cup of tea and hit the hay early can burn the tender roots and stems of young plants, making them more susceptible to disease months later. The newspaper will protect them from those silly little cookies, while preventing nutrient loss during its slow decomposition phase. Those little net things you get from the local Wal­Mart don’t do any of that, so let’s just turn our backs on them like we do all of those rays of negativity we have stored deep down within ourselves that are just waiting for the day we unleash them on the world!!! Not today, you guys! Not today!

What you need:

Here’s my advice, and believe me when I tell you that you are just gorgeous: Get the stuff you need, then put on an awesome documentary. I recommend Food, Inc., but you’ve probably seen that one. Perhaps put on Fresh, or The Science of Sex Appeal,because they’re pretty great. Also, all three are evidence based, and not filled with a bunch of unverifiable, unfalsifiable silliness, silly!

This is all you need.

 1.     Newspaper

 2.     Scissors

 3.     A bowl of water

 4.     Some kind of tray that won’t leak. I’m using the plastic tray I bought from the local Wal­Mart a couple of years ago. If you don’t have one, you may have to buy this item, but at least you can use it for several years. I don’t know how to mold plastic, and I’m not creative enough right now to think about leak­proof alternatives to this plastic tray, because my simple brain is too busy thinking about ways to improve your day, my sweet garden friend!

 5.     Some kind of cylindrical object. This is your mold. I used a spice container. Use something without a lip at the bottom so it won’t destroy your fragile seed starters when you start sliding them off. Or use one with a lip at the bottom. I’ll think you’re wonderful either way!

How to make them:

1. Cut the newspaper into horizontal strips. Make a pile of 3­inch wide strips, and a pile of 1.5­inch wide strips. The 1.5­inch strips should be the width of the bottom of your cylindrical object. Mine was roughly 1.5 inches, yours might be different. It really doesn’t matter that much, but YOU certainly do!!!

2. Cut the 1.5­inch stips into lengths of about 4 inches. I pretty much cut the 1.5­inch strips vertically into thirds.

 

3. Put the newspaper strips in the bowl of water, but separate them first, because newspaper is hard to pull apart once it gets wet, and it’s pretty delicate. Sort of like a sweet little puppy, who just longs for your caressing touch to make it feel secure in your loving arms.

 

4. Start wrapping the cylindrical object with one 3­inch strip. Do it while thinking about clowns.

5. Drape one 1.5­inch strip over the bottom, and make it stick to the sides. Fold the corners down or whatever.

6. Put another 1.5­inch strip over the bottom again, but the other way to maximize coverage.

7. Wrap another 3­inch strip around the cylindrical object.

 

8. This is the only hard, and sometimes frustrating part, but remember to keep that hidden rage buried deep down in there! Grab the top of the cylindrical object with one hand (in my case it is the cap of the spice container) and the newspaper with the other hand. Start twisting and pulling the two in opposite directions. The newspaper will start sliding off of the cylindrical object. Sometimes you have an issue with the vacuum that is created between the bottom of the cylindrical object and the inside of the newspaper when you start pulling it apart. It’s so silly when that happens!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sometimes, it ruins your seed starter. Other times, you can sort of gently put your fingers into the seed starter and mold it back into shape, cutie!

9. Make more, buds!

 

Tray of Seed Starters

www.raginggardeners.com

Healthy Soil, Happy Plants

Ever wonder what makes a plant grow beautifully in one place and terribly in another? Look no further than the ground beneath your feet! For healthy plants, there's no better place to start than healthy soil.
While we often think of soil health as what nutrients are present - for example, nitrogen, potassium, or phosphorous - it turns out there's a bigger picture. The truth is, most plants can't even soak up those nutrients without help from microorganisms. And so, introducing... bacteria and fungi!

Here are the basics of how it works... Bacteria and fungi in the soil munch on nutrients, digest them, and then spit them back into the soil. Once the nutrients have been digested, they're in the right form for your plant's roots to take them up. Long story short? Without microorganisms to help break down nutrients, even heavily fertilized soil won't help your plants stay healthy.

So what's the good news? These fungi and bacteria are naturally present in all soil! Additionally, the practices we use in the garden can greatly influence their numbers for better or worse, so below are some tips to keep your soil in good shape.

Simple Tips for Soil Health

• Avoid Tilling!  Tilling works like a blender on your soil's microorganisms - it chops them up, which is bad for nutrient breakdown business. 
• Broadfork! Broadforking is a gentler way to break up your soil than tilling. It lets air into the soil, which bacteria, fungi and plants need, but doesn't overly disrupt or blend microorganisms like tilling. 
• Utilize Compost! Good compost is a perfect breeding ground for healthy bacteria and fungi, so when you put it on your soil, it works like an inoculant, helping to boost their numbers. 
• Use Cover Crops! This system of keeping plants in the soil helps keep your microorganisms happy even in the winter by providing food as they break down and by keeping the soil aerated with their roots systems. 
• Avoid fungicides and pesticides! These chemicals can outright kill your soil microorganisms, even if they're designed to combat fungal or bacterial diseases. So unless it's absolutely necessary, avoid using them! 
• Watch your watering!  Soil microorganisms thrive in damp, but not overly wet environments. Aim for the wetness level of a wrung out sponge. 

Looking for more in-depth resources? Check these websites!

- The Living Soil, by Colorado State University

- Cover Crop Basics, by Rodale's Organic Life

- Soil Biology Primer, by Elaine Ingham

Hub Gardens at One Year

tomatoes thrive on our sunny patio
at the entrance to the food pantry

a row of cabbages in one of our garden beds
featuring soil built from sheet mulching

It's like a dream come true here at Mother Hubbard's Cupboard.  We've always wanted to share our community gardens with all of the folks using our food pantry services. Our three community gardens at Crestmont, Butler Park and Banneker Community Center have always been open and accessible to everyone, but sometimes seeing is believing. It can be challenging to convey the beauty and convenience of growing food right outside your door...unless...well, you have some food growing right outside your door!

from old washing machine basins to leaky wheel
barrows, many everyday objects can be
repurposed into planters

compost bins made from repurposed shipping pallets

Since moving into our new space last June, our on-site gardens have gone from zero to abundant in just twelve short months. Designed to showcase a number of methods of growing food in small spaces, the Hub garden site includes raised beds, window boxes, found-object container gardening, straw bale gardening, a food forest, herb spiral, perennial beds, lasagne/sheet mulched beds, and STRAWBERRIES! With an emphasis on keeping costs down and conserving resources, our gardens feature compost bins made from re-purposed wooden pallets, rain barrels, a low-tech irrigation system and plenty of mulch (straw, leaves, wood chips...).

a perennial bed lines the front of the building.
also in view: rain barrels and a new picnic table

permaculture inspired herb spiral built during a Hub workshop

Garden interns hand out seeds, plants and gardening tips from our patio, and lead folks into the garden to learn about growing food at home or to take home samples of freshly picked fruits and vegetables. Pantry patrons have picked strawberries, harvested spinach, peas, herbs and other greens, and youth groups have toured, tasted planted and harvested.

a view of the irrigation system and our new sign inviting
folks to join us in the garden

Window boxes constructed by eagle Scouts
line the ramp railing, and host edibles
such as this trailing squash vine

MHC's Garden Coordinator Kendra Brewer, remarked at a recent garden workday "The Hub garden is now where we hoped it would be in our first year. It's a real garden now."

Smart and Easy Garden Watering with Less Water

Smart and Easy Garden Watering with Less Water

1.     Add Compost and Other Organic Matter to Garden Soil:  Organic matter, such as compost helps soils to absorb water like a sponge, instead of allowing it to all drain away.

2.     Mulch: Mulch is your garden soil’s great friend.  A layer of mulch helps to keep soil from drying out, keeps weeds from sprouting, and breaks down to become organic mater in your garden soil, further increasing your soil’s water retention.  On your annual beds, spread straw or leaves in a 3-4 inch layer over your garden soil, being careful not to cover or crowd your plants. In your perennial beds, use wood chips if you have them.

3.     Water the Soil, Not the Leaves: A drip hose puts the water into the soil, where it needs to go, and keeps plant leaves dry, which helps keep disease under control.  You can place mulch over a drip hose, further conserving water in your garden. Once in place, a drip hose will save you time, and can even be set with an automatic timer, watering without you having to be home!  Instructions to make a drip hose out of a leaky old hose are below.

4.     Water Deeply and Less Often:  Water deeply to fully soak the soil, then wait until it is nearly dry again to water.  This encourages deep roots to grow, which will make the plant more resilient to drought and other stresses. 

5.     Dig Swails: Swails are trenches dug along the curve of a hill to capture water running down the incline.  Dig a 6” deep trench along the downhill side of a garden bed, and fill it in with wood chips to keep water close to your garden plants. 

6.     Limit Weeds:  Weeds drink up water from your soils!

7.     Save Rainwater: Using a rainwater catchment system, you can significantly reduce your municipal water usage. 

Making a drip hose with an old busted hose:

• Get new life out of an old leaky garden hose by turning it into a drip hose.  Once they are in place, drip hoses help save time and water! 

• Take your hose and place it over some scrap wood.   Starting where the hose will actually be watering the soil, use a 1/16^th drill bit to drill a hole every 2-3”.  

• Shake out the little bits that were drilled out, and attach hose to spigot.  Flush out the hose with water.  If you won’t be connecting the end of this hose to another, you will need to clamp off the end.  This can be done by cutting off the metal at the end, then folding the end back and securing with some wire or a small clamp. 

• Place the drip hose on top of the soil as close to the plant roots as you can manage, anchoring the hose with ground pins.  Start by turning the drip hose on for 20 minutes, adjusting the watering time as your garden needs! 

Pears and Plums, Past Their Prime

When I was at the Hub near closing time on Friday, they had a whole bunch of badly bruised pears. So badly bruised they were dripping. Yuck! Since they wouldn’t make it to Monday, they were going to compost them, but I was sure there was something that could be done with them, so I brought them home with me. I brought home some nectarines, too, in the same condition.

I put the fruit in the fridge overnight while I tried to figure out what to do with it. I thought it was over-ripe, not just bruised, and that’s what I looked for on the internet. What to do with over-ripe pears and plums (because I thought that’s what the nectarines were until I cut into the first one).

There were several articles and posts online about using over-ripe fruit (I’ve included links to some of them below), but the most common use seems to be making jams and jellies, so that’s what I decided to do. Well, butters, actually. Pear butter and plum butter. 

Before straining pears

The pears I cut into fourths and put them, stems, seeds, peel and all, into my 4-quart slow cooker on low. I added about half a cup of water and a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice and left it for several hours, stirring it occasionally. I didn’t add any sugar because I figured that the over-ripe fruit was extra sweet to begin with. After about six hours, I turned it off and put it in the fridge to finish the next day.

The next day I ran the cooked pears through my China hat (known more formally as a chinois), which is an old-fashioned metal, cone-
shaped food mill.  You put something like cooked pears in it and then smush the pears through the tiny holes in the sides with a wooden cone-shaped pestle. It

Chinois or China hat

squeezes the pulp through and keeps the parts you don’t want, like the seeds and peel and stems, inside. The food mills that you can borrow from the Hub Tool Share program do the same thing. I was going to make pear butter, but decided to stop with pear sauce, instead. I added two cinnamon sticks and about a fourth of a teaspoon of almond extract but didn’t add any sugar. It turned out pretty good, considering that I rescued the pears from the compost bin!

After straining pears

There were only a few nectarines, so I cooked them on top of the stove. I did pretty much the same thing – quartered them, then put the whole fruit, including the pits and skin, into a big saucepan. I added a little bit of lemon juice and just a bit of water and cooked it over the lowest heat I could get, stirring it frequently so it wouldn’t burn. When the fruit was really soft, I fished out all of the pits, then put the pulp and skins in the blender. I processed it until it was really smooth, then put it back in the pan and cooked it some more, until it was really thick. It splattered something fierce, so I put a splatter guard over the top. It didn’t catch all of the splatters, but it helped.

Once the pear sauce and nectarine butter were done, I sterilized some jars, filled and sealed them, then processed them for 10 minutes in a water bath canner.

Pear sauce and nectarine butter

So what did I end up with? For the cost of two cinnamon sticks, a bit of almond extract and some lemon juice, I made three half pints of nectarine butter and three pints of pear sauce. The nectarine butter can be used like apple butter, though it's not as sweet. The pear sauce can be used like applesauce to make Pear Sauce Cake or Cookies or to replace some of the fat in baked goods. You can pour it over pancakes. It goes great with pork. You can eat it plain, like applesauce. Or you can make SPARKIN' PIE, so named because a girl once made it to impress her boyfriend, he proposed on the spot, and they lived happily every after.

And to think, all that yummy goodness from food that might otherwise be composted!

-Mary Anne-

Here are some resources for things to do with overripe fruit. My favorite comes from the first article - "Overripe peaches and plums can very quickly be pureed and used as a fruity filling for cakes and muffins.  Simply pour your cake mixture into the case, make a well and add the puree before baking.  The sponge will rise above the puree, encasing it and creating a rich and very fruity addition to your weekly baking repertoire." Or however often you bake at your house. 

What to do with Overripe Fruit - Culinary Arts 360

Top 10 Ways to Use Up Overripe Fruit - the kitchn

10 Things to Do With Overripe Fruit - Savvy Housekeeping

10 Ways to Use Extra or Overripe Fruits and Vegetables - The Purposeful Mom

Uses for Overripe Fruit - thrifty fun

Seven Ways to Enjoy Overripe Fruit - Divine Caroline

Delicious recipes using overripe fruit. A.K.A. kids can't complain about the "mushy part." - Cool Mom Picks