A tale of two squashes

When I scored some red kuri squash seeds in a seed swap this spring, my reasonable inner voice told me to back away slowly and leave the squash -- with it's large leaves, tenacious vines and high water needs -- to a gardener with more square footage. But my inner crazed gardener beat down that reasonable voice and I furtively tucked an envelope of the seeds into my pocket. I had to be furtive -- my husband hates squash plants, thanks to my foray in decorative gourds a few years back that turned our backyard into a Little-Shop-Of-Horrors of unchecked growth. So the question was, where to grow it?

I have a large, open compost bin tucked behind the garage that is dedicated solely to yard waste like leaves, grass clippings and the like. Since it is just an open wire bin, I do not compost food scraps in there (those go into my rodent-proof plastic composters). This hidden yard-waste area abuts the alley and gets an extraordinary amount of sun. It also is screened by the grape arbor and therefore unlikely to be seen easily by a squash-phobic partner. So I planted the seeds directly into the compost pile -- I had read that this works reasonably well. So yes, even in a tiny urban garden, I can have secrets.

Last month, I saw a delicata squash seedling at a plant sale. Remembering how delicious delicata can be, I couldn't resist adding the plant to my secret squash experiment. The seedling joined the red kuri in the compost pile -- at the time, they were the exact same size. I figured I could grow one plant up the fence and let the other cascade down to the ground. Now, a month later, I am puzzled by the disparate health of the two plants. The delicata is stunted and yellowing. The red kuri is green and lush. If both were sickly, I would guess that it was an issue with nitrogen availability in the young compost pile, too much soggy weather, or perhaps some kind of pathogen carried over from composted diseased plants. Are the kuri and the delicata squash so different in their cultivation needs that one can thrive while the other struggles? My only guess is their true difference: the kuri was sown directly and the delicata transplanted. Other theories welcome!

Urban Composting

Tonight I attended an urban composting lecture at the City of Chicago's Center for Green Technology. For years, I have passed this center and I have always wondered what it looked like inside, and what programs they offered. When I recently I picked up a brochure at the library advertising spring educational programs -- including the one tonight on urban composting -- and decided to sign myself up. I wish I could attend some of the talks at the Family Farmed Expo going on at UIC, but my work schedule prevents it -- all I could squeeze in this week was a nighttime lecture. The Center itself is located on Sacramento in what appears to be a former industrial site near the train tracks. It has a killer view of downtown from the rear and is a green living oasis: rain barrels, solar panels, native plantings, the list goes on! Definitely worth a stop if you are over in these parts visiting the Garfield Park Conservatory.

The speaker for tonight's lecture was Bill Shores of Shores Garden Consulting. He had a long, well-designed power point presentation that covered nearly the entire spectrum of composting. I especially enjoyed his emphasis on "passive systems". So often, I feel like composting experts promote only complicated, labor-intensive methods, or else discuss specific bins that come at hefty price tags. Mr. Shores reassured the audience that just keeping leaves in plastic bags for 9 months would yield great compost. He lingered on the ease and benefits of sheet mulching (re-branded of late as "lasagna gardening"). On the topic of turning piles, he shrugged and called it "optional". He argued that microfauna, like pill bugs, do sufficient "turning" of the pile. I love an expert who makes their topic simple and accessible!

Shores did suggest multiple times that shredding was key to a well-maintained and efficiently decomposing pile. He showed some cheap options (a leaf vacuum, an electric mower) but then showed his shredder of choice: a big motor-driven shredder/chipper built in Wisconsin. It comes with a hefty price tag (upwards of $800) and he suggested going in on it with some neighbors...if only I had like-minded folks living on my block! Maybe I can find a big-box or hardware store that rents a similar device for a low hourly price. As it stands now, I'll just continue to run over my debris with the push mower before adding it to my piles. It made me wistful for places like Berkeley, CA where the public libraries also loan out household tools. I wish we had an urban garden tool library, where Chicagoans could borrow shredders, rototillers, electric and push mowers, etc. It is silly, when you think about it, that house after house, block after block, owns the same expensive equipment that is used only for a few hours every week, if that often.

Shores is a big fan of worm bins, and he had a lot of interesting pictures of the way he has integrated them into the urban garden he helps to run. I was interested that he has started trying to winter over some bins outside. I wish he had more time to discuss how he insulated the bins, and how well his worm population survived. The best tip he gave -- and one I haven't heard anywhere else-- was to "pre-digest" food scraps for the worms, by leaving them to anaerobic bacteria in a covered plastic bucket for a few weeks. Then you feed those softened scraps to the worms. This makes sense to me, since I have been noticing that some foods linger in the bin for quite sometime, no matter how finely I chop them. He spent a lot of time discussing fruit-fly control -- from my research, seems like beneficial nematodes are the best option, and he mentioned these too. I did check up on this and it seems like the fruit flies are a nuisance to humans, but do no harm to the worms themselves. Currently, he is spraying weekly Bt for control -- I am skittish of additional maintenance activities and additional cost. If I need to, I'll use a homemade fruit fly trap, but so far, so good (knock on wood).

I was able to bring up my concern to him that a family who cooks a vegetable-heavy diet at home most nights of the week simply can't rely on a single worm bin for all of their composting needs. He conceded that "probably six" bins would be needed in that case, and when I brought up the issue of space efficiency and apartment dwellers, he countered that the bins could be placed in otherwise neglected areas like crawl spaces. I appreciated his honesty -- I am beginning to bristle a bit at all of the brochures that present one bin as the answer to all composting needs. You either must have an outdoor system too, or you need to be ready to ramp up the bins as the worm population grows. Either way, it is more work than one single 30-gallon container, especially if it is going to be a genuine effort at composting and not just a fun science project.

The lecture was a survey of most of the methods I already use -- I have three different styles of outdoor bins, a vermiculture set-up and I have started sheet mulching (my first bed is pictured above - I am trying to "cook" it down with black plastic). I still felt like it was useful to hear tips from an expert, and I loved all of the pictures he showed of the various gardens and composting systems he maintains. Some of his salvaged wood bins are quite attractive, more so than my black plastic tumbler or my giant mesh "playpen". If I have any leftover leaves this season, maybe I will try the "leave it in the plastic bag" method. How to convince my neighbor -- who already shudders at my bins -- that a stack of plastic bags isn't an eyesore?

Winter Garden Project Update

Planning for my winter garden projects can often mimic planning for the actual garden itself. A long season stretches out ahead of me. In a fervor of excitement and overconfidence, I forget my work obligations, my family obligations and my budget constraints. Example: I actually printed out blueprints for a 6 foot long grape arbor, imagining I could set it up in my basement prior to the spring. A whole month of winter has gone by, and nothing has been done except lying on the couch imagining myself lounging in the dappled shade of fruit-laden vines. I have tabled that project for the moment. Anyway, that's where I want to put a chicken coop....someday. Here's the project updates, mostly to remind myself for next year, when I get carried away again.

1. Worm Bins

The worms have been relocated to the basement. They lived with us in our front hall for the first few weeks, but I was forced to send them into the netherworld of our house. First, the bin did smell. It wasn't a bad smell, but it was definitely not odorless. Before the worm bin enthusiasts jump all over this one, I promise that I did set up the bin correctly. It wasn't too wet, it had enough bedding and I was careful not to overfeed. But, I would come home after work, and my whole house was permeated with a gentle "rotting leaves" kind of smell. Not unpleasant, but also not the ambiance I'm shooting for in my living room. Second, in the interest of my worms' health, it was also better to move them a little further out of reach. Having them that close to the kitchen definitely led to the temptation to overfeed. The basement is more conducive to a weekly or biweekly burial of vegetable scrap. The rest just goes into one of our outdoor composters to freeze over until spring. The worms are just not breaking down the amount of vegetable matter that I thought they would. Maybe this is because they are new to their bin, and it is winter. I will keep an eye on this, but for now, they are barely scratching the surface of our daily compostable scraps.

2. Cold Frames

I have decided where the cold frames are going, and have measured out the area. They will get pride of place in a spot adjacent to the asparagus bed, since it gets some of the best southern sun in my garden. Something happened with the heavy rains in the fall, and this normally level section of my garden was regraded into a micro-slope. Now, I am trying to figure out how to prevent a spring bog in this little 3X5 ft area. I am probably going to dump a good amount of compost on there in the next few weeks, and let it over-rot until the spring, Lasagna-garden style.

As for the frames themselves, I have enough wood scrap around to build the base, most of it old shelving from the closet I re-organized this summer. I had planned to use some old storm windows as the top of the frame, until I started my library research. Jeff Ashton, author of The 12-Month Gardener, argues against use of recycled windows in cold frames. Kids, he warns "at some point, will climb on top of a cold frame, or kick through some other home-spun glass contraption. Apparently, the allure of a raised platform...is too much to resist...I've heard horror stories...kids, animals, or adults who were cut because they fell onto the frame, climbed on top and broke through, or sat on the frame thinking the glass would hold their weight". While I do usually try to avoid the "danger at every turn" approach to parenting, Ashton's warning seems wise. I am the mother of an avid climber, and can only imagine the damage that shards of glass could do to his little legs. So, I am planning on a reconnaissance mission to the hardware store to see what types of fiberglass or plastic I might be able to use.

I think this cold frame project is in reach before the cruel winds of March roll in, and my fingers get itchy to plant radish seed. I have a whole list of other things I wish I had the time to do over the winter: the grape arbor, a home-built wooden cheese press, seed starting shelves in my sunniest window, a chicken coop for the long-awaited chickens, and, most fancifully, a small urban greenhouse. That greenhouse will likely not materialize in the next few years, but I just found a cool jar, so my son and I will create a terrarium. Right after I finish those cold frames.

Worms!

After many years of talking myself out of vermiculture, I took the plunge and ordered a pound of red wrigglers for winter composting. I set the worms in a thick plastic bin I found for $1.99 at a local store. I drilled a few holes, added some wet newspaper and voila!

I was underwhelmed by the amount of worms when they arrived, but according to the seller, worms can lose 70% of their body water during shipping. I gave them a good drink in their bedding, and hopefully they will plump up.

I have already identified two challenges of worm composting for my family. First, my curious toddler wants to see the worms every few minutes. Clearly, these critters want to be snuggled down deep in their bedding, and my little guy wants to have them sit at the breakfast table with him. This is likely a function of natural curiosity and our pet-deprived home. These are the first non-human creatures we have (intentionally) hosted in our home. Fortunately, feeding the worms is almost as good as seeing them, so my son's job will be to carefully place scraps in the bin. If it takes him an hour, so be it. The second issue is the sheer amount of vegetable matter our family of three produces. Websites give various ratios for amount of scraps per square foot or per pound of worms, but the basic message is not to overwhelm the worms, especially not in new bins. Last night, as I stared at the mountain of compostables from our vegetable pad thai and fruit salad dinner, I realized that unless I dedicated some serious square footage to vermiculture, I was still going to be making the cold trip out to our regular composter.

We'll see what comes of this experiment, but I am embarrassed at my years of delay after seeing the low cost and ease of this project. If anything, it has inspired me to look at some other simple gardening projects I have been eying with trepidation for years. The worm bin has let loose the flood gates, and this winter, my son and I are going to have a new basement project: building cold frames for an early spring harvest!

Fall Compost

Today I am mulching the garden with this year's compost. I have many books and articles that give long, complicated instructions for composting, exhorting me to achieve the texture of a wet sponge, to layer exact amounts of brown and green material, and to adhere to precise turning schedules. One leaflet even recommends purchasing a special thermometer to take the temperature at the center of the pile. I do not have the time for this hands-on management approach -- apparently you get rapid results and rich, coffeeground-like material within weeks. I do have patience, so I am a slow, cold composter. Usually I end up with a mostly-broken-down melange that I can then use as my over-winter mulch. It has always broken down well by spring time.

I now have two bins and as winter sets in, I'll empty them on to my garden and then cram both of them full of fall debris. My longest relationship is with a black recycled plastic square bin composter. It is partially buried and was advertised as rodent-proof, and over three years this seems to be the case. My new acquisition is a tumbler composter....results pending. Apparently things work quickly in the barrel if I add some ridiculously expensive "compost activator" from the garden supply company. My guess is that I can toss some semi-broken down junk from my other pile, like a sourdough starter, and let nature take its course.

The tumbler is clearly appealing to a toddler: my little one is ecstatic about his new chore of turning the compost ferris-wheel style morning and night. It is more unsightly than the square bin. I am pondering the best placement for the tumbler, as it also has a large footprint with the metallic support frame. The square composter sits next to the back of the house, and with an exuberant border of (well-fed) dusty millers, it actually pleases the eye, the dark black setting off the beautiful silvery foliage.

Of course, the inevitable project is vermiculture. Thus far I have resisted the worm bin, mostly because my current composting scheme works for me. The appeal I can see is not having to schlep out to the compost bin with kitchen scraps on cold winter nights. I know, I know, you can keep stuff in the freezer and dump it as a batch. But there's no space in my freezer -- it's filled with chicken stock and tomato sauce. I could keep a large plastic bin under the sink. But that inevitably stinks -- and makes my green-by-convenience husband rethink his commitment to composting. And if I am filling a large plastic bin under the sink, why not throw some worms in? It would control the stink according to the evangelical worm literature. Okay. Maybe I have just talked myself into it. But now I suspect it is too cold to get worms shipped to me via the mail. Off to find a local source...