Today begins our five weeks of soil cooking. There are a lot of various weeds in our lot, bermuda grass in particular. This lot has been vacant for at least 50 years, so many things have been growing, including random car parts and oil cans. (However, I don't think our soil cooking is intended to kill any car parts that may be buried.) So, we made a trench around the edge of our plot. Then we wet down the top 8 inches of our soil and made a whole bunch of mud. It was actually quite fun. At one point there was a suggestion of taking off our shoes and stirring the mud with our feet, but this was determined to be rather dangerous. So shovels it was. Once we were completely mudded up, we covered the whole plot with 4 mil drop cloth (it was suggested we should use at least 2 mil) and we filled in the trench with dirt, over the cloth, to seal it. Now our soil is just going to sit and cook for 5 weeks. Some folks suggest up to 3 months to really get the weeds cooked and gone. But, I think our whole garden is ready to get growing. So cook baby cook! (disco inferno?)
P.S. Oh and on the drop cloth issue. Another suggestion I was given was to make somethign akin to a double-paned window. You do one drop cloth and then a layer of something (in the scenario I heard it was plastic bottles) and then another drop cloth. Its supposed to cook even better.

Mulch

Today, Martha and I took two pickups and went to SMUD. They have a GINORMOUS pile of mulch that you can take for free. So we loaded up the beds and took it to the garden. I have to say it was quite some work getting all that mulch in the cars. It was also pretty comical, both Martha and I climbing up the mulch pile to scrape it down into the bed.
After the dump off at the garden, I took some home and put it in our garden. When I put it around the agapanthas and potato bush, it really improved the look on the corner. The composition of this mulch isnt' the prettiest I have seen (not like the cedar that our neigbor gave us), but it really set off the green of the plants on that corner in a really appealing way.
Did I mention this was free? YAY SMUD!

Herb Spiral

We went to visit Fremont Community garden last night to take a look at their composting system. It was a really neat experience to see what our garden could end up looking like. Of course, Fremont is a city-owned garden, and they invested something like $100,000 in building raised beds and adding paths and art etc. We obviously don't have those resources.

As soon as we walked in, a gardener picked a HUGE watermelon and cut it up to share with us. I am not a huge watermelon fan due to slight alergies, but I partook of the offering. I forgot the feeling of watermelon juices just running off of your entire hands, and just the crisp feeling of taking a bite into a slice.

After we checked out the compost and got some ideas, we got a quick tour of the garden. Its there that I saw this totally intriguing concept. An herb spiral. Basically it is a way to put a whole bunch of herbs in a small space. The spiral creates height differences that allows for different environments that are suitable for different herb types. For example, at the top, you would have an herb that needs lighter watering, while at the bottom, you may have kind of a bog for herbs that need more constant water. You can also set up the herbs to provide more or less light in different areas of the spiral. I have borrowed the attached picture of an herb spiral from http://gardeningtipsnideas.com/

Inititally we were not going to plant herbs in the New Era Garden because I like having them at home. However, this concept makes me want to create one of these in the garden. Really its just an aesthetic thing. I still don't wish to have my herbs that far from my house, but I just feel like it would add such a nice calming feeling to our plot. We'll see.

To worm or not to worm

So our first bit of compost discussion revolved around whether we should use the brown/green method or vermiculture.
The brown/green concept revolves around using brown materials for carbon and green materials for nitrogen. My first and only experience with compost has been with the brown/green concept in my backyard. We (meaning J) took a plastic trash can and punctured it throughougt to allow air to move through the compost. Since he did this, we have been filling it, slowly, but surely. Mostly we use waste from the kitchen, including coffee filters and grounds, and then some leaves and newspaper. I do have to say that I really enjoy taking the pieces of vegetables we don't cook and leftovers we don't eat, and putting them in the bin. In the future, my uneaten food will be used to grow new food for us to eat. How cool is that concept? (Feel free to sing the Circle of Life from the Lion King now if you so desire.)
Our composting commitee has decided that the New Era garden will start out with this type of compost.
Now, what I know about vermicomposting. Vermiculture uses worms to break down the materials. Baiscally, you just take a bin and line the bottom with worms and let them eat through the food.
I don't really know at this point what the benefits and deteriments are to either type of compost. Although we are going to start out sans worms, we will be discussing what the future benefits might be to moving to the worm-based system later.
So that's really it for now on the composting. I am just trying to learn a lot about the two different types and what materials are best for each system. Next week, we will go tour two community gardens to check out their composting systems. Who would ever think it would be so much fun to talk about and learn about how to use left over food?