On 09/18/2016 09:30 PM, songbird wrote:
T wrote:
...
I chop it up with a shovel. It comes out to about
1 to 3 inches loose packed when I am done. Then I
cover it up with dirt mixed with peat. (I don't have
leftover extra dirt, as at least half of the dirt is
rocks.)

The vegi scraps consist of avocado skins and seeds (which
I whack with the back of my ax), jicama skins, tomato
rinds, failed zuke fruit, lettuce trimmings, parsley
stalks, garlic wrappers, ends of carrots, ends of
cucumbers, purslane stems, bolted purslane (whole plant),
pepper ends, melon rinds, and so and and so forth. Plus
any weed that was foolish enough to invade my garden (not
dandelions as I am afraid they will sprout). I
keep a bag I fill with vegi scraps as I cook.

leave the dandelions out on the surface. in
your climate they'll dry out soon enough, then
they can be buried.


And, I plant about 4" above the scraps. The idea is that
when the root get long enough to reach the scraps, they
will be broken down.

yeah. probably ok as long as it doesn't
overheat or the gases or liquids from fermenting
don't mess up germination or get a fungi
going too close to the surface (before the
seeds can sprout).


The one time I have to dig up one of my holes to make
it deeper, I only found one onion skin that had not
decomposed. The rest had vanished. The hole was about
two weeks old.

melon rinds go really quick. in the worm
buckets here they're gone within three days
most of the time. other items persist longer
(carrot ends or potato pieces can persist for
quite some time if the ground is cool and damp)
pretty much any root crop if it isn't cooked,
frozen, dried or ground up may persist a while
until the fungi or other soil critters break
it down a bit. worms may nibble a little at
some things, but generally they don't eat
live plant material (some worm species will
drag leaves/grasses into their burrows, but it
is primarily food for the bacteria in their
gut).


I really do not know what the effect of a new plant
would be sitting on top of a bunch of vegi scraps. I
would like to not wait so long that nutrients get washed
away before the plants above it can take advantage.

But then again, I do not know what I am doing.

there is a huge amount of energy in food
scraps for other animals/bacteria/fungi. even
after it is fermented or digested by something
else, what remains can often fuel another few
rounds of various creatures/etc finishing up.

when you look at what happens when plants
photosynthesize and what the various chemical
compounds are created and all that energy gets
stored in one way or another. even the hard
to digest stuff like cellulose has a lot of
potential energy/chemical compounds useful to
a fungi...


songbird



Thank you!

My main concern was for my onion and shallot beds.
The nights are in the 40's F now and the days in the 70
to 80's F, I do not know how much heat I will be creating
in the beds. I am racing to make sure I am ready when my
order of bulbs arrives. I won't back fill until they do.

I also am including tomatillo wrappers too. They have
FINALLY started to ripen. (I shake the bushes and
pick up whatever falls off.) We eat them like cherry
tomatoes.