The Most Important Composting Material

We burn them and throw them away, yet they are one of the most nutrient rich sources of compost we can acquire; those annoying leaves that we begrudgingly rake up every fall.

Trees are plants with an amazingly wide root structure. These roots, combined with the hyphae network, have been documented to pick up nutrients a hundred yards from the parent structure.

From this blog, you should already understand the importance of how plants metabolize nutrients. These nutrients are systemically in the cell structure of those leaves. Leaves that by design are suppose to fall on the root structure around the tree and decompose into a rich soil around the tree base.

If you ever walk through a natural forest, kick the ground and you will discover an amazingly rich soil. This is what should be around our trees and around plants we are growing. Leaves are one of the most important composting materials we can find.

As with any biological process, studies show that different trees in varying soils will uptake minerals in their own unique ways. So the type of tree, and where it is growing, will have an impact on what nutrients the leaves are putting into out gardens compost. All the studies show that leaves are one of the best "minor" gathering plants to incorporate those important elements that may be missing from our diets.
So how do we utilize these leaves? Everyone who has raked leaves, knows they take way too much space and annoyingly blow around our yard and into our neighbors yard.

Step one is getting them under control. You will find a hundred different gimmicks for gathering leaves, (www.avoidgardenrippoffs.blogspot.com), but the best way to gather leaves is simply with your lawn mower. This will mulch the leaves and help them break down faster, as well as make them much easier to contain in a composter.

Composting is simple with leaves. However, be aware that not all leaves are usable. Black Walnut should be avoided and as a general rule, the best leaves, are those that are smaller such as Ash and Willow.

Some leaves are difficult to break down such as Oak, Sycamore and Hornbeam. If you have enough space to store these for years they can be used but if not, focus on those leaves that break down. Here is a list of good and bad leaves for composting.

Do not put the leaves in a plastic bag. Plastic can not breath and they will quickly become anaerobic, rotting into such a smelly mass you can't use them. As shown in the photo, wire that can allow oxygen into the leaves will control them and break them down in a manner that does not create the smell.

Most people have the expectation that by next year mulched leaves will break down into a rich soil building compost. Under the right conditions that can be true, but on the realistic side, I incorporate a small amount of leaves on top of my other composting materials every week. The leaves provide a good barrier to inhibit smells the neighbors may complain about, and as the acid from other rotting materials are incorporated into the smaller amount of leaves, I get a faster break down.

Don't be discouraged if it takes time, that is what organic gardening is all about.

This Quick Freeze

KTVB PHOTO

As you can see by the photo, our plants got caught with leaves on the trees and shrubs, and for many of us, completely unprepared for a quick freeze.

So what does this mean for our gardens and yards?

Shrubs that are deciduous will often break due to snow load on leaves that would have normally fallen off. Gently remove that snow, but be very careful due to the fact the limbs can break when they are frozen. If the snow is dry and fluffy, use a leaf blower to remove the snow so the limbs are not shaken.

If the snow is wet and sticking, and the blower method won't work, I prefer to prop up limbs and branches that are under too much strain with five inch cedar fencing boards you can purchase at Home Depot or Lowes. These boards are wide enough to distribute the branch weight and will stand up well by themselves from the downward pressure. With the branch now protected, you can use a broom to knock the snow off the top.
Many of us still need to prune our shrubs. Frozen branches are brittle from the outer layer of cell tissue crystalizing. If the shrubs are directly in the sunshine, test the pliability by bending an inside branch that can be sacrificed. If it can bend thirty degrees without snapping, you probably are safe to prune them.

When shrub pruning, keep in mind that a motor driven hedge trimmer creates severe vibration. If the shrub is borderline frozen, it would be better to use hand pruners. Proper pruning methods can be seen on this video.

Gardens that had carrots and other vegetables still in the ground can actually be pulled right now...yes, give it a try. The snow actually blanketed the ground fast enough, before the freeze, that the ground is not frozen. You will still see sprinkler systems being blown out as well. So before the snow is removed, and it freezes again, get those out of the ground.

The one thing you can count on in Idaho is the weather is going to change. We will probably warm up considerably and all this snow will be gone soon. So don't panic and be ready for a heat wave.

Soil is KEY

How you build your gardens soil, with nutrients and minerals, is key to true health.

I have been working with Jerry Bale and others on this process, for years now, and the truth is in the results. The amazing health of the people using this correct biological loop, is undeniable.

Our bodies need a large variety of minerals to balance the natural chemistry in our bodies. When these minerals are missing, our health suffers.

Taking pills with a few vitamins is not how our bodies best metabolize these elements. Food is going through a digestive process that utilizes the nutrients it needs. So one quick flush of a multi-vitamin is not how our bodies naturally absorb what is needed.

When we consume a vegetable, the plant has gone through a metabolizing process that has broken the element down, (example could be iron), in such a way as to make it easier for our bodies to take in what essentially is a non-soluble substance. As a professor very profoundly stated, in one of my biology classes about plant uptake, "consider the symbiotic relationship plants have with the fungi mycorrhiza, this is a process where a microscopic living organism breaks down an element that is essentially a rock, and makes it viable for the plant to metabolize that substance." The plant is part of the process that makes your body able to uptake the same element.

Volcanic ash, sea kelp, food refuse that has been taken from organic gardens (not off the shelf pesticide produce), wood chips (from trees without pesticides) and manure (from stock that is not on hormones or on chemical feeds), all composted through the Worm Composting process, is what creates soil that will make your garden produce incredibly healthy food.

You too can produce soil that will help your entire family live a more healthy life.

How Plants Make Us Healthy

Health is really what we need from what we eat. So what are we looking for?

The building blocks of our cells are generated from an amazing biological process, where the actual soil with living micro-organisms breaks down minerals and nutrients and actually injects it into the plant roots such as mycorrhiza.

Not only must those minerals and nutrients be available in the soil, but the living organisms that transfer and network those minerals must be in your soil as well. As living organisms, they must have an environment with moisture and some temperature control as with any thing trying to live. Soil that has been left out in the sun, to bake with no weeds or ground cover, is not going to have living organisms in it. So buying top soil from the local garden center that looks like fine moon dust, is not going to give you food with the health benefits your are wanting.

Plants make us healthy by transferring, and biologically breaking down, nutrients and minerals through the mycorrhiza process or biological loop. Then the plants metabolism, along with it's ability to create carbon atoms through photosynthesis, creates a molecular state that when consumed, your body can recognize and absorb those nutrients that actually started in the biological loop in the soil.

A plant can grow fast and green with lots of nitrogen - but that does not mean it is a plant that has absorbed the nutrients and minerals we need to be healthy.

I have been shocked at how few organic gardeners even consider this part of that necessary loop. Simply removing pesticides and GMO seed from your growing process is not enough. If you are striving for an organic garden, you need to understand the basics of soil biology. It's really not that complicated and this is one of the best University links that breaks it down in a simple manner to comprehend.

Information is the most important tool you can use in your garden.

What is Organic

Organic is such a buzz word in our culture, but does organic mean it is perfect or complete?

Most people want to stop consuming man made pesticides. This is a good start, but is this what makes food healthy?

What is healthy food?

These are the questions that this blog is focused on.

I was certified as a Master Gardener in 2006, and, although very informative, the program surprisingly did not answer the question. The truth is we need to search out these answers for ourselves, which takes time and effort most folks do not have. So a consolidated blog, focused on growing healthy food, (not just pesticide free), is what we need.

I am also a Certified Arborist, and Licensed in Idaho to apply restricted use pesticides, so focusing on this information became a study for me. In that search, I have been in dozens of certified organic gardens, quizzing the owners what they were doing in their food growing practices. Most felt they were organic because they believed they were pesticides free. However, they were using ditch water with pesticide run off, and often composting from feed lot waste with growth hormones, and wood chips that could have come from trees treated with systemic pesticides.

So the reality is; it is very difficult to get completely pesticide free.

The second issue was the food itself. Did it have the nutrients needed to help our bodies health.

It seems this should be the focus. As much as avoiding man made pesticides and chemicals, are we actually improving our health with the foods we eat.

The main study most growers are focused is how to make the plants grow fast to produce a crop. But in my search for better food, I am finding that fast repetitious growth actually depletes the soil and defeats the main goal - food that makes us healthy.

I am finding other back yard growers with similar findings and this has lead to our own research on how to create truly healthy food.