Week 2 on the Farm: Compost!

Weather forecast: Tuesday, 49 degrees F, 60% chance of rain; Wednesday, 51 degrees F, 70% chance of rain.

So it looks like we may be dodging raindrops this week and that may very well determine what we're able to do. What I'd like to do with you this week is to show you how to make a couple of different kinds of compost. And if it isn't too wet, I'd like to show you how we loosen and aerate the soil in our beds without overly disrupting the life within them through mechanical tillage.

Here's a video by small farming gurus Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch that demostrates how they mimic nature's fertility systems in their gardens through compost and manual cultivation techniques. Take a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSNu1OBKqh0. The first 20 minutes is about soil fertility--the rest talks about small fruit.

One type of composting that I'm really excited about is vermicomposting, composting with redworms. This Cornell webpage contains a 9 minute video that explains why vermicompost is so good for plants: http://cwmi.css.cornell.edu/vermicompost.htm.

I hope these resources will be useful for you in better understanding what we're doing on the farm, so please take the time to look at them! Thanks.