THE DAYS OF COMPOST AND ROSES

By Richard Stanford

THE DAYS OF COMPOST AND ROSES will give you everything you need know about composting all year round.

Composters, methods, raw materials, location, soil building, green manures, winter, spring, summer, autumn – you will have more compost than you’ve ever imagined.

Your vegetable and perennial gardens will thrive – regardless of the current state of your land.

And you will accomplish all of this without chemicals, fertilizers, or back-breaking work.

This 2nd Edition includes a new chapter DARWIN’S WORMS, exploring the key role these amazing creatures bring to your garden and the part that Charles Darwin played in the discovery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Stanford
• Release date: Dec 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781105572388

Richard Stanford

Richard is a photographer, filmmaker and writer living in Vaudreuil-Dorion, Québec.  His photography has been exhibited at The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Vehicule Art Gallery Arbor Gallery, Skelly Gallery, Cornwall Art Gallery, Abbey for the Arts, and Critical Eye Gallery.  He has written and directed 50 documentary films and feature films.  The Adirondack Review, Montage, P.O.V., Canada's History Magazine and Ovi Magazine have published his stories and essays.

Book preview

Table of Contents

The First Scraps

Autumn

Winter

Soil Building & Green Manures

Spring

Summer

Green Manure Crops

Darwin’s Worms

Time

THE FIRST SCRAPS

The simple perception of natural forms is a delight.

-  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Your soil is alive.  If you want it to be healthy, fertile and continuously productive, it must be fed plenty of organic matter.  By alive I mean that every square inch of good garden soil teems with millions of microorganisms.

We are all familiar with one of the largest soil organisms, the ordinary earthworm, which you will soon consider to be one of your best friends by the time you’ve finished with this book.  Earthworms feed entirely upon raw, undigested vegetable matter.  In the gradual process of consuming and decomposing dead plant remains, soil organisms activate the release of valuable minerals and trace elements in a form that plant roots can absorb.

Humus is organic matter at its final stage of decomposition and that is our theme. Humus gives good soil its spongy texture.  It allows the necessary circulation of air to plant roots and soil, and it enables soil to absorb and retain the right amount of moisture.

Adding humus to garden beds and planting holes enhances nutrients and improves soil texture.  It helps loosen heavy clay soils and increases the water-retention capacity of sandy soils.  It contains organic matter and nutrients as well as a generous measure of underground organisms that keep soil healthy and productive.  Its dark colour absorbs heat from the sun, warming the soil.

Soil that is not regularly refuelled with organic matter can truly become lifeless and unable to support plants.  Your friend the earthworm will go elsewhere in search of food.  Minerals and other nutrients will remain locked up in soil particles, unavailable for growth without the intense activity of decomposition by microorganisms.

Chemical fertilizers can be poured on in huge quantities, but they won’t do a thing for the soil texture or for the soil-life population.  And of course, they’re definitely not free.

You can make humus easily yourself from many different – and free – materials:  grass clippings, leaves, vegetable plant foliage and roots, dead perennial plants and roots, kitchen scraps and more.  Composting is non-polluting.  Landfills are filling up and composting is now widely recognized as an easy, effective way to reduce solid waste at home. And how much waste is that?  Based upon my experience with a family of two, plus assorted companion animals, it amounts to ten to fifteen kilograms (22-33 pounds) per week!  There is no way I’m wasting that.

The alchemy of