Kicking off the Spring growing season with a big truck, a mountain of compost, and a lot of muscle

We recently got 30 yards of compost delivered to our farm thanks to a huge dump truck from Cannon Excavation. We know that the key to growing great produce is having great soil, so we continue to do our best to improve the mostly clay-based soil on our farm. Compost is a soil conditioner, mulch and fertilizer all wrapped into one. It feeds the soil microorganisms that help plants stay healthy, adds nutrients to the soil, and helps clay soil drain better and sandy soil retain water.

Here is a great drawing about compost I recently saw online

We have a small worm bin and create vermicompost in our apartment, but it only creates about 4 cups of compost every six months. We need a lot more than that for a quarter-acre farm plot! Last season, we also started a big compost bin at the farm and used all of our decaying vegetable leaves, stems, and some turkey manure. Well, let's just say that it is not a glamorous process to create compost, but it is a great way to decrease the amount of garden waste going to the land fill and create a nutrient rich additive for our soil. Unfortunately, we didn't realize how much waste one needs to create a huge amount of compost. Our 4'x4'x5' cube of compost broke down to mere inches of compost over the winter. Wow! We definitely want to become better at learning how to compost and get larger amounts of compost to use in our farm, but for know we are thankful for St. Peters Earth Center for creating enough to share with us.



Boba guarding our farm from her compost pile lookout!



Once we got our huge mountain of compost delivered, it was time to start using our muscles to shovel and wheel barrel it into our rows. We mounded up compost on each row and then till it into the soil. This year, we are trying an experiment of using different amounts of compost in each row to see if it makes a difference in plant growth. So far, we have 7 rows finished and plan to finish 8 more today. We plan to start planting on Tuesday after the 90°F temperatures are gone. We hope this excessively hot Spring will be good to our baby plants!

This year we are building vertical trellises for our climbing beans and are planning to protect them with additional chicken wire fencing so that the deer can't get to them. Last year, we learned that deer really love beans and this year they can go somewhere else to find some food!

Yep, it is just dirt, but it takes a lot of muscle to make dirt look this good! :)