Compost and Seeders

Net Zero Waste dropped off another donated load of compost yesterday. The students spread it this morning, and Anna picked up another load from Harvest Power to cover the remainder of the campus terrace plots.

Working with two different municipal composters will give us a chance to see how their products compare over the course of the growing season. Harvest Power offers the advantage of being nearby. Their Richmond composting facility is the largest municipal composting operation in the region, and is just 10 km east of campus. In addition to making compost, they have a biogas digester to make methane from green bin waste, which fuels a generator to make electricity. Harvest Power is a big American company, with locations in nine US states, plus Ontario and British Columbia.

Net Zero Waste is a much smaller BC-based business, located 85 km east of campus, in Abbotsford. They are experimenting with compost-heated greenhouses, and they are the only company in our area to offer an OMRI-listed compost. OMRI is the "Organic Materials Review Institute," a nonprofit that determines whether agricultural inputs are allowed for use on certified organic farms. The Net Zero compost generally contains less plastic than the Harvest Power compost.

The biggest problem with the Net Zero compost has been getting it to campus. A student from Langley brought a couple of loads in his pickup truck earlier this spring, and a Net Zero sales rep brought the load we spread this morning.

Harvest Power compost (left) and Net Zero compost (right).

Unamended sandy soil (foreground), Net Zero compost (center) and Harvest Power compost (background).
All plots were sown to lettuce, spinach, and Swiss chard. The plants are growing
better in the compost than in the sand, and those in the Net Zero plot are a
bit bigger than those in the Harvest Power plot.

  

In most of the terrace gardens we incorporate the compost into the sand, rather than leaving it on top. The students learned to use the roto-tillar attachment on a BCS walk-behind tractor to accomplish this task this morning.

I also gave a demonstration of 'double digging' as a way to loosen soil and incorporate material without inverting the soil profile. Double digging is probably better suited to heavier soils than ours.

Here is a video I took in Kentucky, showing double digging in a heavy clay soil in
a high tunnel. The background music is my Old-Time band, The Raging Acorns.

The students top-dressed the potatoes with a little more compost.



The pac choi seems to be re-sprouting after Tuesday's harvest.

We seeded adjacent rows of lettuce with a Jang Seeder (top) and an Earthway Seeder (bottom) in order to compare the two push seeders. The Jang Seeder costs about $500, and the Earthway is just $130. The Jang is much heavier, and went through the mix of compost and sand more smoothly. When the lettuce emerges we'll see whether it lives up to its reputation as a more precise seeder.