We're talking about the equinox, early signs of spring in our garden, and Gabe's garden obsession: compost!
We're talking about the equinox, early signs of spring in our garden, and Gabe's garden obsession: compost!
Welcome to leafing out Episode Six podcasts about gardening. I'm Gabe.
Rebecca:I'm Rebecca.
Gabe Long:And we're not experts. We're amateur podcasters and amateur gardeners sharing what we learn as we learn it on our gardening journey. And today we're talking about, we're talking
Rebecca:about first signs of spring. And composting, composting gates favorite subject. If you want to have a lot of fun at a cocktail party, you just get cornered by Gabe and let him talk to you for 30 minutes about composting whether you like it or not. That's right.
Gabe Long:Um, all right, Rebecca. Well, I feel like you have a really great love of spring. I mean, who doesn't love Spring, but I feel like you have given me a new appreciation of it. And you You talk a lot about the way the light changes in February and how that's sort of the first little inklings of spring for you. So I'm curious, what are some of your favorite things about spring water, things you're noticing right now?
Rebecca:It's true. I really love springtime. I think it's because my birthday is in late April. And when I was a little kid, I used to always know when the daffodils were blooming. This was in New Jersey, when the daffodils were blooming, I would think now it's almost my birthday. It was like a romantic notion that I had as a kid or something. It's, they're here, they're signaling that it's almost my birthday. But it is fun to have a birthday around like cherry blossom season and when things are starting to really get showy, and it's full on spring. But today, we're not quite there yet, at least not here in New England right now. As we record this, we're just a few days before the first actual day of spring, the spring equinox, which is March 20. I was just researching the the equinox. And I'm so bad at science that I always forget this kind of stuff. And every time I Google it, I'm like, ooh, all over again. But for those who don't know, Equinox, what does Equinox translate to gay people night?
Gabe Long:Equal? Equal is equal and Knox is night in? I'm going to go with Latin, maybe Greek? I'm not sure.
Rebecca:I think that would probably be Latin on the spring equinox. They're equal amounts of daylight and sunlight, daylight and nighttime. Oh, my goodness. It's the day that the northern hemisphere actually starts tilting toward the sun. So on March 20, if you're where we are in the US, the sun is going to rise due east and actually set do West, which it doesn't do year round. I just thought that was kind of cool. I don't know. It feels kind of witchy or something. Oh, totally, you know, totally. But yeah, it's just a nice time of year. I really love seeing the first snow drops come up, out back and I didn't realize that the snow drops have a really nice scent. You really have to I only notice this because one as I was like trying to brush the leaf litter off around them, I broke off one of them and picked it up and it has like a really lovely, floral, clean smell. But you would have to if you don't want to break off a flower you'd have to really get on your hands and knees ease your nose in there because it's not very potent but it is really lovely smelling.
Gabe Long:What are your other first signs of spring that you love? I mean, the Witch Hazel's the thing that comes to mind.
Rebecca:Yeah, I mean, our Witch Hazel has been blooming since what mid February and that is just such a gift like everyone should have a witch hazel. They there are a bunch of which I should say there are a bunch of witchhazel is that bloom at different times? I think the STS native blooms in late fall, right? Oh yeah. But well, the one we have is Hama Melis hammer, MLS intermedia Arnauld promise. But the witchhazel is just such a gift. Because it's like the only thing blooming in February and it must kind of bloom as soon as as soon as there starts getting to be enough light. I'm going on a total tangent here. But we were recently doing some work at a local farm. And they do all their farming in greenhouses. And they were talking about how their plants kind of, you know, wake up and start really the growing season for them really starts around February 15. Is that what they said? Yeah, 15th Because that's the point at which there starts to be the days start to be long enough that the plants are like all right time just trying to get started. Which was cool to hear just because like we think about it, those of us who are not farmers, you know, think about spring coming when the weather gets really warm and we associate the warmth with the plants waking up. But so much of it is actually about the amount of daylight in the day. I thought it was just comforting to hear that and think about the like micro seasons within seasons and how even kind of what we think of as the middle of winter During terms of the freezing weather is a time when the light is changing so much that plants are able to start growing in a totally different way. I just thought that was so cool.
Gabe Long:Yes, I've heard farmers refer to the period when there's fewer than 10 hours of light per day is the Persephone period, because that's when, even in a greenhouse regardless of the temperature, growth really stops, so you can keep a plant alive, but it's not going to grow, it'll just sort of survive at whatever size it's at, and then get coming out February 15. And beyond, it starts to regrow.
Rebecca:So I love the like romantic pneus of of that it's like, supports my, my feeling that gardening and farming and agriculture is like a very nostalgic work full of and selja for me anyway, what else am I noticing right now with our plants and stuff. I mean, there's no drops are coming up. And they're beautiful. And just like so cheerful and friendly to see. I also was looking up at some of the trees and noticing that the shapes of the very tips of the trees is a little bit different because they are starting to starting to produce buds a tiny bit. And it's cool to see there that like gnarled spiky, little tiny bits that you wouldn't notice unless you were really looking for them. But it's happening. I also was noticing that our Magnolia has fuzzy buds. And I just learned something that I thought was so cool. The fuzz of course has a purpose. And that the fuzz is actually protecting the flower inside like insulation. It's like a tiny
Gabe Long:fur coat. Yeah, of course, that makes so much sense. It's cool.
Rebecca:Let's keep them from freezing. Yeah. So when Magnolia actually blooms, we can like appreciate the fuzzy capsule, yeah, again. And the other thing I was gonna mention is just that we were away last weekend, visiting Gabes parents who live like 40 minutes south of us. And it's only 40 minutes. It's like a quick drive down there. But because they're so close to the ocean, they're always a couple of weeks, kind of ahead of us in the spring. And it was so nice to see that the forsythia is already blooming down there. It's just it's right around the corner, even though it still feels like yeah, winter. So the other thing I wanted to mention in terms of like, right where we are right now, in early, early spring, late winter, is just about not cleaning up leaf litter, which maybe you can speak to, but we've become big believers in not cleaning up your leaf litter right away, there's like this big move to, things start getting a little bit warmer. And it's like, Oh, we got to go out and clean up the garden to get ready for the season. And we got to cut down all of the brush and dead plant matter. And inevitably, some leaves have gotten blown around, I got to clean up all those dead leaves and make everything nice and tidy. Don't do that. If you're doing that don't do that. It's really good to wait until the temperature is consistently above like 50 degrees. Right? Yeah. I said you should talk about it. And I talked about
Gabe Long:No, that's great. I'll put a little asterisk on there. It's interesting, one of our favorite podcasts, plant Rama just mentioned this in their episode. And I'm just going to kind of repeat what they're what they're saying in terms of I think there is you know, can be hard to go all or nothing as far as clean up. And we have a bunch of our backyard that is lawn and if you leave big, you know piles of leaves on the lawn, the the clover and other sort of grasses will die underneath it. So they'll come back in the spring, you know, but you're not doing them a great service but leaving whole leaves on the lawn. So I would say as much as possible. Yeah, save your leaves, rake them into your garden beds. They're great mulch as they break down. And yet, particularly with cutting things back even whatever dead stocks you have still sticking up, just leave those like leave those until you see you know, the new growth coming. There's there's sort of, I guess, in my mind, overwinter those stalks or something for the snow to land on. And in the spring, I feel like they give real structure to your garden. I guess it's a matter of aesthetics. But I feel like there's really no downside to leaving those because there are so many insects that bees and other insects that overwinter in those dead stocks and then like you're saying it's only when it's above 50 consistently that they start moving around and you can clean that way out. Yeah,
Rebecca:yeah, we think about pollinators as honey bees often. And honey. These are wonderful honey bees are not native to North America, though. They're wonderful and they're supportive of our environment. But the native pollinators to North America usually make their Homes in, in the ground over winter, and in like dead plant material like hollow stocks if you have like an elderberry shrub or lots of shrubs have this, you can look at the shrub in winter while the material is dead and you if you break a stock, it's hard. It's like a straw. And insects are using that space to overwinter. Plus it's just nicer to do the cleanup when it's nicer out. But I also relate to wanting to
Gabe Long:get started. Started well I'll give a Getting Started joy for today, which is that I just planted tomato seeds in the basement. Not in the backyard. Not all backyard. No, no, but I planted peas a couple of weeks ago. And you know things are growing. I think that's the
Rebecca:other like, hint of spring thing is, is I like imagining all of the like activity happening in people's basements and people's weird little closet corners of the Grow lights starting there little tiny seeds and everybody's doing their little project. Yeah, getting it ready. Yeah, there's a sweetness to that. The other Okay, one more cool this time of year thing is that it's not just our outdoor plant friends that are enjoying more light our house plants are changing their life cycle is adjusting to based on the amount of daylight during the day, which I never knew until like, yeah, last spring or something. But um, if you have some houseplants, now's a good time to fertilize them start, you can start fertilizing them now that we have more hours in the day of sunlight, because they've been overwintering themselves, even though they're in a temperate climate controlled environment, they kind of go dormant because of that date, 10 hours of daylight thing that he was talking about. So now is the time when you can start fussing with them. And you know, it's it's a nice time of year to remember to change the soil and fertilize if you
Gabe Long:want to cut them back a little bit. If you want to reshape them, they're going to have new growth soon. So it's good, you want to know
Rebecca:that Yeah, you don't really want to want to trim back your houseplants too much in the middle of winter, because not a good time for them to grow. So now's a fine time to do that. The other thing that these farmers were talking about, they have like a whole greenhouse full of house plants that they're cultivating and stuff. And they were saying that their advice to people about their house plants is you have to really fertilize your house plants because you have to think of the dirt that your house plants are started out in as like one meal for your house, plant the world like a big bowl of food because that dirt that it's in contains all of these, you know, minerals and all this nutrition for the house plant, that's that plant is going to consume all of that nutrition. And it's going to need more, you can't just expect it to live with like one big bowl of spaghetti and meatballs forever. So the fertilizer that you're doing is renewing that and you also want to like change out the dirt. Sometimes we've got to
Gabe Long:Yeah, and it's not a bad idea. You know, just to look at the roots of your plant. Like that's something that with house plants, you know, it is this sort of pretty artificial environment. So you get a sense of oh, is it really rootbound? Does it you know, does it need a larger pot or their you know, if you've got an orchid and it's not doing well you might see that the you know, maybe the roots are brown the overwatering and rotting the roots, you can get some information by taking a look at those roots.
Rebecca:Okay, I think now is a good time to hear from our sponsors. Just kidding. We don't have any sponsors. We don't have that many lists because the native pollinators in our backyard. Yeah, I'm Gabe, do you want to talk about compost? I would love nothing more than we only have like 10 minutes for you to talk about compost game, not all day and night.
Gabe Long:Right? Well, I thought I would start just by giving an overview. I feel like composting is something that people are very passionate about. And they're really like camps of like, oh, you compost this way the greens and the browns. You do it that way this way that way.
Rebecca:And then you also have the camps have, you can't compost in a city you're going to get rats, there's no way to do it. And then I feel like a lot of people we talked to are like either composting and having it picked up. Or they're like I really would love to get into composting but what maybe you could give us some advice for like, what would you do if you were starting right interested in starting out composting.
Gabe Long:So I would say to like the beginner composter never composted anything before and this is a good season to be to be thinking about it if you want to, you know, take that on as a new project for your garden this year. All composting is is just any sort of organic material breaking down. And that is a natural process that you honestly don't need to help along. I mean, you think about you know the body drawer of your fridge when you leave the lettuce in there too long like it. It's a very sort of artificial clean environment and that lettuce is gonna break down no matter what you do. And so that's the process that's going to take place with any organic material that you have outside and everything that people who compost talk about as far as Yeah, ratios of green to browns or doing this doing that, that's all about gaining some advantage for that process. Whether it's speeding up that process, that's what the ratio is of green to Browns is is getting that process to move faster.
Rebecca:What do you mean to say greens to browns?
Gabe Long:Sure. Okay. So greens and browns, you hear a lot talked about in compost, basically, greens are things that are high in nitrogen. So your kitchen food scraps, or freshly cut grass, which would literally be green, like living green. Yeah, living plant material that still has like it's going to have water in it, it's going to have nitrogen in it. And then browns are sort of dead things. So dried grass, dry brown leaves, newspaper, shredded cardboard, those sorts of things.
Rebecca:What about like, when I finally do trim back my dead perennial order that has like, you know, dried, decorative grasses and hydrangea blooms and stuff like that. Yeah,
Gabe Long:all of that would be those would all be browns, and those can all be composted. I guess we're getting off track here a little bit, my point was just that you can compost just by taking I mean, again, like it's all about sort of how pretty you want it to be how fast you want it to go. Obviously, you want to avoid, you know, rats and other pests. But basically, you can take any organic matter any, any sort of thing that's not like plastic or rock or metal and put it outside and it will create compost. So you know, maybe if you're beginning compost, or you're, you know, maybe you don't have an ideal setup, try just taking a bunch of your leaves that you know, around your yard and either just put them in a pile and you know, sort of in the corner where they won't blow around too much you can if you have some sort of bin, you can use really any kind of Bin. chicken wire is really good if you just go and get some chicken wire and make a little cylinder out of that. And you can put a bunch of leaves in there. If you want to add in just some, you know, simple vegetable scraps, your whatever the cut ends of your celery and broccoli and you know, lettuces kind of put some of that very basic stuff in there. That will break down over time and it'll create like a good compost.
Rebecca:So are you saying like, you have all your leaves in the in this, say you're using a chicken wire, like bent into a cylinder shape. If you throw in some kitchen scraps, some like carrot peel or rotting celery from the bottom of the fridge, that is not going to speed up how fast all that stuff breaks down?
Gabe Long:It will Yeah,
Rebecca:I always feel like you should combine it just because it like seems like a good idea. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah.
Gabe Long:So there's a lot of different ratios that are thrown around about that balance between greens and browns. But in general, you want way more Browns than greens. You know, I've heard like tender ones, I'd be like, Oh 32 ones that people are 321, whatever. But you want by volume, a lot more of that brown material than the sort of wet fresh material for a couple of different reasons. One is just smell. I mean, if you imagine like taking a bunch of sort of banana peels and squeezed out lime halves and whatever, and you put that in a pile, it's gonna it's gonna smell like rotting food, right? If you have that mixed in with a whole bunch of shredded leaves, then you're it's not gonna smell or it'll smell a little, maybe you'll get sort of on a hot day like an earthy smell, but you won't get that sort of, like, putrid rotting smell, I guess. Yeah, I would say that there's sort of any number of, of roads to go down. But as with so many things in gardening, I think that so much of it comes it's sort of your own recipe that you need to develop a little bit as far as like, what kind of organic waste? Are you actually producing? What are you comfortable with? What might attract pests will kind of pest you have in your area. So all of that leads to in my mind, the best way to get started is start with something like leaves and a few sort of like kitchen scraps and you'll get a feel for it. You can you know, there's tons of resources online as you sort of get into it. You know, the metaphor I always come back to is cooking. You know, somebody says like, oh, sear the steak on both sides. And if you're, if you've never cooked before, you know maybe look up a video of that or whatever, you're gonna come across some different problems that are kind of unique to your situation, but you basically will Want to have that organic matter somewhere where it's going to be getting some air? You don't want it in like a totally closed container? Because then if it doesn't have enough oxygen, it will get kind of Gross. Gross. And, and a little. Yeah, putrid. And you want to get
Rebecca:some because of like good bacteria versus bad bacteria? Um,
Gabe Long:yeah, I mean, it has to do with basically aerobic versus anaerobic environments. If it's aerobic, meaning that there's oxygen in it, the types of bacteria you get, the waste products from those bacteria are less stinky or something, there's sort of it works better to create compost,
Rebecca:bacteria difference in oxidized and oxidized I don't know what I'm talking about with anaerobic. Yeah,
Gabe Long:anaerobic means without oxygen. And that's where you get that sort of, you know, bottom of the vegetable drawer like sludge, right? Right, right, right, it's breaking down, but you get these nasty smells, you get sort of a lot of liquid that's building up. So if you have a container, and you have things that are breaking down and sort of smashing down on themselves, then there's not going to be any air at least in portion of that pile. And then it's creating that anaerobic environment. So
Rebecca:this might be why people talk about turning your compost. Exactly. Yeah, I am learning things.
Gabe Long:Mm hmm. So yeah, turning your compost is another thing that can be useful. I think it's, I hesitate to sort of say, like, yeah, turn your compost, just because it's another thing that sort of intimidates people of like, Oh, if I don't turn my compost, it's going to turn into like this sewage heap? And it's like, no, no, no, you do need some air in there. That's why the chicken wire can be good. But the turning is, is off as long as you are not, you know, in some sort of extreme scenario with what you're putting in there. As long as you have plenty of leaves, whatever it might be that sort of light and fluffy and brown, you're you don't really need to turn your compost that will increase the amount of oxygen in there. It'll speed up the process, but it's not a requirement. It's sort of this additional thing that you can do to make it move faster.
Rebecca:So do we have compost in the basement that we're going to use in our garden?
Gabe Long:Yes. So we have a very complicated, some would say overly difficult system of composting and Goldberg system, we really do. But maybe I'll describe it and maybe in its describe it in like two sentence excessive corners, there might be there might be something useful. So what we do is we take basically all our food scraps, including, you know, small amounts of meat, oil, all that stuff. That's another thing. This is a slight tangent, but people are always like, oh, you can't compost meat. It's like, no, of course, you can compost me, what do you think happens to me, you know, breaks down the risk with meat, oil, food leftovers from a plate is pests that that is, you know, has a lot of calories in it. It smells like something that has a lot of calories in it. And as a result, it's very attractive to rats and raccoons and that sort of stuff. If you take a piece of lettuce and you throw it out in your backyard, that's not particularly more appealing than just a leaf off of a tree, right? There's not
Rebecca:here. But if you're in the country, and you have like rabbits and deer and stuff like that might be a little bit different depending on like, what volume you're talking about, and what your circumstances are, right circumstan of what your point is about, like, you got to kind of figure out what works for you. This is where it comes. Yeah, come in with like, the barrels that are closed, that you can like, turn and stuff that are like they're protective, and all of that.
Gabe Long:Yeah, it definitely depends on your circumstance. But in general, you what you're what you're looking at is, is is the thing that you're throwing out there really different than what's already available. So even, you know, deer or something, are they really going to come looking for that one, you know, the end piece of the lettuce that you cut off, you know, I think probably not, especially if it's mixed in with some leaves and some other things anyway, so we take all of our we put all of our food scraps in a little container on the counter. Those go into a Bokashi system in the basement, which is an intentionally anaerobic environment. It's inside a sealed bucket and you pour like a little bit of this brand that's inoculated with a specific set of bacteria. That begins the process of breaking stuff down. And then after a few weeks, there's kind of this mush in there. And then that goes out to bins outside where it finishes the composting process. I mix the indoor material, the food scraps with leaves, grass, you know, whatever sort of garden stuff that we have available, that'll add some air into it and kind of create some Something of a balance between greens and browns, even though I'm very unscientific about that. And it does, we do get compost quite fast as a result of that quite in depth system.
Rebecca:You love a project.
Gabe Long:I do love a project,
Rebecca:I'll tell you this, the best thing about compost to me is that when we started composting, I was absolutely shocked at how much our levels of garbage that our household was producing went down. I could not believe how much of our garbage production was just food scraps. And like even just composting, the green matter is a huge change. Huge, huge, huge change. For us, we take out the trash, I don't know, let we need to take it out less than we used to mine kind of a lot. And between recycling and composting, the amount of garbage going out of this house is pretty low, which feels really good.
Gabe Long:And getting back to that question of the aerobic and anaerobic that is actually a pretty significant thing about composting. Not only are you not taking up space in a landfill and taking out extra trash and all of that, but when you have food scraps that go into a landfill, they're packed into that landfill and in in a oxygen free anaerobic environment. As they break down, they create methane, which is of course an incredibly powerful greenhouse gas much more powerful I think 10 times four times more powerful than carbon dioxide. If those same food scraps break down aerobically, so breaking down in a compost pile that's, you know, has some oxygen they create a very small amount of carbon dioxide but no methane at all. So yeah, composting is good, but I feel like there can be an intimidation I guess my maybe I'm leaning too hard into this but I think there can be an intimidation factor of like, oh composting, that's such an intense that you know, it's like can I compost Am I good enough at gardening to compost it's
Rebecca:like a science experiment. Yeah,
Gabe Long:I again like just take some leaves throw it in a cylinder of chicken wire. The other thing that you do need is you need a little bit of water so if it's you have to have a little bit of a balance between the amount of air and the amount of water don't just put those like under the edge of your roof where they get no water at all if the the water
Rebecca:just like helps things rot faster basically yeah the water your compost need to get rained on you wanted to get some rain yes
Gabe Long:all you don't have to like water. You don't need to water it. You know, as you get into this, then yes, you sort of like manage how much water is in there, this and that. But at the outset, yeah, put it out where it gets some rain. You're good to go.
Rebecca:We love composting. Write to us with your composting questions. Yeah, and Gabe will answer them on the air. I will answer every single one. If you need to be talked into composting if you're intimidated about composting, we would love to talk about it. We love this stuff. I think that is going to conclude our episode for today. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for listening and for being out. If you have a question about composting or anything else you want answered on the podcast. You can email us or even better send us a voice memo at leafing out pod@gmail.com Or you can DM us on Instagram we're at leafing out pod over there too. And you know it'd be so great if you're still listening at this point. Could you just go over to Apple podcasts and rate and review us that really would help us and it would help other people who are interested in gardening find our podcast. Happy gardening. See you out there. Out there.