Hi Everyone! I teach in a small rural primary school in Victoria ,Australia and I am presently busy trying to get a permaculture garden up and running. I am using sheet composting on bare ground ( Ph about 5) and I am using - a solution of horse manure with a little worm castings to "seed" my ground,followed by about 8 cm of grass cuttings , a liberal dose of lime, 8 cm of tree mulch and finally a thick layer of "spoiled " hay.It seems to be working okay as I checked the temp a few days after putting down the latest section and it was around 42C. Any thoughts? Can you offer any suggestions/improvements? There does not seem to be a lot of literature available on this form of composting . . When ( I am in a temperate climate region) can I expect to be able to plant? Thanks in advance for your input
Not sure I understand your question exactly there Serengeti, but if you have enough finished compost, you can plant into that lovely sheet mulch right away, simply by making holes through the layers of mulch, scratching the soil at the bottom a little bit, and filling the holes with plugs of compost, and planting into the plugs. If the plants are going to out live the mulch the crowns may get exposed as the mulch diminishes, but it works with short lived annuals. Of course, if you are sheet mulching to kill invasive grasses, it may be better to leave the sheets in tact until you have a complete kill, as any small amount of light will trigger the grasses into action again... By the way, welcome!
If you keep the mulch to a depth of 15-20cm even as the crops are growing, it will help keep the soil moist and discourage weeds and grasses. Sue
Hi Serengeti I wouldn't use lime as it can be a bit harsh, use dolomite and a mineral rock dust, wet the newspaper before laying it down using a small amount of either liquid kelp, molasses or yogurt and water. Did you use newspaper in your process? Are you going to green manure crop a few times before planting food crops?
Hi Serengeti, We have tried all kinds of sheet composting. We put down newspaper first and cardboard first, but found this made the stuff abouve it dry out too quickly, so we no longer use newspaper or coardboard. We tried various layers of stuff as per a huge number of 'recipes' from books, innernet etc. Finally we have worked out the best solution. 10-20cm of manure (free from the saleyards). Top with straw - any straw, as it makes no difference if it is lucerne, pea or wheaten. (Personally, I hate pea straw as it brings in the mice and bloody peas grow endlessly out of it. Barley straw is my favourite, because it is soft and doesn't do so much damage to my girly hands.) Stand back and whistle - that brings the worms in - let THEM do the digging. You can plant into this one week after putting it down. The straw on top stops any weeds coming through. We are also in a temperate climate in Vic.
Hi Serengeti, you need to correct your pH5 problem and aim for around 6.5. Do that by liberally applying dolomite or limestone. Then add blood and bone with 10% potash at a rate of about a cupful per sq metre. On top of this apply animal manure - a mixture of sheep, cow, horse and well seasoned chook poo. The ratio here should be around ½ bucket or mixed manure per sq metre. Cover this with mushroom compost. I understand you're probably limited in your access to these materials as you're at a school and probably paying for this yourself or with limited funds but use as much of it as you can. You can't leave out the limstone though. Then you have to dig all this into the soil. Don't confuse sheet mulching with no dig gardening, it's different. When your enriched mixture is worked into the soil, water it well and leave it for at least a week to let everything settle. Retest the soil. When you're ready to plant, get all your plants in and then start your sheet composting. The plants can be in for a week or so before you start mulching. This can be a mixture of stray, hay, old grass clippings, leaves, seaweed, sawdust or any other organinc material that will break down quickly - not wood chips or pinebark though as they take too long to decompose. Then add more manures and blood and bone to that layer. What you get is a sheet of decaying material over the surface of the soil which rots down and becomes compost - which is why it's called sheet composting. BTw I wouldn't add newspaper to your cultivated soil but would add it, shredded, to your sheet of mulch. The advantage of this method is that you'll end up with more fertile soil at the end of the growing season and build on that every year.
Sheet Composting Thank s to all of those people that so quickly replied to my request for ideas on sheet composting. You have given me much food for thought!! On another topic can anyone suggest to me what is a good permaculture design certificate course run in Victoria or Tasmania?
G'day serengeti, I along with twenty-three other individuals participated in the Bendigo 2005 PDC. This was a amazing opportunity to be totally immersed in a two-week (seventy-two hour) residential course. I am not sure if the course is running again this year, but I hope (for the sake of those whose pleasure it will be to undertake it) that it does. I learnt so much at this course. Some four-months have passed since we graduated and I am still pulling out bits of knowledge from the deeper regions of my mind and applying them to the projects that I am involved in (with very positive outcomes to date). From the communal feeling of dormer-type accommodation, to the expertly prepared, (organic) wholefood-based, and extremely tasty meals, and to the dedicated and professional wisdom of the lecturers/presenters, this course was a success from start to finish. If the same crew present a PDC in Bendigo again this year, I would not hesitate in encouraging you to sign up. If you're looking for decades of combined wisdom from some of Australia's most respected permaculture practitioners/teachers, all combined in a setting that provides practical knowledge for the conditions that are ideally suited to your location (temperate Victoria), then Bendigo is for you. Keep up the good work with the children and the garden - fertile soil and fertile minds will be for the benefit of us all . Some links to last year's course info, and to the websites of the people that taught us: https://www.permaculture.biz/SalvosPDC/home.htm https://www.permaculture.biz/SalvosPDC/S ... _Flyer.pdf Cheerio, Mark.
hmmm..digging vs. sheet mulchinb Hmm... So, help me out with something. I have a garden which has been sheet mulched in the past and rarely and occassionally tilled by hand (and not too deeply). The garden is in a bit of a sad state (as we had a daughter born in the fall and have been busy with her), and I want to get it ready for the upcoming season. It is a fairly clay soil and I had thought to get a late green manure crop in. But that would require tilling of sorts. So I thought I'd justadd some ammendments, manure, and sheet mulch it again. I am confused about this whole digging concept. From my understanding, digging turns up all the little happy critters beneath the surface and disrupts theire cycles and abilities to aerate and nourish soils. What is your take on this concept?
Personally, I think digging is kind of a waste of time, it brings up weed seeds, and it exposes the soil microbes to the sunlight and drying air. If manure, leaves, etc, are put directly on top of the (undug) soil, it will keep the soil moist (assuming it was to begin with), the worms will take bits underground. If you keep the mulch deep enough, most weeds will be shaded enough so not many will sprout and those that do are usually easy to pull. I would try spreading some manure (some aging would be best), then scratch just the surface of that a bit and scatter the cover crop seed. But since it will be near the surface, you'll have to plant in damp weather or do some watering. Sue
anne, you could go for a no dig garden, there is plenty of info in the web about that but it sounds like you're in the northern hemisphere so I wouldn't do a no dig garden. You'll need to warm up your soil, no dig gardens will not do this, sheet mulching will. With sheet mulching you'll need to cultivate the soil to about 20cm. This will expose the soil to the sun and will start to warm it up. Don't worry about soil microbes, if you do your sheet muclhing well, you'll have a thriving garden in no time. Also, when you dig, add some gyphsum to help break up the clay. Good luck.
