Black Magic?

The last bulbs are planted in the Sunshine Coast garden where we have way too many deer to fool with growing tulips, deer's favorite spring lunch. Instead, this garden specializes in daffodils which deer, miraculously, don’t eat. I’m sure the deer are evolving the ability to digest them as I type, but for the moment and for the next year, the bulbs are safe, at least from the deer.

We bought a truck load of dirt from the local nursery yesterday because Ed rebuilt a retaining wall and extended it beyond its prior boundary, leaving great, gaping, 2-foot-deep holes behind it at either end. Once it was all nicely filled in with this black, organic looking dirt, that bed looked like the perfect place to plant the last dozen King Alfred bulbs. But when I dug up the first few trowels-ful of dirt, I noticed there was a strange dust rising from the hole. I took off my gloves and put my hand into this misty apparition and discovered that it was steam. Putting my hand into the hole I had dug, I found it was decidedly hot down there. Whatever is in this organic looking black dirt is still composting at a very active level. Putting the bulbs in there would, I expect, have either cooked them, rotted them out, or caused them to go into high speed growing.

As I have previously explained, I’m not a fan of buying dirt insofar as I already own 2 acres of land, but in this case the argument was that all the other dirt was currently being used to support some other plant life. I read an article last year about the introduction of highly treated sewage as garden soil and maybe this is some of that; the official name was 'treated sewage sludge' but has now been changed (unsurprisingly) to ‘biosolids.' This 'dirt' is certainly a color I had never previously seen in nature or in a commercial planting mix: it is really black rather than a rich brown, which would be my expectation. (It is the black area behind the midlevel gray wall in the picture above; you can see it better if you click on the picture.) And it has a truly strange smell; and not a pleasant one either. I trust that will dissipate as whatever is in it finishes burning up. It does seem one more interference with my understood way of life. Dirt is not supposed to steam, at least not if you don’t live in Yellowstone Park.

What’s going on here? I could ask the clerk at the nursery, but I doubt seriously that she would offer me clear information. I have read around a bit on the net about biosolids, enough to know that they are being used extensively and that there is at least some dispute about their safety. (In the realm of they are safe if they are produced properly; we could mention that to the Chinese, I suppose. Something like ‘eggs are safe if produced properly; if not, if you give the chickens feed with melamine in it, well then all bets are off.’) However, Cornell University provides some general information as well as a description of the issues with respect to one of the commercially available biosolids, ‘Milorganite,’ which seems generally applicable to the biosolids available to home gardeners.

I expect I’d be more concerned if that was an area where I planted a vegetable garden, but it’s not: nothing but flowers. I could hope that this black magic, this black something, may be just one more way to discourage the deer from lunching in those borders, I suppose. And for now, those 12 daff bulbs had to go somewhere else.

Update: I took the temperature of that black dirt this morning after a day and night of rain and temperatures in the high 50's: at 6 inches deep, 117 degrees F.

In and Out, Out and In

I was out in the yard today sifting compost for the benefit of my toddler hydrangeas, all three of whom could use a nice layer of mulch if the hot weather comes in July. Which it might. Which it often does. Hope is not a plan, of course, but with weather it’s about all you’ve got: hope and a layer of mulch. Sifting away, I noticed some cherry and peach pits. Aah, those came from a year ago at least since the only time we get peaches and cherries are in July when the Okanagan—a summer-hot, inland valley up one of the rivers, maybe the Fraser River, maybe the Columbia or the Okanagan river, northeast of Vancouver-- pours forth fruit in the the way Utah used to pour forth fruit when I was a child in southeastern Idaho. Such fruit is part of what makes summer so amazingly wonderful. That and the fact that it’s finally warm.

Of course, it’s possible that these peach and cherry pits have been in my compost for two or three years. How long would it take a peach pit actually to compost, after all? Nothing composts very fast in my experience. This is because the 4-foot tall, square, black compost bin-like object is mostly in the shade (because all the land around the house is pretty much shaded by tall trees), because the air temperature never gets very warm, and because I doubtless fail to buy something to put in the compost bin-like object to make it work faster. But it works, of course, because time itself will bring everything back to some other form of itself: ashes to ashes, and all that.

I really like the idea of composting. A depression-era related feeling that you are saving yourself from having to buy mulch, perhaps. Or, even better, that you are turning garbage, of all things, into something that you need. It really feels like a wondrous form of recycling. Of course, it’s probably all in my head: all those coffee filters and grounds, all those tea bags, all 4 egg shells each week probably don’t turn into gold just because Rumplestiltskin is inside the compost bin working away. The worms, doubtless, hate coffee grounds. The sow bugs would surely prefer the peaches to the peach pits. The mulch obtained probably doesn’t amount to much.

But mostly what the worms and bugs get in my compost bin-like object is maple leaves. I am so rich in maple leaves that I cannot begin to compost them all. I am as rich in maple leaves as the maple tree itself is rich in maple leaves. Actually, I am burdened by all these maple leaves: why does this tree need to make so many leaves? Do maple leaves turn into spectacular and rich compost that feeds the maple trees? I think not because if they did, the forest floors around me would have topsoil and they don’t. So probably the maple leaves, the coffee grounds, and the peach pits all just represent the illusion of some things going in and some other better things coming out. Change: we do like to think of it as progress, whereas mostly, it's probably just change.