Just by Adding Water                      by Bernel L. Davis

            In the spring of 2009, a New Orleans Mid City dweller, Sandy Burns, decided she’d gone it alone long enough.  Frustrated by repeated failed attempts to grow vegetables in her back yard, Sandy appealed to her new neighbor, Jake Clancy, for help.  

            Early the following morning, Jake stuck his gardening fork into the ground in Sandy’s garden plot.  Jake then tilted the fork back slightly, lifted his right foot onto the fork’s right side, and by applying pressure, forced the fork about eight inches deep into the moist, loose soil.  He quickly bent forward, slid his left hand down to the fork’s base, and—by flipping the fork up and over—lifted a sizeable wad of dirt from its garden bed.  With his right hand, Jake spread the soil out wide on the grassy surface immediately adjacent to Sandy’s garden bed. He repeated the process twice more.  Nothing moved.  He then stood, pushed his black felt hat to the back of his head, pulled the large blue and white handkerchief from his pocket, straightened up, and, shaking his head sadly, wiped his brow.  Things were as he suspected; no worms were present; Sandy’s garden soil was dead.

            Jake knew he could remedy the problem himself, but he decided on a better course.  He’d have Sandy host a neighborhood teach-in.

            The following Saturday morning, seven neighbors—each with a bag of kitchen scraps (no meat or dairy as Sandy had instructed)—came to experience their new adventure.  Jake taught the neighbors how to make a compost pile by distributing layers of brown leaves, kitchen scraps, lawn trimmings, animal manure (that he collected from a nearby stable), and soil.  Jake also explained to his audience that the manure contained thousands of decay-producing organisms that would multiply their numbers because of their newly found food source.  And he taught the neighbors that by adding water, they would encourage these organisms to freely move throughout the mixture, decomposing its elements as they traveled.  Such movement, he taught, would generate heat that would kill off many weed seeds inside the pile.

            Jake informed his neighbors that in two to three months—with periodic turning and wetting—the process of decomposition would be complete, and that there would be enough compost for each of them to enrich their garden soil.  Such enrichment, he explained, would help attract earthworms—themselves decomposers—and would make more nutrients available for Sandy’s and all their plants.

Sources:

Gershuny, Grace.  Start with the Soil.

Plaster, Edward J.  Soil Science & Management.

State University, Colorado.  “Choosing a Soil Amendment.”