Coffee Grounds and Wood Ash for Soil Fertility

Coffee grounds collected from coffee-shops.

Since we began weening ourselves off the use of animal manures as a source of soil fertility, we have turned increasingly to leaves, grass-clippings, wood-ash and coffee grounds as a replacement. Here is a summary of our "Deep Mulch Method" in which we cover the topic of leaves and grass and other organic materials in our gardens.

Regarding coffee:

Coffee grounds provide generous amounts of phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, and copper. They also release nitrogen into the soil as they degrade. When we have it, we spread it about 1/4" thick on beds before we plant. We also layer it into our compost piles. Here's an informative article about using coffee grounds in the garden: The Ground to Ground Primer – Coffee Grounds for the Garden

For some reason, worms love coffee grounds! By sprinkling grounds in your garden beds, you will attract worms to come into your soil and, since coffee grounds also contain many nutrients on their own, we also recommend adding them to your greenhouse paths and compost bins. They will attract worms and speed up the process of decomposition.

We sift both our coffee grounds and wood-ashes. Here are students from Oregon State Univ. performing "service-learning" by sifting coffee grounds.

...and Wood Ash:

Wood Ashes provide all necessary nutrients for plant growth except nitrogen and sulfur.  We use ashes from our wood-stove (that heats our house). We use only newspaper to start the fires and burn pure wood. We don't burn anything with paint; no ply-wood or other man-made products so the chemicals in them don't get into our food-chain. We sift the ashes to remove any big chunks, and use a heavy-duty magnet to remove any screws or nails.  

Be very careful not to use too much! We put just the lightest dusting in our beds. Do not use wood-ash to make a potting soil. It is caustic to worms and will alkalize your soil so use only a little, and wait 7-10 days before planting seeds or seedlings. Do not use around acid-loving plants (like blueberries, or in potato-beds). Here's an article from SFGate's garden-site: About Enriching Soil With Ash, and here are 12 Uses for Fireplace Ashes That Are Suitable for Your Home (beyond its use in the garden).

Heating with wood has many benefits. Here's a wood-stove in one of our greenhouses we made from a barrel-kit.

Here's Caleb - our youngest coffee-spreader!

Gallery of Givers: Highlights from the 2023 Season

This has been a wonderful year at the Sharing Gardens; much bounty, new friendships. Our experiments with Local, Plant-sourced Fertility (LINK: How we grow...Veganic Community-based gardening) continue to yield massive quantities of highest quality soil/compost. Both our seed collection and our wildlife habitat grows with each year. Our lives, (me and Chris) are centered on this land, this project, this lifestyle. We are so fortunate to be able to to give all our focus to our life here at the Sharing Gardens.

And yet, we couldn't have done it without the dedicated help of our wonderful share-givers. Here is a gallery of some of the year's highlights. (That's Joey - above, sifting compost scooped out of our greenhouse paths. Joey joined our crew this summer. He's been such an amazing contribution to the program. He's strong and generous of spirit and always willing to do whatever needs to get done.)

Share-givers typically come once a week for about three hours but we had two gung-ho helpers who managed to come twice a week for much of the summer, Joey and Maddie. Here they are harvesting elephant garlic in June. (Maddie had to go back to school this fall. We miss you Maddie, but we hope you'll come play in the Gardens again next summer and bring some of your young, strong, healthy friends!)

Sometimes we work in small groups:

Chris, Joey and Jim digging potatoes.

Another group potato-dig. This was our best year yet. We harvested just over 400 pounds!

Joey and Donn sift the compost we scoop out of our greenhouse paths. Chris here is bagging it in repurposed bags from pellet-stove fuel. In 2023, we estimate that we harvested about 200 bags of this 'black gold"! This becomes the foundation of our potting mix (which we haven't bought in several years) and is alsso used as a soil amendment in all our garden beds.

Suzanne, Darlene and Chris sifting compost. It's full of worm eggs which then hatch over the course of the winter while still in the bags, or in the garden beds next spring.

Venecia and Michael from OSU's Service Learning program, help Chris gather apples in the midst of a downpour. The light was incredible that day; golden-peachy, coming through the clouds, rain in showers and everything washed clean and bright - including the air. It was a great fruit year this past summer! This is the first year these trees, planted in 2013, yielded significant fruit. And boy did they!

In these next two pics, OSU students from a Sustainability class performed service learning at the Sharing Gardens and received college credit for their efforts.

One of the tasks they performed was to load leaves onto tarps and distribute them in the beds we eventually grew winter squash in. We are especially grateful to the Dillards and Crosby's - two neighborhood households who donate the vast majority of their leaves to our project. They bring them by the trailer-load!

Sometimes it's great just to be in pairs...

Darlene and Sandra - fun in the potato patch!

Suzanne and Darlene cutting up apples for applesauce. Our fruit trees were amazingly productive (as were most trees in the southern Willamette valley of western Oregon where we live.). We canned 49 quarts of applesauce. Lots for us and lots to share!

More autumn tasks...Jim is teasing the sorghum seed-heads off their stalks (Grow Your Own Sorghum for Grain and Flour). Chris is shelling dried beans (we grew over 50 pounds of dried beans in 2023!) Chris and I held back this year's harvest for our own use and distributed all that was left over from last year amongst our sharegivers. (Grow Your Own Protein: Scarlet Runner beans).

Snacking in the celery patch! Chris and Donn with a big harvest on its way to the food pantry.

And here are a few wonderful solo pics:

Here I am, Llyn, with a bouquet of broccoli comprised of three heads bunched together. Our spring broccoli didn't perform very well but this fall crop grew with great vigor and vitality! There's just no comparison between store-bought and home-grown, fresh broccoli. So sweet and tender!

Jim loves to mow - and we are SO grateful!

Cindy, with her many years experience, is a fast and thorough harvester. Here she is with most of our white onion harvest.

Suzanne, threshing sorghum.

Rook has been a champion sorghum harvester. Here he is with a variety called Ba Ye Qi which has a short season so it works well in northern climates. He's dealing with some severe health problems this year so missed much of the summer/fall season. We're holding him in our thoughts and prayers that he'll be able to rejoin us in the spring.

Llyn with part of a day's harvest in the autumn. It's often difficult to find room on all the tables and benches to put everything! Food is distributed first to our sharegivers (including other supporters of the garden such as our neighbors' landscaper, Chuy who brings over all their surplus grass-clippings and leaves) and the copious surplus is donated to food charities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...and our beloved Cindy who, like the best Grandma, bakes cookies and pies to share with us at snack time in the Gardens (and sometimes she'll make something just for me and Chris!).

We always love having family and past participants come join us for garden fun...

Llyn's uncle Craig always jumps right in to help whenever he comes to visit. Here he is sifting compost.

We had wonderful visits from Cindy's (left) granddaughter Adri (middle) this summer. Adri's 12 now and has been coming to the gardens since a few months after she was born. She's moved to Tennessee now but on her visit she was a great help in the Gardens. That's Judy on the right; Llyn's Mom. We can't thank her enough for her profound support over the years. Our "greatest fan"! And super-helpful too! In this picture we were telling childhood stories at snack time and having a great laugh!

Here's another one of Judy/Mom teasing baby lettuce plants apart for transplanting into the beds. Thanks for everything, Mom!

And finally...We always try to make time for snacking in the Garden! Here's Chris and Joey enjoying our delicious home-grown apples. (Joey moved to Portland at the end of the season...We miss you Joey!).

Full Circle Generosity - some examples...

The Sharing Gardens is a unique kind of community garden: Instead of many separate plots that are rented by individuals, the garden is one large plot, shared by all. All materials and labor are donated. Share-givers (volunteers) typically come one to two times per week (at scheduled times) to help in all aspects of farming from planting, through harvest and seed-saving. The food we grow is shared amongst those who have contributed in some way as well as with others who are in need in our community through food pantries and other charities. (Overview and Benefits of the Sharing Gardens) 

The Gardens operate on the principle of mutual- or full-circle generosity, finding ways to help each other in the community in which we live. 

Here are two actual examples of how this works:

The Garden's fertility comes primarily from leaves, grass, wood ash (we heat entirely with wood and save the leftover charcoal and ashes) and composted fruits and veg from our own table scraps and the food pantry which shares our parking lot. This was the fourth season that we grew our crops without use of commercial fertilizers, store-bought amendments, livestock manures or any animal by-products; in other words: veganically. (LINK-Introduction to veganics). We've written extensively about our veganic methods in previous posts. Here's a LINK to Locally Sustainable Gardening in the Face of Supply-Chain Shortages.

Much of the Garden's fertility comes from yard waste and food scraps from our own kitchen and produce "past its prime" from the food pantry that shares our parking lot. Worms absolutely love apples and other sweet fruits. The pile above was layered with the 'scraps' alternating with leaves and compost that wasn't fully finished. We mounded it up over 3-feet high and covered it with a tarp. it will be finished and ready for use by early spring.

Full-circle Farming: It is said that "for every calorie that leaves a farm, at least a calorie must replace it". This means that if the Sharing Gardens were to continue to give away as much produce as we do, and do nothing to replace the organic matter/bio-mass that this represents, that our soil would not only diminish in terms of fertility and minerals but each year we would actually have physically less soil. We have addressed this challenge by creating a drop-off site for neighbors to bring us their grass-clippings and leaves that would just be a waste-product if they had to keep it on their own land. (We have no yard-waste pick-up in our small town and residents are not allowed to burn yard-waste during summer months due to fire danger). So, by providing this drop-off site, it keeps these precious materials from going into the land-fill or polluting the air.

Here is the donation drop-off site for leaves and grass in front of the Sharing Gardens. The trash can is full of plastic bags we've dried, rolled into bunches of 5-6 and make available for free re-use.

We are especially grateful to our neighbors, the Dillards who send us their substantial surplus of leaves and grass-clippings (their home sits on 3-acres). Here's the corner of the Sharing Gardens that shares their fence line.

We have another 'neighbor' (up the road) who also donates massive amounts of leaves each fall. Here's David (left) and one of his helpers donating a load of leaves with his dump-trailer.

The leaves and grass-clippings are donated. This keeps them out of burn-piles or landfills. It contributes to garden fertility. We grow vegetables and give them to those who have contributed in some way and donate the surplus to food charities. Full Circle! (left; Llyn, assembling the harvest for distribution to our share-givers/volunteers and food pantries.)

Firewood and wood ash: We heat our home entirely with wood (left). As we mentioned before, wood ash is another source of garden fertility (LINK: Coffee Grounds and Wood Ash for Soil Fertility). Though this year we purchased the majority of our firewood, we also received a large donation of seasoned madrone tree 'rounds'. Madrone trees produce a super-dense hardwood that burns slow and hot. Our friend Steve Rose calls it "the closest plant-source to burning coal"! The madrone was donated by the warehouse manager of Local Aid - a food pantry that receives a majority of our donations (though the wood came from her personally, not the pantry). Our dear friend and long-term garden volunteer Donn Dussell brought his wood-splitter and helped us split the wood. We kept half, and donated the other half to a family in-need.

We receive donations of firewood. Donn donates the use of his splitter and his time splitting the wood. We burn the wood (and share some with a family in-need). The ashes create fertility in the Gardens. We have surplus veggies to share in the community. Full Circle!

Our dear friend Donn. He comes weekly to help in the Gardens and also finds so many other ways to contribute as well. A true gem!

Dried Tomato Pesto - Recipe

Last year we had a fantastic abundance of a type of tomato called "Ropreco". It's a rather small fruit that's acorn-shaped. It's the perfect variety for making dried tomatoes. Here's a delicious recipe if you have that "high-quality problem" of too many dried tomatoes!

Dried Tomato Pesto

2 cups dried tomatoes

1 cup coursely chopped walnuts

3/4 cup olive oil

1/3 cup grated parmesan

1/4 cup dried basil (or a few tablespoons basil pesto)

4 cloves garlic -chopped

2 Tablespoons balsamic or other good vinegar

Puree all ingredients in a food processor until smooth. Add a little water if it seems too sticky, but it should remain thick enough to spread on a slice of bread.

This and other delicious recipes are available here: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Autumn Pleasures: Pumpkin Pie and Saving Tomato Seeds

Rob, Chris and Sam - harvesting potatoes

We have lots of good news and updates to share about the Gardens, just not a lot of time to write the post! here are some timely re-posts of two articles pertaining to the Autumn season. Enjoy!




Saving Tomato Seeds - LINK

Provence squash - ready for baking

Making Pumpkin Pie from Scratch - LINK

"Squashes and grains and beans, oh my!"...

...a shifting focus on what foods we grow...

(This is a re-post from January 2023 which explains the changes we made this year in the varieties of foods we grew, and why). Over the last few years, we've noticed that our donations of fresh vegetables have been less needed by the food charities we serve (see: News from the Gardens Jan. 2023).

While we celebrate the abundance of produce being provided to our food-insecure neighbors through other channels, it has caused us at the Sharing Gardens to make some shifts in which crops we wish to emphasize and how best to use our garden space and the volunteer help provided by our share-givers.

In addition to the staple annual crops (tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, cabbage etc) that were shared amongst the share-givers (volunteers), in 2021 and 2022, we began dedicating a higher percentage of our garden space to corn, sorghum, beans and winter storage squash.

Sandra harvests sweet, yellow Bantam corn which we dry and use for cereal and baking.

Rook harvests Ba Ye Ki sorghum, a fast growing variety. Not as sweet as Kassaby but is better for shorter growing seasons (we had a cool, wet spring). (Cindy harvests broccoli on the right. The yellow flowers are broccoli purposely going to seed which we saved to replant and share with other gardeners.)

Rook and Chris with sorghum harvest.

Giant Greek white runner beans (on left tipi) in front of our largest greenhouse, the Sunship. (Scarlet Runner beans and this white variety easily cross).

We always grow a long wall of runner beans inside the Sunship too. Here they are at the end of the season, turning brown (best to harvest them as dry as possible for better ripeness and storage. (Grow Your Own Protein - Scarlet Runner Beans)

Jewells and Jenny harvesting runner beans.

The grain and bean crops are all hand-processed with the help of our share-givers. Shelling the beans, husking and shucking the corn and removing the sorghum seeds from their stalks are all coveted tasks in the autumn as share-givers sit around in the shade of our garden-shed-awning or, on cooler days, circle the cozy wood-stove in our Sunship greenhouse. These hand-tasks can be very relaxing and satisfying and even fun to do as a group and yet would be daunting and time-consuming for a solo farmer or farm-family.

Chris and Donn, shelling runner beans

We grow kidney beans as a bush-variety. Once ripe, these are cut off at ground level, leaving the roots in the ground (less mess and the worms like the dead roots) and laid on a tarp to dry.

Chris and Jim threshing kidney beans on a tarp. After the beans are good and dry, we thresh them with wooden broom sticks or other tool-handles.  This shatters most of the pods and the beans fall out onto the tarp. Some beans must still be shelled by hand and then they're winnowed in the wind.

We grind the dried grains in our Diamant grain mill which Chris hooked up to a re-purposed electric motor. We then mix the grains together to make a delicious and nutritious hot cereal, or use them in a baking mix for corn cake (LINK - Crumb-Free, Whole-Grain Cornbread Recipe ). The Hooker's blue corn we grow has been found to have 30% more protein than regular corn (LINK - Grow Your Own 'Blue Corn' ) and is sweet and hearty!

Blue Hooker's corn, dried, husked and shucked. Ready for grinding.

Our motorized grain mill.

Bantam, blue corn, sorghum and polenta in our pantry. All grown at the Sharing Gardens!

35 pounds of scarlet runner beans in 2022!

We continue to expand the amount of land we dedicate to winter squash too. Our winter squash harvest was excellent this year. We grew Delicatas and Sweet Meats (both delicious, moist varieties). We had enough to share with our share-givers to get them through the winter, with plenty of surplus for the S. Benton Food Pantry and the Stone Soup Kitchen.

Just a fraction of this year's Delicata and Sweetmeat squash harvest. Yum!

So, the gardens are morphing from their original emphasis on providing food for food charities to a model which provides a significant amount of food to those who are helping to actually grow it. While at first we were concerned by this shift, we now see it as a natural progression and are happy that the food charities are so well stocked during the summer months of peak garden production and that the share-givers are SO appreciative of receiving the Garden's highest quality produce. This new trend frees the Sharing Gardens to continue to demonstrate a model that builds community using local resources for fertility while encouraging mutual generosity. (For info on other community-supporting projects we've already implemented, or intend to cultivate in the future, see: A Wintery Summary).

We'll always have room for the brassicas: Donn and Chris prep beds for cabbage , collards and broccoli.