The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge. by Daniel J. Boorstin

I love the folks over at Seattle Tilth, they’re right in there with librarians for being resourceful. In early November I attended their Putting the Garden to Bed for the Winter clinic. The big take-away for me –protecting the soil, it’s more important than planting.

What a great class, taught in the garden with hot chocolate no less. I’ve already started using what I learned. I’m using the Interbay Mulch method to put my weed choked yard to bed for the winter and have it awaken in the spring all humusy and healthy.

Holiday Light Bulb: A Seattle Tilth clinic or class would make a great gift for a gardener or would-be gardener.

My backyard is mostly obnoxious and noxious weeds in compacted clay soil that’s been unprotected for dozens of years.

Here’s the deal, alternating layers of green and brown, culled from the urban waste stream, piled on top of my soil and covered in burlap coffee sacks. It’s all free!

My first a layer is cardboard (brown layer), a layer of leaves (brown layer), a layer of garden clippings (green) then a layer of coffee grounds (green). I’m going to jump start it with a little compost – one wheelbarrow per 100 sq ft. Then I plan to sprinkle a little kelp meal on top, wet it down and cover it with burlap bags weighed down with cinder blocks. That’s my plan!

So far I’ve put down an inch of cardboard over the cut down weeds. The cardboard boxes came from my local PCC market. They were most happy and accommodating in saving the boxes for me. I covered the cardboard layer with 6 inches of leaves from my yard and my neighbors’ yards. Now I’m collecting coffee grounds for the green layer (the cardboard and leaves are technically brown- if it won’t burn its green). My goal is 10 inches of material over the entire garden. I’m doing it one 3 foot by 5 foot section at a time.

The cinder blocks are a story in themselves. My neighbors took apart all their raised beds and I inherited the cinder blocks, stacks of them. My thought is that the cinder blocks will eventually be the stepping stones through the garden, having buried themselves in successive layers of compost. It could happen.

If I get this done by end of November, I should have 2 inches of healthy humus by April, ready to plant into. That’s my plan. All the materials are free and I can do it incrementally, which is the part that makes it actually achievable. One cardboard box, one bag of leaves, I bucket of grounds at a time. I can make time on any day to do that – can’t I?

The nice folks at Tully’s Coffee roasting plant make their burlap bags available for free Monday- Thursday 9-4, on a first come first served basis. Just go to the roll up door at the southern end of the building, (south of their loading docks) and they’ll show you the drill. I’m giving them a point on their Monya Green Card for sharing the burlap and helping make Seattle’s soil healthier.

Burlap bags are the secret ingredient. According to the Interbay Mulch program –“…burlap bags are essential to fool the nocturnal, light avoiding organisms into working 24 hours a day. Burlap diffuses and soaks up rain preventing it from driving into the mulch. It also inhibits evaporation, keeping organic materials uniformly moist but has enough permeability for needed oxygen to reach all parts of the mulch. Birds are unable to forge in the mulch so worms and other organisms flourish and multiply. Burlap covers the mulch but it is also part of the habitat cultivating a rich variety of fungi and providing a home for beetles, spiders, worms and the like.”

I asked my neighborhood baristas to save me buckets of coffee ground, Tully’s, Starbucks, and Tutta Bella all said YES. I make a daily round of picking up the coffee grounds when I’m doing my errands. I’m thinking of adding in my shredded office papers as a brown layer, since most of the leaves are gone now. That’ll make me feel better about all the junk mail I get.

There you have it! Truly this is stone soup for the soil.

Seattle Tilth Association

http://www.seattletilth.org/

4649 Sunnyside Avenue N, Room 120

Seattle, WA 98103

206 633-0451

Tully’s Coffee Corporation

http://www.tullys.com

3100 Airport Way South
Seattle, WA 98134