Practicing the principles of permaculture gardening presents some interesting challenges for gardeners. For example, composting for the garden requires a proper ration of 1 part greens to 2 parts browns.
While collecting greens is never a problem this time of year when the lawn gets cut every week, coming up with the browns is considerably harder to do. I already had 1 part brown, saved from kitchen scraps and coffee grounds, but was at a loss for where to obtain the second part. I could have used shredded newspaper, I know, but I was really wanting to use resources from the yard itself.
Understanding that one of the guiding principles of permaculture (and just plain good stewardship) is to make the highest and best use of the resources available to me, I began looking around for what was currently available. Outside, Keith was cutting the dead-wood out of some shrubs on the side of the house. And behold. There it was right in front of my boots! Brown dead-wood and also brown leaves that had collected at the base of the shrubs and hadn’t been blown away by the winter wind.
Gleefully, I gathered them up in the proper amount and added the browns and the greens to my compost tumbler. Opening the air vents, I spun it a few times, and started the composting process. By simply turning it 5-10 times every 2 or 3 days, I should have a nice sweet-smelling batch of compost to feed the garden soil in a few weeks.
Linking soil, water, plants, animals and compost together to create a closed-loop wholistic garden set up will be a slow and layered process to be sure, but I expect to continue finding deep satisfaction in each small but significant part of the journey. It is a labor of love to bring forth a vision, to breathe life into it, and to log the work necessary to make it a reality.
