Growing Good Dirt

By Elise Krohn, Traditional Foods Educator and Herbalist

 
As part of the Native Plant Nutrition Program at the Northwest Indian Treatment Center, patients learn to plant, maintain, harvest, prepare and preserve many types of food plants. At the end of June we added over 75 salmonberry, thimbleberry and strawberry plants to the garden. By next year these delicious wild foods will help feed the patients along with local wildlife including deer and birds. 

As I planted strawberries, I took a moment to ponder the substance that sifted through my fingers – dirt. It is miraculous, really. According to Seattle Tilth, one gram of healthy soil is home to as many as 500 million organisms including bacteria, yeast, algae, protozoa and insects! These tiny creatures can build soil nutrients, hold water and ward off plant diseases. If soil is alive, plants will be healthy and robust.  If not, plants will struggle for survival. Just as people get run down when they are not eating enough good food, plants will fail to thrive when they are growing in poor quality soil.

Last year, our food garden suffered despite that fact that we watered regularly and brought in organic fertilizer and bagged compost. Plants stayed small and were attacked by insects including aphids, cutter beetles and other pests. Because we are committed to growing our gardens free of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, we needed to look deeper to solve our problem. The obvious answer was to build our soil quality.  Nature is our best role model here. In healthy forests, everything is recycled and turned back into useful material. But how could we recreate a similar model in our gardens? This is how our compost project was born.

There is no shortage of compostable materials at the treatment center. Our large grounds are laden with beautiful trees, grassy areas and several gardens. For the last several years, we have been piling yard debris into a giant heap that has become a thriving tangle of blackberries. Over 35 patients and staff eat three meals a day, which creates over 15 gallons of food waste per day. We also generate an immense amount of paper and cardboard waste, which goes into the garbage because we do not have a local recycle program. All of this can be turned into fertile soil for our gardens.

There are a lot of ways to compost, so we went to our local experts to ask for advice. With help from a local Master Composter and a county extension officer from the Washington State University Extension Master Gardener Program we decided that our best option was to build a cinder block multiple bin. This design allows us to have several piles composting in different phases at once. Our basic ingredients are equal parts of “browns” and “greens.” Greens include grass clippings, fresh leaves, garden clippings, small prunings and kitchen waste. Browns include dry leaves, dried garden clippings, shredded paper, shredded cardboard and wood chips. We also added a couple shovels full of finished compost and water to get the pile started. These basic ingredients provide everything organisms need to create rich compost that our plants will thrive on. Patients are turning the pile once or twice a week to speed up the composting process. I’ve never seen so many people so excited about dirt!

The results of our compost project were almost immediate. Within the first week we started seeing worms, beetles and other insects moving in and decomposing our pile. We are reducing our waste while saving money on costly fertilizer and bagged compost. 

The Native Plant Nutrition Program is offered through a partnership between the Northwest Indian Treatment Center and the Northwest Indian College’s Cooperative Extension Department. For more information please contact Elise Krohn at ekrohn@nwic.edu 

 
   

Comments

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