Leaves and Nutrients

[opabinia51]

Here are the layers in the sheet compost in my garden so far;

Fall Rye (turned into the soil)
Tilia (Linden Tree) Leaves
Horse Manure
Tilia (Linden Tree) Leaves and Apple Leaves
Coffee Grounds
Maple, cottonwood and Tilia (Linden Tree) Leaves
Seaweed (not totally covered yet)
Maple and Apple leaves
Chicken Manure in areas that I will not be planting corn and potatoes
Horse manure in the areas that I will be planting the corn, potatoes, squash and beans (The "Trinity" plus one)
Finally, I seeded the surface area of manure with a mix of Fall Rye, peas and Vetch. Then, I planted a 1 kg bag of FAVA beans. Next year, I'll do at least two of those bags, maybe four.

I also added a tonne of Maple leaves to my leaf mold pile yesterday. The hot compost pile that has now gone cold continues to recieve any weeds that I pull up (though, with all those layers of compostables; there aren't to many weeds) and any spent plants like the squash plants.

Last year, my sheet mulch was about a foot in height and this past spring there was only about an inch of compost left after 7 months of composting. My hope is that I will have more of the good stuff this spring.

The plan is to have the rest of the seaweed in this week and pile leaves on top of that and finally place chicken manure over the leaves in the non corn/potatoe area and horse manure in the corn/potatoe area (where squash and beans will be planted as well).
Atop all that good stuff I am going to plant fava beans and a seed mix of 70% Fall Rye, 20% Peas and 10% Vetch. That should be really good because the beans, peas and vetch are all Legumes and will be aiding nitrogen fixing bacteria in doing their magic.

And I will have nice buttery beans to eat next spring.

[opabinia51]

So yes, put the rest of the seaweed on my garden Friday night and put the final layer of leaves and then all the manure (650 pounds of chicken manure and .... a lot of horse manure) atop the leaves yesterday.

The cover crop is planted and all I have to do now is continue adding leaves to my leaf mold pile and cold compost pile. Not to mention turn the two.

The big bonus of sheet composting is that you don't have to turn it and you also don't have to spread it in the spring.

[opabinia51]

For peoples information, I had about a foot, maybe a bit less of soil when I turned the rye into the soil this past spring. My entire garden is growing like a weed.

I'm locking this thread for the time being as it is a bit long.