By RADICLE LAND COLLECTIVE
The community at San Pablo’s/Saint Paul’s is getting ready to install a peace and healing garden, complete with a meditative labyrinth. The first step to creating something like that is to prep the area and get rid of the grass! At Radicle, we try to process and keep as much as we can on site. This helps by reducing the need for transportation of waste material off site to another processing area, and keeps raw material for our use in the spring.
With jumping worms being an increasing concern, keeping all material on site reduces the need to bring soil that may have the worms in it on site, and if the jumping worms are already present, keeps us from unintentionally spreading them. Jumping worms are especially dangerous to our local ecology because they are voracious eaters of our native wildflower root systems, and the ‘soil’ they leave behind changes the way water moves through soil, which alters the conditions so much that native plants can’t thrive.
How do you ‘process’ grass on site? Time is an important ally, one not often used in the landscape industry. It takes months for soil and grass to decompose into a usable substrate. That’s why, even though the garden will be built in the spring, it was perfect timing to start demo. The site at San Pablo’s is a laboratory right now, utilizing natural processes of decomposition.
First, we scraped off the grass over the entire site. Next, we created layers of this soil/sod mixture and built up several berms. These berms are where the magic happens. Last, we covered the berms with a degradable barrier- cardboard – that we source from a local bookshop- and then mulch. This helps keep any rogue seeds and rhizomes from sprouting, and adds an extra ‘brown’ layer to our compost berm.
This method of composting is called the ‘lasagna method’. Layers of green, brown, and soil material are the recipe for decomposition. Green layers are made of living, or recently cut, plant material. The important thing about green layers is that they provide nitrogen and necessary moisture. Brown layers are dead natural plant material- think mulch, leaves, and even cardboard (made from trees). The soil layer is also important because that is where we get our starter microbes and is the binder for this soil cake we are making.
To keep the cardboard down, we sprinkle lower layers of soil we have excavated that have less of a seed bank – seeds in the soil that have accumulated over time and are just waiting for the right conditions to grow – in it on top. Lastly, we add mulch, like frosting, to keep everything in place until spring.
These composting berms will reduce in height by about 50%, and then we will have nutrient-rich, processed soil to work with and further move around to build a peace and healing garden.
Stay tuned and watch the magic happen!
Radicle Land Collective is a landscape design/build firm interested in the land we have in common and our collective stewardship of it. Get in touch at info@radiclelandcollective.com
