Round Robin: Making Soil Amendments
October/November 1994
By Andy Van Hevelingen
NEWBERG, Oregon—This is the time of year when I order my soil amendments. My clay soil and high water table require lots of organic matter to improve aeration and drainage. I usually get either mushroom compost or chicken manure, whichever is less expensive, and stockpile it over the winter. Winter rains flush out lingering fertilizer salts from the mushroom compost or “cook off” the potentially hot chicken manure before I put it on the garden. With all the organic matter I’ve added to the garden, when I dig up a shovelful, I find only a few inches of really good friable soil (my worm zone) above the resident heavy clay.
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This year, I hope to try some “mint straw”, the composted “greens” left after cooking up fresh mint to distill the oil. Nichols Garden Nursery in nearby Albany has used it very successfully for the past few years, applying about 6 inches over their propagation beds and display gardens in the fall. Since it has been heated, the straw is free of rust disease, insects, and viable weed seeds. It is extremely light and easy to work with and has a pleasant minty odor. By next spring, the mint straw will have further decomposed to make a mulch from which even the toughest weeds can be pulled with ease.
This summer, I added a golden hop plant (Humulus lupulus ‘Aureus’) to my garden. I first encountered the plant at Hardwick Hall in England, in a large, perfectly flat, walled herb garden. Golden hops and green hops trained into alternating 8-foot-high columns added a stunning vertical element as well as foliage contrast to the overall garden design. In my own garden, I am less formal and lazier and allow my plants to just meander where they will, but I keep my eye on the hopvine; I have some rather defenseless herbs in my garden that would be easy prey to its rampant growth. Fortunately, it dies back to the ground and lies dormant all winter, and I can forget all about it until next spring. However, after a long day’s work in the garden, I occasionally enjoy the hops at the local microbrewery—for purely medicinal reasons, of course.