GARDEN PROJECTS JUST IN TIME FOR SPRINGLook for “Handmade Garden Projects: Step-by-Step Instructions for Creative Garden Features, Containers, Lighting & More” by Lorene Edwards Forkner . Timber Press. $19.95.Learn about Personalizing outdoor spaces with found, crafted or repurposed items. For a trellis: Use an old step ladder, build a bamboo obelisk, turn a dead tree upside down.Do Plant a mini-knot garden in a pot. Turn a birdbath into a planter.Don’t Miss the vintage chandelier that’s crafted from wire edging fence, wire, glass porch light covers, cut-glass crystals and votive candles. – Krys Stefansky, The Virginian-Pilotgrow

Sunday | 03.04.12 | THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT | PAGE 3

system sized to process the amount of manure generated by the six hors-es then on the property.

“It wasn’t cheap,” Brian said. But it is simple. A blower forces

air through 3-inch PVC pipes that extend behind and underneath the trio of 12-by-12-foot bins.

One bin accumulates fresh ma-nure. Twice each hour for 30 seconds a fan forces air into the bottom of the second pile, already filled. The third pile, in a further stage of decompo-sition, sits and cures. On a cold day, the manure sends up whiffs of steam.

Monitoring follows Environmental Protection Agency standards and as-sures that pile temperatures destroy pathogens, weed seeds and – evident-ly – horse manure’s usual odor. Bri-an gauges progress by periodically stabbing the composting piles with an enormous thermometer, keeping records required by the N orth Car-olina Department of Environmental Resources .

With this rotating system, one bin receives fresh manure mixed with used pine-pellet bedding, along with green kitchen waste generated by the couple and Anna’s parents, who live next door in the house where she grew up.

The two remaining bins simply “cook.”

The wood pellets Anna uses in the stalls help speed decomposition and give the mix the good carbon-to-ni-trogen ratio important to gardeners. There’s no pile turning. Manure is handled just twice – once going into an empty bin and once, as compost, going out.

When the first rich, dark compost was ready 90 days after they first be-gan, the Smiths gave it away to de-lighted friends and family, then sold it by the truckload. Brian rigged a Bush Ho g to mince the monthly batches of compost into the lightweight, even-ly textured consistency that camou-flages its true origins.

“People don’t like to see the lumps,” he said.

After a couple of years, the West Coast composting system paid for itself. And, last year, it paid for a small tractor.

Right around Camden, people still order the compost by the truckload. But Brian wants to spread the by-product of Anna’s horses to a broad-er market.

“I think our clientele is more the older, retired, gardener person,” Bri-an said, adding that the green move-ment encourages gardeners to find natural products with which to fer-tilize and amend their soil.

For them – those gardeners pre-sumably a little weak in the back – be-sides filling substantial and perhaps challenging 44-quart sacks, Brian bags compost in resealable, han-dled, easily carried, 16-quart bags. He also packages lunch-bag-sized paper sacks with four 4-oz compost “tea bags.” Compost tea is for patio gardeners looking to give their plants a drink of water with a little kick.

Making the circuit of garden shows to market their product, in January at The Virginia Flower & Garden Expo in Virginia Beach, Brian and Anna Smith caught the attention of Dave Dubinsky , owner of Jack Frost Land-scapes & Garden Center . Dubinsky placed an order for Carolina Compost to arrive in his Virginia Beach shop by March, at the start of the garden-ing season.

Not a minute too soon, he figured.“I wanted to jump on it before any-

body else did,” Dubinsky said. Organ-ic products are the trend in garden-ing, he said, and the reason he carries organic leaf compost, organic mush-room compost and an organic product line from California called Dr. Earth .

In our area, Dubinsky said, gar-deners are increasingly concerned about what effect their gardening has on the Chesapeake Bay. More and more, he said, they want to be environmentally friendly and avoid chemicals.

Carolina Compost also appealed to him as an independent garden center owner trying to set itself apart from the inventory of large chain retailers.

For Brian, the headache of the manure is over. In fact, the more the horses make, the better. Every day, their work continues.

Hightower, Anna’s 18-hand high Belgian draft horse, is the big pro-ducer and received an honor: His sturdy likeness became the Caro-lina Compost company logo.

“He weighs 1,700 pounds and probably poops more than 50 pounds a day.” Anna said, laughing.

Lexie, her Thoroughbred and the former racehorse for whom the farm is named , comes in second in the manure-making department. Then there’s Rebel, a quarterhorse and boarder.

Lastly in terms of manure pro-duced, is a petite pony Anna recent-ly bought for Addie , the couple’s 7-month-old daughter.

The shaggy little Shetland, with years to go until Addie is old enough to ride, is named Banks.

“He makes the little bags,” Anna joked.

Krys Stefansky, 757-446-2043, krys.stefansky@pilotonline.com

BILL TIERNAN PHOTOS | THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT

Brian and Anna Smith built a system on their farm near Camden, N.C., to turn their horses’ manure into compost that they sell to farmers and gardeners.

Brian Smith dumps manure into a bin to start the process of turning the horse waste into compost. The Smiths’ system is designed so the manure piles don’t need to be turned.

C O M P O S T

A RICH SOLUTION TO A STINKY PROBLEM

Continued from Page 1

want to try it?For information on the O2Compost system, write O2Compost, Price-Moon Enterprises, P.O. Box 1026, Snohomish, WA 98291, or go to www.o2compost.com. 360-568-8085.

“We saw a business thing there and a good invest-

ment.”

Brian Smith

By Mary Reid BarrowCorrespondent

VIRGINIA BEACH

Hey, city slickers! If you’re yearning for a little country, head

down to Back Bay Botanicals in the Pungo area of Virginia Beach Saturday for a taste of the bucolic life.

Owner Gina Lynch will see that you head home, dreaming of spring, with new plants, perhaps some fresh eggs in your sack and maybe even a few chickens.

It’s Lynch’s Virginia Beach Seed & Poul-try Swap from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday , rain or shine.

The event is free and takes place in and around the new farm stand on Muddy Creek Road, adjacent to her pick-your-own flow-er and herb beds and where her free-range chickens often feed.

Take some of the seeds you collected from flowers or veggies last year, or bring cut-tings from, say, hydrangeas or roses, divi-sions of some of your perennials, bulbs you have thinned or even early seedlings you have started.

Swap what you have with other partici-pants’ bounty from their land.

Lynch has even made up colorful pack-ets of her own seeds – dill, zinnia and sun-flower – that she collected last year from her prolific summer pick-your-own garden.

“Heirloom seeds are best because they will be true to what they were originally,” Lynch said. “With hybrids you can’t tell.”

If you raise chickens, bring your extra roosters or hens and swap with other chick-en lovers in attendance.

And if you want to raise chickens, but live in the northern half of Virginia Beach where zoning laws won’t allow it, Lynch will have a petition on hand that you can sign. It will request a change in zoning so that residents can keep hens in their yards.

Wait until you see Lynch’s colorful eggs she has for sale under the label “Just Got Laid in Pungo.” The sight of the blue-green, brown and chocolate eggs will make you want to buy a dozen .

As part of the seed-and-chicken swap, Lynch also will have Heritage breed chick-ens and laying hens for sale to help you get started.

And if you like the idea of having chick-ens, but really don’t want to go to the trou-ble, Lynch has a Rent-A-Chick program in which you and the kids can participate for a couple of weeks. For $60 she will send you home with baby chickens, instructions and everything you need to raise the chicks for a week or two. Then bring them back to the farm ; Lynch takes care of the rest.

Lynch, who was a biology major at Old

Dominion University, works full time at her parents’ business, Lynch Insurance, in Virginia Beach. She is renovating the 100-year-old farmhouse on Muddy Creek Road that her parents owned into a bed-and-breakfast inn.

The 31-year-old hopes the B&B, along with sales of her flowers , herbs , chickens and eggs, will allow her to be a full-time farm girl before too long.

She started three years ago, first with chickens , then she opened her pick-your-own farm for herbs and flowers. She held her first seed-and-chicken swap last year and 40 people came from as far as way as Williamsburg and Yorktown to the swap. She is hoping for many more this year.

“It’s just fun to network with other gar-deners,” Lynch said. “And chickens are the gateway drugs of farming!”

Mary Reid Barrow, barrow1@cox.net

CHICKENS, SEEDS, SO MUCH MOREVirginia Beach Seed & Poultry Swap is set for Saturday at new Pungo farm stand

want to go?What Virginia Beach Seed & Poultry Swap

Where Back Bay Botanicals, 1549 N. Muddy Creek Road, Virginia Beach

When 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday

Details Bring seeds, cuttings, divisions, bulbs and seedlings to share. Bring chickens to swap, too. Rent-A-Chick. Buy eggs. Sign a petition to allow folks to raise hens in the northern half of Virginia Beach.

Info Contact Gina Lynch (pictured above with one of her roosters), 757-560-1455, backbaybotanicals@yahoo.com or www.backbaybotanicals.blogspot.com.

MARY REID BARROW | FOR THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT

By Lee ReichThe Associated Press

Let us now praise an un-sung hero of the garden: the humble garden cart.

My cart has played a fun-damental role in the plea-sures that a garden offers to eyes, nose and mouth.

Let’s first be clear on just what implement I’m talking about. A garden cart is not a wheelbarrow. Instead of having a single, squat tire, a garden cart has a large body boxed in by wood, sometimes aluminum, flanked by two heavy-duty bicycle-size tires.

The tires’ size and the fact that they’re centered along the wooden bed make a garden cart useful in a dif-ferent way than a wheel-barrow. This cart lets you move a much heavier load – up to 400 pounds if it’s a high-quality cart. That’s be-cause the large wheels move smoothly over bumps and carry most of the weight.

With a garden cart, you mostly just pull the weight, in contrast to a wheelbar-row, which requires you to lift and push. My cart has been indispensable in mov-ing rocks over the years .

The large, high-walled bed of the cart also makes it possible to haul around oodles of bulky materials.

A friend praises his cart for being able to move, in one trip, four large bales of hay from his storage area to his horses.

My garden thanks the cart for the enormous quantities of organic materials hauled over to it. Some, such as com-post, are heavy, and others, such as leaves, are bulky. Quantities of organic mate-rials are what make great soils, and great soils are the foundation of great gardens, whether vegetable gardens, traditional flower gardens or stately or fruitful trees.

Year after year, for almost two decades, my cart has hauled the mowings from a 1-acre hayfield to be turned into compost or laid around trees and berries as mulch. Year after year, large piles of wood chips have been moved, too, one cartload at a time, from my driveway, where arborists convenient-ly dump truckloads of chips, back to my garden for mulch or for paths.

Autumn leaves, bagged and discarded by neigh-bors, likewise have bumped along in the wooden bed to their eventual home beneath

trees or in the compost pile. The cart has occasionally moved plants and soil. Regu-larly, usually at this time of year, the cart rolls finished compost from compost bins over to beds to be put down as an inch-thick icing.

This year brought re-newed appreciation for my garden cart because the wooden bed had final-ly reached such a state of disrepair. Every shovelful of compost was also taking along layers of soon-disap-pearing plywood. After two days of measuring and dis-mantling, I replaced the old plywood with new.

No need to become an-noyed at a garden cart when it reaches a state of disre-pair. After all, mine, for example, had by that time hauled tons and tons of ma-terials. It had stood the abuse of spending most of its life outdoors, exposed to rain, snow, heat and cold.

In summary, any garden would be improved by a gar-den cart, and be sure to get a high-quality one. Look espe-cially for sturdy wheels and a large bed of high-quality plywood.

AN ODE TO A HUMBLE PARTNER: THE GARDEN CART

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