Compost & Cover Crops For Soil Health & Biodiversity.
Deep dive into soil health practices at Zentvelds coffee farm
Compost & cover crops for soil health & biodiversity
A mixture of permanent ground covers and annual cover crops are allowed to go to seed and add diversity above and below the soil. They join the well established flowering native shrub borders, scattered food and garden trees and most notably our local rainforest species planted over 25 years ago under June Zentveld’s care. We acknowledge the Harris family across the creek for their rainforest plantings too, joining ours. The headwaters of Skinners Creek that literally bubble out of the ground we care for are now bordered by fully rejuvenated riparian zone rainforest liveliness, healthful creek life with clear running waters and rocky pools of croaking frogs, lizards, and birdlife a’plenty.
Plants grow soil.
A diverse mix of green solar panels (leaves) feed sugars to the great diversity of microbial life down there; which in turn help make available soil nutrients to our coffee trees, and build up our soil health across the farm, naturally.
We delight in now seeing native grasses such as basket grass thriving below the coffee trees. A great sign our soils are healthy and as nature intended. And we never want to leave soil bare.
No 2 : Make compost. Turn ‘waste’ into food for the soil life.
We turn wood chips and macadamia husks, coffee fruit skins, coffee grounds, shrubbery clippings, roastery chaff and even our paper coffee cups get soaked and buried into compost piles.
Add nature’s sunshine and rain; a few turns to heat it up, allow some steamed up energy, a bit of time and voila; life giving compost is made with all it’s benefits of cooling, water retaining, microfauna food and cover for the soil.
Our worms and friends are grateful and living their best life down there. 🐛🪱🐜
Our plants say ‘ahhh’ in appreciation and mostly respond with good health and the ability to withstand extremes of heat, wet or cold. Climate change resilience? Yes please.. 🌱
Bec loves loves love gathering inputs for compost and John is really good at turning the piles with his Avant to liven them up. Ibis love to sit a’top and offer a bit more nutrient with their droppings. Magpies come and steal the worms and bugs, and Willie Wagtails stake their claim as chieftains of the compost piles. Happy farm life with compost!
No 3. Prune the coffee trees. Turn into mulch and slow release wood chip goodness.
Our latest move has been to prune blocks of our 35-38 yr old coffee trees, turning them into wood chips and throwing them straight back in the coffee rows. We will do this, in fresh blocks every year until all the overly tall old trees have had a hard prune and enlivened with fresh new growth. That is, if they are not pulled out to make room for new plantings of new varieties.
No.4 Circular economy : We’re on board. Waste not, want not.
We’re recycling other’s ‘waste’ into nutrient richness, regenerating our farm and soil health.
Accepting other farmer/ producer ‘waste’ and transforming such inputs into compost, transforming fish bones and seaweed into foliar feed hydrolysates for natural plant nutrition and soil health. Macadamia husks and rejected nut, hemp seed husk, arborists’ wood chips, fisherman’s co-op bones – we’ll take it, compost it or ferment it to become a biological worthy, nutritional input.
My motto is that on our farm we have no discernible ‘waste’ product, only useful organic inputs. All our harvested fruit skins and dried parchment ‘shells’ from the wet and dry mill processes get composted or spread as mulch back under the coffee rows. No organic waste leaves our farm, or gets put in a bin, ever.
Tree trimmings are usually cut and mulched in place, down the rows. From our roastery, the chaff gets chucked on the compost heap. From the coffee house, takeaway paper cups are truly compostable and we make the effort to do so. Made of pure paper, no glue, and edible ink by MPM in Brisbane; they are soaked in water, then buried in a well aged compost pile, feeding the worms and soil life along with the spent coffee grounds.
We are most effectively enriching our earth and soil’s health through returning our tree, harvest and roastery coffee house waste back to where it belongs, in situ.
The soil life on our farm, is getting healthier and fed more naturally each year. And we’re happy doing it! 👩🏻🌾😁
Hooray for soil life and biodiversity above and below the ground.
Uniquely free of the coffee pest and disease that afflicts all other coffee producing nations, we are growing fine Arabica coffee in Australia without harmful insecticides.
Truly bird and bee friendly Australian coffee farming that we can be proud of. 💓 👩🏻🌾🌻🌱🌳🦜🐝😁
