No Stinky Here

This room is for conversations about composting, soil improvements and amendments, How to make our own plant food. Well, maybe it might be a bit stinky. A place to share photos of your dirt or your pretty compost pile whichever it is, we will look at it and be supportive.  

Composting is a very interesting thing to do.  We buy or grow our produce, we take the scraps, throw them in a pile and it turns into dirt.  The leaves and branches fall from the trees, we gather them and put them in a pile and that turns into dirt.  Our grass grows and we gather the discard and throw it in a pile and it turns into dirt.  But there is a little bit more in-between, it is kind of like a salad. We layer these different brown and greens and toss it around. We do not compost any meat or oils so there are no rodents and problems other than the year Chipmunks decided to make a den in our compost pile. 

My garden is divided into twelve sections, and our compost pile gets one of them, We move it each year to a new section so that it improves the soil all over the garden. Things always grow best the year they get to be where the compost pile was the year before. This year the potatoes are getting the old compost pile section.

Grandma Donna wrote,  Stephanie G, that is a really good idea and so glad you shared that with us all.

That's a really good idea, Stephanie!  I might try that this year!  Thanks for sharing.  Grandma Donna, can you share more about how the tree roots affected your compost?  Currently, our main bin is at the back edge of our property line near a tree line.  Thank you.

Grandma Donna wrote,  Elizabeth M, we have many trees in and surrounding our yard and there is always a battle and it takes no time for the tree roots to find the compost pile no matter where we move it.  We put our current compost pile on top of pavement/stepping stones and the roots still work their way through.  We have one store bought composter on our patio and that one works good but we need more compost that what that one will make and also we need a working pile and a resting pile.  our yard is the shape of a elongated narrow triangle.  It is a rather small yard. 

My neighbor Mr. Al, in his 90's, now past for many years, he would walk out with his bucket of scraps about once a week and take them out and bury them in his yard where he gardened and he would know where he buried last and kept moving his spot. His cabbages that he grew in that garden space were beautiful but his yard was large enough to shift the garden. I think that is a very good simple way too. I keep thinking of how to do that in our garden, we need every bit of space to grow.  Resting the pile is when we get into trouble and the roots take over.

Thank you, Grandma Donna.  Usually, in the early spring  when I don't have a lot planted, I will bury my scraps throughout the garden.  I'm hoping to try to do more of that throughout the summer, but it is hard to dig amongst the established plants as my garden beds are small and densely planted. I am trying to figure out a solution.  Something I do when planting tomatoes, pepper plants, etc, is to dig the hole deeper than needed, drop in some scraps, top the scraps with a few inches of soil, and then add the plant.