July 20, 2013 - A Question Answered

Nichole, from Blessed Beyond Measure, asked "Granny - Your squash look great! Do you use your own compost or purchase a specific kind to amend your soil?"

Well, Nichole, I have admitted before that I'm terrible at making compost.  Way back in 2008, when I first began this blog, I confessed....

I'm a failure at composting. I used to have a wonderful compost pile, back in the days when I had a "real" garden and a nearby neighbor with horse poop and straw. Now, living in the city, I have a bottomless barrel back behind the garden shed, and I just randomly throw the kitchen and garden scraps into it. I think it takes something like five years to decompose (not really, but it seems like it). I just don't have all the brown and green stuff to have a proper compost pile. And my almost-seventy-year-old body doesn't take kindly to the daily compost turning, anyway. It's for that reason I now do "trench composting". I just find a vacant spot in my garden, dig a hole and bury everything. By next spring it will have enriched my garden plot with little or no work on my part.

I still use that old barrel, and my old body is almost 75 now, but I have added a 4'x4'x4' fenced in area in the corner of the garden in which I pile chopped leaves mixed with grass clippings.  I don't do anything to it, just keep it damp and use it like this....

 First I dig a trench, not too deep, just down a garden fork full of soil.  Then I add a layer of garden "trash".  That could be any garden vegetation that's not showing signs of disease, like bean or pea vines or, in this case, corn husks.

 Then I add my kitchen garbage.  I keep this in a container with a tight lid, under the kitchen sink, until the container is full.

 I cover that with a layer of the partially decomposed leaves and grass clippings from the pile in the corner of the garden.

 I pull the soil back over the trench, breaking up dirt clods and small roots, and use the fork to make it somewhat smooth.

I add the rest of the bucket of leaves to the top, to remind me I've already trenched this area.  When my son has time to go to the nursery to get a load of dairy compost  (hello, John!), I'll top this bed with a few more leaves and about 2" of the compost.  It will be all ready for planting next year.

This 3' wide potato bed was trench composted as I dug the potatoes, now it's covered with chopped leaves and just waiting for its top dressing of dairy compost (hello. John!).  

I sure miss my old pickup.  We've talked about buying an old junker, just for hauling cow poo and the occasional 8' boards we sometimes need, but when we consider the cost of insuring a vehicle just to use a couple of times a year, we talk ourselves out of it.  Son John has a pickup.  Hello, John.....Mom needs you  :-)