The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Even though I dealt with my annual compost task a couple weeks ago, I thought it might bear sharing, since I wrote one of my first blog posts about it and thought a picture of the same pile a year later would be cool.
Unfortunately, the photos aren’t the best. That’s because the GSP has perfected her craft of breaking into the pile and feasting on its putrified contents, and I had to find a way to stop her. Not because she’d puke it up or have accidents — that dog could handily digest a bucket of bolts with nary a fart. But rather, the compost needs those green fuzzy cantaloupe peels, not her! So now I have wire on the top, wire on the front, all hammered in with U-nails. … And I was too lazy to take them off for the photo. So use your squinting skills.
The left is the pile this time last year, the right is the same side 12 months later (now).
Again, I do nothing to this pile, aside from adding everything except blooming weeds (and car parts). No aerating, no turning. No paying attention to the ratio of green versus brown contents. Nothing.
Therefore, there are always things that don’t completely rot: avocado pits, cantaloupe peels, big sticks and branches, some egg shells, clam shells… Maybe I shouldn’t be adding clam shells…
As I dig the compost out, I pull any large item out and set it aside.
I also pull out the garbage that has made its way in to the pile.
And rescue any kitchen utensils that were inadvertently thrown away. (Just found my missing vegetable peeler, thank-you-very-much.)
Then I spread it in the garden.
After I have completely emptied the finished compost…
…which I guess I was not quite done with when I took this picture…
I use those large sticks, peels and shells that I had set aside as the base for the new pile, layering it directly on top of the dirt. On top of that, I put any leftover dried brown plant material, like asparagus tops or dead kale plants, leaves or raked brown grass
Then I cover up the other side and label with a skull and crossbones to warn the kids not to add to that pile. Well, not really. I just yell at them a lot when the inevitably screw up. So, in the photo above, the left side is now the “active” side and the other will be left alone until this time next year.
The only downside is that I never have enough. There was a point last year that I actually started catching grass clipping so that I’d have more stuff to add to the compost pile. Then I realized that was, well, insane. And I stopped.
Sylvana says
WOW! Now that’s progress – unless it got smaller because your dog ate the rest 😛
vrtlaricaana says
People make such a big science project with compost pile. That you for sharing this simple and time saving method of composting.
admin says
Hi Guys! Thanks for commenting. Yes, it’s true. I’m the lazy composter. But it works. I’d rather spend my time digging weeds… Sylvana: you make a good point. I like to blame Lola, the GSP for a lot of things, so maybe I can add that to my list: SHE is the reason I don’t have enough compost, eh?
Steve Southard says
Jen I used to do pretty much the same thing. I had a double sided bin for about 20 years that held a little over 2 cubic yards of raw material on each side. At first I was really diligent about rotating the left side to the right side and thus aerating it in the process but got lazy after a while. The main ingredients were leaves and grass clippings and honestly, I found if I just let it sit there I had all the “black gold” I could use the following spring hiding at that bottom. Anything that hadn’t decomposed got tossed into the new heap for the following year. Before that when I was young and stupid, I built a HUGE 15 by 7 foot double bin on the property I lived on and made trip after trip to the horse stables down the hill for scrapings hauled in my little pickup. I had been reading all about composting and heard that to test you should thrust your fist in up to your elbow to test the temperature #)$(*#)$#$*&!! It was kind of like thrusting my fist into a pot of simmering stew! Cripes! Thanks a lot Mother Earth magazine. I think it’s safe to say no seeds or bad stuff survived that batch. LOL! And I was left with no scars.