Compost This . . . and this, and this

I don't remember the first time I heard about composting, but for our first raised bed garden, we bought lots of bagged soil from the store to get us started.  It seemed good enough and the veggies grew well, but for our second raised bed, we got some compost from my wife's father.  He had a huge pile which he made out of leaves and cow manure.  We brought some home, made our second garden, and everything in it shot up immediately.  The squash grew to twice the size of the squash in the first garden.  I became a staunch believer in compost and vowed to never buy soil again.

Composting is essentially making homemade dirt from decomposed material.  The right way to make compost is to use a mix of greens (items high in nitrogen) and browns (items high in carbon).  Some examples of greens are grass clippings, weeds, coffee grounds, rotten vegetables, egg shells, fruit peels, etc.  Some examples of browns are leaves, sticks, cardboard, paper products, etc.  Then it just needs air and motion . . . and time (my batch won't be ready until next February).

I started with a garbage can that I punched holes into and rolled around the yard daily.

In just a month the compost from the garbage can looks like this:

Black Gold

I realized though that this wouldn't be enough for our third garden next spring, so I created a compost heap.  This is the place where I keep adding our kitchen waste.

I haven't had a problem with pests because I dig a trench into the center of the heap, deposit the kitchen waste, and then cover it over.  At some point at the end of the summer I will leave this heap be to rot and start another one.  I plan on adding some rabbit manure to mine (high in nitrogen) and some earthworms (a procedure called vermicomposting).

One of the things I love about composting is that no two composts are the same.  My heap is individual to my family because it contains things we discard.  Someone else will discard entirely different things.  I don't think there is a wrong way to make compost.  I like that we are reducing the amount we put into the garbage can and creating something useful with it.

Now I just have to wait.  Proverbs 14:29 says "A patient man has great understanding" . . . and big, tasty vegetables as well.