When someone asks me for my pesto recipe, I always say, well, on September 1 you plant garlic... and so it goes.
Next year's garden is always in progress this year. This morning I double dug a long, 4 foot wide raised bed and turned in two wheelbarrows-full of compost. The pile of weeds I pulled out of that same bed before digging it over went right into the wheelbarrow and back to the compost pile (with a few choice tidbits thrown to the chickens and bunny along the way). Next year's garden will grow on this spring's decomposted weeds. The compost I was spreading still had some 'clinkers' in it -- chunks of coal from the woodstove that hadn't completely burnt to ash -- and I threw those back into the compost pile for next year too. Winter's wood ash joins spring weeds in the compost pile, along with all those eggshells, veggie scraps, hay and manure from the rabbit and chickens, brush, and whatever else we've got.
I love compost. And I'll admit -- I am not very good at making it. I'm not methodical, I don't save up things in neat piles in order to layer them in carefully measured layers. I just throw stuff on there and turn it from time to time. It all works out.
A bunch of my veggie scraps get saved in the freezer for soup stock, and cooked down until they are nothing but an unidentifyable brown mass before I add them to the compost pile. Other bits get fed to the chickies or rabbit first and then get to the compost pile as manure. When time is short or I have a big pile of compost spilling over whatever container happens to be catching it on the kitchen counter, it will just go straight to the compost pile.
Shoveling up the compost pile I see remaining little bits of corncob or eggshell here and there, and every shovelful disturbs a bevy of earthworms and earwigs as well as the evidence of millions of other agents of decomposition too small for the eye to see. A toad has taken up residence in a broken piece of sunflower stalk and hops away in panic as I shovel the compost out around him.
Few things illustrate the spiral journey of growing food more than composting, and saving seeds. Sometimes the compost even saves seeds for you--and up pop the volunteer squash and tomato plants, all on their own. Sheesh, sometimes you might even think the natural world could go on without us...
I love compost. And I'll admit -- I am not very good at making it. I'm not methodical, I don't save up things in neat piles in order to layer them in carefully measured layers. I just throw stuff on there and turn it from time to time. It all works out.
A bunch of my veggie scraps get saved in the freezer for soup stock, and cooked down until they are nothing but an unidentifyable brown mass before I add them to the compost pile. Other bits get fed to the chickies or rabbit first and then get to the compost pile as manure. When time is short or I have a big pile of compost spilling over whatever container happens to be catching it on the kitchen counter, it will just go straight to the compost pile.
Shoveling up the compost pile I see remaining little bits of corncob or eggshell here and there, and every shovelful disturbs a bevy of earthworms and earwigs as well as the evidence of millions of other agents of decomposition too small for the eye to see. A toad has taken up residence in a broken piece of sunflower stalk and hops away in panic as I shovel the compost out around him.
Few things illustrate the spiral journey of growing food more than composting, and saving seeds. Sometimes the compost even saves seeds for you--and up pop the volunteer squash and tomato plants, all on their own. Sheesh, sometimes you might even think the natural world could go on without us...
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