OK, so I know that it's probably sort of weird to be really into compost - being that it's decomposing garbage and has a bunch of bugs in it, but I think that compost is the coolest thing! Mollie started several compost piles for her Science Fair project in 5th grade. This one was the pile she put small sticks and stems in. Over the past few years we have used one pile for our kitchen scraps and leaves, this pile for small sticks and stems, and then one other pile for larger wood chips and bark. This pile is now rich compost and can be used on our gardens - amazing! There is something about the cycle of life in the compost pile that captures my attention. The fact that we can throw sticks, wood chips, grass, leaves, and all of our kitchen scraps in a pile, bugs can chomp away on them, the sun, rain, and snow can do their magic, and we can end up with rich compost to put in the garden is just cool - I don't know what else to say about it! We don't throw away any of our yard waste because we try to use it for various purposes. We put the weeds around the trees to mulch them or, if they don't have roots in them, we put them right on the compost pile. We use the sticks for kindling for our winter fires, and we use the grass clippings from mowing for mulching the garden beds. I like that we are actually using our yard for something purposeful instead of just cutting grass and throwing away the yard waste. We are using the things in the yard to enrich the soil so we can grow more food.
I am amazed by compost, too. I am curious why you had 3 different kinds of compost. I throw all kinds of compostable matter into one pile. Do you turn (aerate) your compost?
ReplyDeleteWe just started out compost that way - don't really know why - it just seemed to make sense because we needed some compost right away for the garden and we figured that the wood would take a lot longer to decompose.
ReplyDeleteI don't turn the compost, but it's only because I don't have time! We basically just throw things on it and let it compost by itself. We do have a composter that we turn sometimes because it is made to easily turn. It sits right outside the back door by the kitchen and we throw stuff in there in the winter when we don't want to trudge out to the back compost piles. We should turn it more, but we just forget. Things seems to want to compost without much human intervention!!