Where Do You Put Your Compost Piles?

Posted on Saturday, November 10, 2007 at 10:16

Our garden currently contains only a few brassicas and greens but the main crop in the Fall garden is always compost!

I know that compost is not a flower or a vegetable but I think of it as a crop because it is sooooo important to the life of all the other plants.

I could write a whole post (and probably should) on why compost is so vital to the organic garden, but this post is about placement of the compost piles. We always used to keep our compost bins and piles hidden out of site behind the garden. This works fine, but one year Ma started a compost pile right in the garden and the soil in that spot the following year was fantastic. Another time, we moved a compost bin and noticed that the grass grew over that spot three times faster and lusher. This obviously means that the ground under a compost pile also benefits from the compost.

With this in mind, we now locate Fall compost piles IN the garden. This year when I re-organized our garden beds, I purposely made the interior beds four foot square so I could easily convert those beds to compost piles in the off season. Those beds are also easier to plant intensively and successively a la Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening.

All I do is drive either metal or wood posts in the corners and wrap chicken wire around the posts.

As we clean up all the garden debris, it goes into these new bins. We also put in shredded leaves and some grass clippings to get the piles heated up.

I will turn the piles a few times and by the Spring The debris will be "black gold", and the beds will be revitalized! I am even considering rotating these compost bins throughout the garden beds during the growing season when the organic matter is so plentiful. In past years we still had the bins off to the side or used our tumbler in the Spring and Summer.

As for right now, I'm very glad that it finally rained enough that the grass turned green and started growing. I now can bag our organic grass clippings to add plenty of nitrogen to the piles. As for the carbons, we can add leaves. This year I am also returning to a practice that I used to do when we gardened in a sub-division. I am driving through the subdivision picking up the bags of leaves that they conveniently left on the curb for me. The only problem with that is that sometimes you get more garbage in the bag than leaves. On my last raid I mistakenly got six bags of pine needles instead of leaves.

I still added a small layer of them to the piles but the rest will become mulch for our blueberries.

Isn't it amazing that people throw stuff like that away? Not me, I'm always looking for more compost ingredients!

Happy Composting!

- Pa

Untitled Comment

Posted by morningsunshine on Saturday, November 24, 2007 at 10:56 - Link

okay - I am a lazy gardener... that is why I think I will like SFG so much! LOL! but my compost is in a cleaned "oil" barrel (actually it had chocolate syrup) in which I have drilled a bunch of 1/2 inch holes. I fill it up and roll it around about every other day. is this actually going to work?
I am so clueless about compost. I just tossed in the boiled turkey bones from my stock-making. is this okay? I heard that worms do not like citris, so should I avoid adding my orange peels? I want to do this, but it makes me nervous - will I really get yummy black compost from GARBAGE?!?!?!?

Fantastic blog!

Posted by job19v25 on Thursday, December 13, 2007 at 06:49 - Link

Hi I've just come across your blog. Great garden and tips. My son and I have started growing our own veggies. In February he got a polytunnel (we are in Ireland) to extend the growing season. Will post some photos of our efforts on my blog at some point. He will be delighted to read through your posts tomorrow.
God bless
Deb