Compost all Winter
Kitchen scraps collected in a 5-gallon bucket, ready to bury in the future garden.
"Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout would not take the garbage out...And though her daddy would scream and shoutShe simply would not take the garbage out
And so, it piled up to the ceilingsCoffee grounds, potato peelingsBrown bananas, rotten peas, chunks of sour cottage cheeseThat filled the can and covered the floor, cracked the window, and blocked the door..."
~ Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends, 1972
What Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout needed was a garden and then all of these kitchen scraps would have had her dreaming of the black gold she could create by simply burying them in the ground. I am a lazy composter and thus do not bother with a bin or a pile nor measure my greens-to-browns ratio. I dig a trench when the ground is not frozen and then dump the kitchen scraps we have collected over the previous weeks in our 5-gallon bucket into the trench to be buried. "If you build it, they will come," is my motto meaning if you dig a trench, fill it with organic matter, and simply wait, microorganisms and worms will come, and they do! While I don't have photos, when I was digging in the fall, the soil where I had been trench-composting was full of wriggling worms feasting on our, "Brown bananas, rotten peas, chunks of sour cottage cheese."
The 5-gallon bucket of kitchen scraps headed for the trench compost in our future garden to be.
The area below the yurt which I have been terraforming to create swales and berms for water retention, has lent itself beautifully to trench composting. This area is a mixture of clay and rocks, not yet a place where plants will flourish. I am currently in soil-building mode, dreaming of my own black gold in which I can grow nutrient-rich food in nutrient-rich soil. As I build the soil, I will add to this post with before and after shots as I transform dirt into a medium for plant nirvana. Check back for updates!
Soil farming socks from my mom as a Christmas gift.
