Extreme Measures

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Extreme Measures
The last thing on my mind on a hot, humid day in late summer is turning a compost pile. It's hard enough trying to remember to add a little moisture let alone go to the trouble of trying to turn it. And if the compost bin happens to be full to the rim it looks more like a pile of work than future black gold.

I came face to face with just such a problem one evening when I walked out to dump a bucket of kitchen scraps. Off to the side of the filled to capacity compost bin was a partially filled raised bed that had held asparagus plants until I decided the bed could be put to more productive use. Long before I built a compost bin I had a compost pile sitting on the ground that I used to turn every now and then. It wasn't a neat composting system but it worked quite well. Remembering that I took the kitchen scraps and dumped them into the middle of the raised bed. I grabbed the spading fork leaning against the compost bin and lifted some of the material from the compost bin onto the kitchen scraps. I watered the pile a little then threw on a bag of steer manure to aid in the composting and topped it off with some more garden waste and a bit of straw.

To look at my creation you might think I had a pile of garbage in my garden. And when a couple of cockroaches scurried off from the pile I knew that's just what I had - a pile of garbage. The only good thing was it didn't smell except for the faint odor of steer manure.

Heaped up yard and garden waste looks like a pile of trash.

Over the next week I'd turn the pile of trash and add some moisture and after one week it still resembled a pile of garbage. There was definitely some composting going on because I could feel the heat when I turned the pile. The problem was there were too many big chunks of material in the pile. Big chunks take longer to decompose.

I'd recently acquired a mini tiller (You can read about the tiller under Till Me More) and decided I might be able to use the motorized piece of equipment as a chipper shredder substitute to grind up my trash pile.

What seemed like a good idea at the time turned out to be a bit flawed. First, the pile of trash was a bit too moist and all that moisture isn't what I'd call good for a new tiller. Secondly, the tomato vines and other plant material in the pile had a way of wrapping around the tiller's tines bringing the tilling action to an abrupt standstill. I spent twenty minutes untangling the vines from the tiller before I could start again. Then I'd go a few feet and the tines would get tangled again. I don't even want to talk about what happened to the toad the tiller found. I like toads; they eat insects. But when they bury themselves in the cool, moist soil you don't know they're there. Truly an accident waiting to happen.

With a little work, garden waste became part of the raised bed's soil.
One month after the bed of garbage was tilled, healthy summer squash were beginning to flower.

Once the materials were dried out the tilling became much easier with far less entanglement. The pile of rubbish eventually became part of the soil in the raised bed. I'd have to say the mini tiller might have been abused a little as it churned its way through the garden waste and I'm not sure I'd use this method again but it certainly made short work of what once looked like a trash heap.(2000)